Call him the First Fan.Obama Welcomes UNC's National Champs to White House (WSJ Blogs - 11 May 2009)
President Barack Obama today welcomed the University of North Carolina Tar Heels basketball team to the White House to congratulate them on their recent national championship—which the president correctly predicted they would win.
UNC Basketball: What Is Going On In Chapel Hill? (Bleacher Report)What has happened to the former No. 1 team in the nation?[...]
Last night's game against the Demon Deacons wasn't a surprise to me, as North Carolina was on the road, and Wake Forest was hungry to show they were as good as advertised. The game against Boston College was a shock, as I felt that the Tar Heels would play tougher and play smarter than in the previous three games, as this was their home and ACC opener.
Did Wayne Ellington and Ty Lawson really buy into the team concept Williams was preaching, or are they trying to prove to the scouts that they are NBA lottery picks? Where is the perimeter defense they both displayed early on in the season, and the good decision making?
Hansbrough on cusp of setting UNC scoring record (AP Sports News via Rivals.com)Tyler Hansbrough didn’t seem fazed by all the questions about how close he is to breaking the career scoring record that has stood for 30 years at North Carolina. The prospect of giving a speech to the home fans to celebrate the moment, however, is another issue.“I’m going to have to plan something,” Hansbrough said Wednesday. “It would be pretty bad if I didn’t get the record (with) with all this anticipation.”
Standing nine points away from passing Phil Ford, the senior is likely to set the mark when the top-ranked Tar Heels face Evansville on Thursday night considering he has failed to score in double figures just six times in his career. It would be the latest accomplishment in a career filled with them for the reigning national player of the year, who has already earned the right to have his No. 50 jersey retired when he graduates.
Ford set the record with 2,290 points in 1978. The record has stood despite notable names like Michael Jordan, James Worthy and Antawn Jamison coming through the program in the years since, though Jordan, Jamison and Rashad McCants would have been within reach had they not left school a year early for the NBA.
WRALSportsFan.com: New N.C. State student ticket policy rewards passionate basketball fansLast season, the drawings for the 3,500 student tickets [for N.C. State Wolfpack men's basketball games] in the RBC Center were random. Student surveys showed, however, that the students wanted a way to reward passionate fans and give upperclassmen a better shot at the tickets.Now, a point system is in place. Seniors and graduate students start with five points, juniors four, sophomores three and freshmen two. Students get an additional point each time they attend a game.So a senior who attends every game is at the top of the priority list – and first in line for midcourt seats – against rivals like North Carolina and Duke."If you are a senior or junior and you attend all the [non-conference] games, there is a great chance you will be sitting mid-court for ACC games, instead of having to watch at home because you missed out on the lottery," Student Body President Jay Dawkins said in a statement.
Quinn Buckner laughed as soon as he heard the premise of the question.
"It's way too early to be talking about this," said Buckner, one of the stars of college basketball's last unbeaten national champion, Indiana's 1975-76 team that went 32-0.
The topic was North Carolina and whether the Tar Heels can replace the Hoosiers as the most recent unblemished champion.
North Carolina was the first unanimous preseason No. 1 team in The Associated Press poll, fueling the chatter that has existed since several key Heels spurned the NBA draft and returned to Chapel Hill.
They return all five starters, including national Player of the Year Tyler Hansbrough, and key reserves from a team that went 36-3 and reached the Final Four. Additionally, they add one of the nation's highest-rated recruiting classes, including 7-foot McDonald's All-American Tyler Zeller from Washington, Ind.
If it hasn't made the news in Indianapolis yet, it will soon: Tyler Hansbrough is out for an undetermined time with a "stress reaction condition" (the precursor to a stress fracture, one imagines?) in his shin.
Hansbrough's absence didn't deter the Tar Heels in their first outing against... uh... UNC-Pembroke.
"I remember being in the huddle. I forget what timeout it was, but we were down 16,” said Jason Richards, who had 20 points for the Wildcats. “And coach is asking us if we’re having fun. We got smiling a little bit and we got our focus off where we were and we came out and got some great stops.“And this kid [Stephen Curry] started getting on fire again, like he did the other day, and when that happens, it’s tough to stop him.”
State of shock: 25 years later, NC State miracle lives on (New York Daily News)It is perhaps the most repeated highlight in tournament history: Final seconds counting down, N.C. State guard Dereck Whittenburg hoists a long air ball that is grabbed by Lorenzo Charles, who jams the errant shot through the net before the final tick on the clock. Houston players stand around in disbelief, some collapse and bang the floor in tears. N.C. State coach Jim Valvano searches frantically for someone to hug.
N.C. State 54, Houston 52.
North Carolina was the only school among the four No. 1 seeds in the NCAA men’s tournament to graduate at least 50 percent of its players.
A report released Monday found 86 percent of Tar Heels men’s players earned diplomas during a six-year period. The other top seeds were far worse: 45 percent at Kansas and 40 percent at UCLA and Memphis.
The study was conducted by Richard Lapchick, head of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport. It evaluated four different freshman classes for a period beginning in 1997-98 and ending with 2000-01. Though the players evaluated are no longer on campus, the report intends to provide a snapshot of academic trends.
Study: Top schools in tournament aren’t tops in classroom (Associated Press)
There has not been a public sale of ACC Tournament tickets since 1966, and all tournaments since then have sold out in advance.The week after that, March Madness sets in.
Caltech, as a school, simply does not have the wherewithal to take sports seriously. For these students, basketball will never be anything more than a diversion. The basketball coach can try to recruit players, but he can't expect any breaks from the scary high standards of the admissions office.ESPN: Nerd Squad: The Tale of Quantum HoopsAs a result, a fair chunk of the basketball team (last season, all five seniors, for instance) did not even play high school basketball. The Caltech basketball team has more valedictorians than high school basketball players.
But they play real deal NCAA Division III basketball.
And, predictably, they get killed.
Night after night. Week after week. Year after year.
At the time this documentary was made, the team had not won a game in 21 years.
[...]What we are used to as college basketball is really basketball as a college major, or in many cases instead of college. Not basketball as an activity.
The version at Caltech puts stuff like health, education, and love of the game first. I can't speak for basketball, but I think a lot of colleges would be better off with that kind of athletic presence on campus. Maybe all the professional development of basketball players should take place somewhere else -- somewhere that is not supposed to be about academics.
The last [UNC basketball] game was my favorite of the year. After the first five minutes of clock time, when Hansbrough took off the protective man to return to the floor to play like a man possessed for the rest of the game -- it took me back to 1993 UNC championship team when George Lynch (my all-time favorite Carolina player) simply willed the championship.(For the uninitiated, Dewey Burke is a player that UNC Coach Roy Williams puts in for a few minutes at the end of the game, when victory is well and truly clinched. He earned the nickname "Biscuits" because the regional fast-food chain Bojangles offers a two-for-$1 sausage biscuit special to the holder of a ticket stub for any game in which Carolina scores 100 points, and Dewey made that happen a few times this season.)
Hansbrough has a fire, an indomitable will to go along with mediocre talent and his will wins almost every battle near the rim. He's expanded the range from where he's comfortable shooting during a game (story has it, that he regularly drains 15-footers and beyond during practice). Watching him bang around inside, knowing that he knows there's an 85% he's either gonna score or get a foul and score (big men, learn how to make free throws like Tyler) always gets the adrenaline hitting my system.
The Reyshawn Terry of last year resurrected during the ACC tourney and has been spectacular on both ends of the floor. Hopefully Wright gets more touches - Lawson seems to feed Tyler better than Brandon; Quentin and Brandon share the same alley-oop neural circuit. Teams are starting to learn that the if-I-hear-it-one-more-goddamn-time label of "defensive stopper" hung on Ginyard only tells half the story - the man will take your sleeping ass on the baseline with a reverse before he heads back down to the other end to harass you like a tabloid paparazzi.
Lawson....you mean the Flash? A Carolina point guard that's the fastest in history WITH THE BALLS TO SHOOT? Well, fuck me and fuck all his opponents because Ty is the new sheriff and he takes no prisoners. And that's a freshman? Only in the press guide - he's Mr. Prime Time. And if he needs to grab some air well there's last year's starter Frasor who is perfectably serviceable for as long as you need him and then Quentin who is only 1/100th of a second slower than Lawson and has some outstanding moves of his own if not the court command of Lawson.
Green doesn't dazzle, he just comes in and outscores the starters on a per minute basis while the starters are resting, that's all, nothing to see here, move along. Wes Miller, who looks and plays like a Duke point guard, which means he's got a center of gravity about three inches off the hardwood and is as ramped up as a Jack Russell on Mountain Dew and visualizes the ball as a chew toy on defense so he can dish it to a pick on the other side while he's scouting territory about 30 feet from the basket to launch his gorgeous mortar which finds the target the longer he's in the game.
There's this Thompson kid who has Sean May's hands which Sean must have left -- they're "soft" as we say -- that means go ahead, throw him a shitty, uncatchable pass - he'll catch it and stuff the rock in the basket while Stephenson blocks out for the rebound.
Love this time of the year - well, let's just say I want to see Dewey "Biscuit" Burke play in four more games.
Imagine if every summer for more than 30 years, young Trojans in the NBA — some of them already All-Stars — kept returning to USC's North Gym or the Sports Arena or now the Galen Center to play pickup games.I love this time of year.
And imagine if year after year, Bill Sharman, Tex Winter, Paul Westphal, Bob Boyd, Stan Morrison, George Raveling and Henry Bibby — all of them with some connection to USC — got together with Tim Floyd to play golf, talk basketball and hold a coaching clinic.
That is what USC is up against in North Carolina.
"They've got the best tradition in the world," said Trojans guard Lodrick Stewart, who remembers playing at the Dean E. Smith Center as a sophomore. "You look up and see all the best names — James Worthy, Sam Perkins, Michael Jordan — players I grew up idolizing. You just look at them and are like, 'Man, I'm on the same court and sitting in the same chairs where the best played.' "
Never mind that the Smith Center opened after Jordan, Worthy and Perkins finished their careers. And Stewart and his teammates don't have to face NBA greats, just Tyler Hansbrough and a batch of talented freshmen, when they play the Tar Heels in an NCAA tournament East Regional semifinal Friday at East Rutherford, N.J.
"For whatever reason, Duke – in a way that, say, Stanford or Northwestern or Vanderbilt doesn’t – represents a certain snotty, privileged, sweater-draped-over-the-shoulder elitism that we love to see taken down a few pegs."
[...]
Duke became the Yankees wrapped up in Notre Dame and divided by the Lakers; without the cuddly presence of Dean Smith at North Carolina and with the decline of Bob Knight at Indiana, playing Duke became the game every player, fan and coach circled on their schedule.
The gentle hills of the Triangle region of North Carolina are spangled with the prim brick McMansions of migrant techies lured by opportunity and temperate weather — almost any day is good for squeezing in 18 holes. Out on the wandering back roads, tall pines still cast thin shadows, turning a sunny-day drive into a sparkling strobe-light show. Just roll down the window to air out your soul. The Triangle, bounded by the cities of Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, is an easy place to live and an even easier place to visit. Refill your sweet-tea glass and sit a while.Important? Ha. I've been living in NYC for ten years now, and I will, this year as always, arrange to take a vacation day on the opening Friday of the ACC Tournament.
But at this time of year, an earlier immigrant from the North slices its pleasant homogeneity into three. The pulsating indoor game of college basketball takes over, dividing loyalties and generating friction. In the Triangle, even if you are not a fervent fan, you must share the deep regional certainty that basketball is really, really important.
