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.
Chapel Hill, Durham mayors place wager on Wednesday matchup (newsandobserver.com blogs: OrangeChat)The mayors of Chapel Hill and Durham are betting big on Wednesday night’s game between UNC and Duke."If Duke loses, Chapel Hill Mayor Kevin Foy will receive tickets to a show at the Durham Performing Arts Center, the newly opened largest performing arts theater in the Carolinas,” according to a release from the mayor’s offices. “If UNC loses, Durham Mayor Bill Bell is invited to a night on Franklin Street and Asian cuisine at the Lantern Restaurant, which the News and Observer ranked as the 2008 No. 1 restaurant in the Triangle.”But wait for this next part.If UNC wins, Foy will supply Bell with a Carolina blue sweatshirt to wear at the next Durham City Council meeting. If Duke wins, Bell will give Foy a Duke blue sweatshirt to wear at the next Chapel Hill Town Council meeting.The game is scheduled at 9 p.m. Wednesday at Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium.
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.
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.
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.
With conference tournaments in full swing and the N.C.A.A. tournament fast approaching, I think this is a good time to offer a remedial B.S.L class: Basketball as a Second Language.
This is for you fans who enjoy watching the games and have a vague idea of what the analysts are talking about. Or you fans who simply want to review the terminology. Or you fans who want to impress the gang at the water cooler the day after by tossing out a few nuggets like: “Did you see how the Heels forced tempo when they went small? When they switched to four out, one in they opened up plenty of back cuts for Reyshawn Terry,” and “How about Wisconsin mixing halfcourt sets with their swing offense? Bo Ryan ran Tucker off those staggered screens, and Taylor beat his man with dribble penetration.”
It still won't help you understand Dickie V, but it's a start.
