In Chapel Hill Saturday, there
will be a fairly remarkable gathering - lettermen from way back and not too
long ago, over 200 altogether. Rasheed sends his apologies. Matt
Doherty will not make it, and in fact no starters from the '82 title team will
be there.
Duke did something like this a few years ago, with the celebration of their
tradition. It was fairly moving, though it was overshadowed to an extent
by the pending exit of Elton Brand and the suspected but not confirmed exits of
William Avery and Corey Maggette.
At any rate, there's no question that UNC has a lot of tradition to honor.
One alum who plans to be there is 92 years old, and then there's the '57 team,
which played six overtimes in the Final Four to win the title. To us,
there will always be a bit of a shadow over that team, since Frank McGuire, we
later learned, paid players at South Carolina and St. John's. It's not
unreasonable to think he did the same at UNC.
When the attention turns from sentiment to hard reality, the FSU
Seminoles will take the court, after their remarkable comeback win in
Tallahassee. Time was, UNC was renowned for comebacks, not for
allowing them. There will be an enormous pressure on the team, given the
occasion, but our guess is that they're
mad enough to not worry too much about it. Walter Davis and others
from the 8 points in 16 second game will be there, and the '57 team, and a lot
of others. It's a lot to live up to.
Here's a small distinction of interest between Ol' Roy Williams and Dean
Smith: Williams, on a fairly regular basis, refers to games he won, as in:
"I've never won a game or lost a game in the first half. Never."
Smith of course made it a habit to deflect all praise to his players and
never said anything about games "he" won. It's a small but
telling distinction.
Ol' Roy says it's been a
difficult year in some respects. So does that mean he's lost the games
UNC blew?
Here's a story about UNC
recruit Marcus Ginyard and how his team did last time out.
John Feinstein has an article up about Maryland, suggesting that the
Comcast crowd is spoiled by success. He goes on to say that the good
news in Maryland's visit to Durham this weekend is that Cameron is the only
place more spoiled by winning.
Gary says Maryland is actually pretty good, and he's right, they are.
It's just a brutal conference this year.
We're pleased to see Hermann Wendorff of the Fayetteville Observer shares our
idea that
the ACC could use some of the old-fashioned intensity that Norm Sloan and
Lefty Driesell brought.