University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Heels Win, Keep Perspective
March 18, 2003 | Men's Basketball
March 18, 2003
By Adam Lucas
What do you do when all the standard sportswriter clich?s have been removed?
You can't write that Raymond Felton was a fighter, despite the fact that his steal, dive, and three-point play on DePaul's first possession of the second half spurred Carolina to an 83-72 victory over the Blue Demons in the first round of the NIT Tuesday night.
You can't write that the Heels were in a war, even though DePaul's burly Andre Brown lived up to his tattoo that read "Beast" in putting together a first-half double-double, nearly outrebounding Carolina single-handedly in the first 20 minutes.
You can't write those things, not when Melvin Scott's cousin, Furman Barnes, is overseas even as you read this preparing to go into battle. You can't write that when Jawad Williams has two friends from his hometown of Cleveland who are in the Middle East, one who just shipped out in recent days. You can't write that when Will Johnson's brother, Daniel, has already served his country in the Navy on a ship and lost his leg saving the life of another sailor.
Not to be a downer or anything--Carolina's 54-point second half performance against DePaul was stellar, and Felton's first three minutes of the half, when he completely overwhelmed the Blue Demons both offensively and defensively, was some of the best basketball you'll see.
We promise to return you to your regularly-scheduled sportswriting after the next game, which will be played either Monday or Tuesday against the winner of the Eastern Washington-Wyoming game, but it's worth taking a minute to put this game where it belongs in the grand scheme of things. What's easy to forget when you're cheering on the Heels from the crowd, watching them on TV, or even writing about them on a daily basis is that they do have lives outside of the Smith Center. They watch television just like you do. They worry just like you do. They might even have a heightened appreciation for other events in our world, because they're roughly the same age as the American soldiers who are overseas wearing uniforms of a different kind. They're not asked about it much, because they're too busy answering questions like, "Can you talk about how you made more shots in the second half?" but they are very aware of the world around them.
"It's different for me, knowing that the people over there are just like my brother," Johnson says. "They're the kinds of people you meet every day, but they're willing to make unbelievable sacrifices."
Scott's cousin was stationed in Augusta, Georgia, until he was abruptly shipped overseas a few months ago. The Tar Heel sophomore was picking up his messages one day back in the fall and got this one from Barnes:
"Yo. I'm gone."
That was it, and when Scott tried to return the phone call by calling Barnes's cell phone, he got only the voice mail. He hasn't heard from him since. So you'll have to forgive Melvin Scott if maybe he doesn't obsess over basketball as much as he otherwise might. It's not as though it weighs on him every second of every day. He is still one of the most loquacious players on the team, and in addition to possessing a reliable three-point shot, he also has a reliable lip. Just seconds before talking about his cousin, he was belting out the newest Missy Elliott song in the shower.
But when he talks about his cousin, there is no joking. There is only dead-serious realization that "taking a shot" means different things to different members of the Scott family.
"Those guys have heart," he says, and he's looking you right in the eye. "That's toughness. Us out there fighting through fatigue or whatever, that's nothing. Those guys over there, they want to be free, they want to play ball. But they're fighting so that we can be free. That's heart, man."
David Noel posted his first career double-double on Tuesday, and he has regularly defended players who outweigh him by 50 pounds or more this season. He's been out of positioin since December, never complaining and regularly absorbing considerable abuse in the paint. He's not afraid of anything, right?
Wrong.
"I'm scared of guns," he says. "I know I'm not going anywhere. You think about those guys over there fighting for us, man..." and he just looks up at you and shakes his head.
So when you're reading accounts of the next Carolina game and someone is describing Scott's three-point shots as "bombs" or calling the NCAA Final Four a "fight to the death," just remember that the Tar Heels know the truth. They've got an assistant coach, Doug Wojcik, who attended Surface Warfare School in Newport, Rhode Island, and served on a frigate in a foreign ocean. They've got a team full of players who know that if they weren't playing basketball, they could just as easily be riding in a tank across a strange pile of sand.
"Maybe something that will come out of this is that some of those phrases will go away," Johnson says. "You read things like 'battle to the death' and you know that's not accurate. We're playing a game. We're just playing a game."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly, click here.
