University of North Carolina Athletics
Senior appreciation: Charlie Everett
March 4, 2005 | Men's Basketball
March 4, 2005
by Adam Lucas, Tar Heel Monthly
It is the little things that have defined Charlie Everett's Carolina basketball experience.
"I'm still enjoying the fact that I can walk around in the Smith Center and Coach Smith walks by and says hello to me," the senior says. "That still gets me. I love walking through the basketball office and seeing old players come through. I'm still the kid with the big smile on his face cowering in the corner."
Not exactly--now he's part of the team. After playing junior varsity basketball for two years, Everett originally tried out for the varsity in the fall of 2003, Roy Williams's first year at the helm of the Carolina program. But the Tar Heel varsity had just one slot available, and C.J. Hooker claimed it. Only freshman and sophomores are allowed to play JV ball, so Everett was left without a team for the first time in his memory.
He became a Woollen Gym pickup rat and one of the Tar Heels' biggest fans.
"I watched every single game," he says. "We'd have eight or nine people over, turn up the speakers, and we'd all watch the games.
"It was weird taking time off. It was the first time I can remember that I didn't play sports."
Everett tried out again for the varsity last fall, and this time he made the cut. His selection made him the third Everett brother to play for the Tar Heels, the only three-brother family in recent program history (Pat and Ryan Sullivan, Matt and Chris Brust, and Joe and Jeff Wolf are among the previous two-brother combos). Jim Everett played for the 2000 and '01 squads, earning a Final Four ring with the 2000 team, and Joe Everett joined the roster of the 2002 team.
Predictably, the Everett household was extremely competitive.
"Growing up, it was pretty normal for us to be playing outside on a 30-degree day, all three brothers going at it," Charlie Everett says. "I was always kind of the runt. But from video games to basketball to a game of checkers, it was always a battle. It was so competitive. If you won this game, you'd have to play until the other person won."
Although it now seems difficult to imagine any Everett brother in anything other than Carolina blue, it wasn't always that way. Their father attended the University of Minnesota and Charlie was a Kentucky fan growing up.
After the family moved to Charlotte when Charlie was in the sixth grade, his new friends began to convert him to the Tar Heels. And when Jim joined the UNC basketball program, Charlie's adaptation was complete.
Unlike many walk-ons who arrive at the varsity level unprepared for the corporation that is Carolina basketball, Charlie Everett had his brothers' experiences to learn from. They shared the ups and the downs, explained the constant grind of practice, the extremely daunting time invested-to-playing time ratio. But none of their pointers could prepare him for seeing his name on the familiar white home jersey for the first time.
"I walked into the locker room before the first game and my name was on the jersey," Charlie says with a smile. "It caught me off guard. My brothers had told me what it was like, but I didn't really understand it until I saw my name on there."
He's appeared in 17 games, notching four baskets and nine points through 24 games. Almost every touch of the basketball is accompanied by screams of "Shoot!" from the crowd, but he doesn't find it difficult to resist the quick trigger.
"If you do something wrong, even in the last minute of the game, Coach is going to get on you," he says. "You're a guy on the team. If you're messing up, you're going to hear about it."
But it's not his 38 minutes of game action that stick out in his memory. More than any of the players other than Jawad Williams, Melvin Scott, and Jackie Manuel, Everett knows how far the program has come since 8-20. He went to games during that era, heard Joe talk about the struggles of ending virtually every Carolina basketball streak.
So he doesn't cite a jumper or a rebound or a steal as his favorite Tar Heel basketball moment of this season. He cites his teammates.
"It's just been incredible to get to know these guys, hang out in the locker room with them, and have a good time," he says. "But after watching the 8-20 year, it's so much fun to watch Jawad, Jackie, and Melvin go from struggling to a team that's doing this well. We're hoping to do big things for them."
[italics]Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. His book on Roy Williams's first season at Carolina, Going Home Again, is now available in bookstores.[end italics]
