University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: He's Not Human
February 13, 2006 | Men's Basketball
Feb. 13, 2006
By Adam Lucas
CORAL GABLES--Like most important things in life, this moment harkened back to the Rocky series.
You know the moment. It's Rocky IV, and Ivan Drago has been whaling on Rocky for several rounds. But for some reason, Rocky won't go down. So Drago goes back to his corner and his trainer is perplexed.
"What's wrong?" the trainer keeps asking the powerful Russian.
Drago gets a look in his eye like he's already seen what's going to happen in this fight, like he can already see Rocky celebrating in the middle of the ring and a long unpaid exile to Siberia in his future.
This is what Drago says: "He's not human. He's like a piece of iron."
Sunday night, Anthony King was Drago. Tyler Hansbrough, for what won't be the last time in his career, was Rocky.
The two 6-foot-9 bruisers had just clashed under the Miami basket. They'd both come down with a hand on a rebound. These are the kind of rebounds Anthony King gets. But there was Hansbrough. First, just an arm. Then a hand on the ball. Then two hands on the ball. King pulled, Hansbrough pushed. There was a moment when you really thought the basketball might deflate from the pressure.
In order to keep the two players from taking a hunk out of the innocent ball, an official stepped in and called a jump ball. The players separated, and King took a couple steps toward his bench. He turned and looked at the Tar Heel freshman, a look unlike any you normally see on a basketball court.
It wasn't an angry look. Wasn't a look intended to start something.
Here's exactly what it was: it was a Drago look. You could see the words forming in King's mind:
"He's not human."
Are we getting too used to this? Understand--Tyler Hansbrough just scored 25 points and picked up 7 rebounds in a critical road game. And here is the collective response: gee, that's nice.
It's not nice. It's almost unprecedented. We are approaching the territory of one of the best freshman seasons in Carolina history, which is like having one of the better sketches in da Vinci's portfolio.
Hansbrough does it all with this blasé expression that absolutely seems to infuriate opposing arenas. He dunks, he scores, he rebounds, he rips the ball away from upperclassmen...and his expression never changes. It doesn't hurt to have a guy on your team that causes the other team to have at least a little doubt about his sanity; it helps that his teammates call him Psycho T.
"Even I'm surprised at how strong he is," Wes Miller said. "He doesn't look the part sometimes. He doesn't look as strong and physical as he is. He's a warrior down there. He shocks people in the ACC. And I'll tell you what, I think people are scared of him once he hits them a couple of times."
Wouldn't you be? After all, you think you've got this kid surrounded, think there's no possible way he can maneuver the ball into the basket around these three pairs of arms, and then he's dropping the ball into the net. And then there's an exchange like what happens with King, and you want to see some kind of reaction, some hint of a crack in the foundation. At least pound his chest. Maybe let out a roar.
Instead, nothing.
He's not human.
"He's extremely gifted and he has tremendously strong hands," Roy Williams said. "He can take a beating and still get the ball up to the board. The amazing thing is that taking that physical play he still has a great touch on the basketball."
He showed some of that touch against Miami--let the word get out that Hansbrough has a reliable midrange game and there will be a lot of head-scratching in ACC film rooms--but mostly what he did was just overpower the Miami Hurricanes.
Miami closes to 49-47 with 16 minutes left? Give it to Hansbrough for a layup.
Miami gets a 52-51 lead? Hansbrough tosses a little pump fake and hits that newfound jumper.
Miami leads 54-53? Hansbrough gets the ball on the block, spins, and scores on a half-hook.
"They go down and score to go up and we answer," Williams said. "Then they score to go up again and we answer again. I think they went up a third time and we answered again. During that stretch I was more impressed with our toughness than at any time this year."
The last time these two teams met, Hansbrough was trapped in the Miami zone. This time, he spent some time at the high post, both as a passer and a scorer. The whole offense opened up around him. You might fool the Tar Heels once--Bobby Frasor said the team hadn't prepared extensively for zone prior to the first meeting--but it won't happen again.
Can a team that commits this many turnovers be cerebral? This team might be.
Up 59-56, Miami had the ball and a chance to seize some momentum in the BankUnited Center, where they've apparently lost the keys to the PA system volume, leaving it jammed on head-rattling levels (find another ACC arena with Warren G's "Regulate"--the unedited version--on the pregame playlist). Wes Miller was beaten on a drive, forcing a switch with David Noel. That put Miller on King. The Hurricanes cycled the ball a couple times, and then King looked down and realized this was a sizable advantage. Several players on the UM bench stood and pointed at Miller, trying to make their teammates aware of the mismatch.
They didn't point for long. Because just a few seconds later, Guillermo Diaz, after never glancing inside, was jacking up a contested 17-footer that missed, and a few seconds after that, Miller drained a huge 3-pointer from the corner.
That's at least a 5-point swing in the span of a few seconds. And it wasn't really because of talent or skill. It was simple heady play.
"I was just trying to battle in there," Miller said.
This particular road battle was a big one.
Rocky would have been proud.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. He is the coauthor of the official book of the 2005 championship season, Led By Their Dreams, and his book on Roy Williams's first season at Carolina, Going Home Again, is now available in bookstores. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly or learn more about Going Home Again, click here.
