University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: The Game's The Thing
December 5, 2007 | Men's Basketball
Dec. 5, 2007
By Adam Lucas
PHILADELPHIA--Now this is basketball.
The Palestra is not a showplace. There are no fake brass rails added to contribute "character." There are no spotlights, no fireworks, and not a single video board.
The game was nice, yes. The 106-71 final score made it Carolina's largest margin of victory on the road in ten years, falling short of a 51-point pasting of Bethune-Cookman on Dec. 29, 1997.
But with all apologies to Tyler Hansbrough's 29 points and 10 rebounds (it's the first time in his career he's had three straight double-doubles) and Danny Green's 19 points off the bench and Wayne Ellington's 13 points in front of a home crowd, the venue was the show. Going from the grandeur of Rupp Arena on Saturday to the intimate Palestra on Tuesday was like comparing the Smith Center to Woollen Gym.
At the Palestra, the game's the thing. And the beauty of the building is that it's easy for old structures to feel run-down. The Palestra didn't feel run-down. It felt important.
It definitely had its quirks.
The Carolina bench was, literally, a bench. The Tar Heel managers normally mark Roy Williams's seat--always third from the scorer's table--with a strip of tape across the back of the chair.
Tuesday, there was no chair. There was just a bench. So the managers improvised and placed a masking tape "X" on the bench where they thought the third seat from the scorer's table might be. C.B. McGrath estimated the last time he'd sat on an actual bench was 1994--his last year of high school.
If you had a ticket to the sold-out game--and it was a big game, a topic of much discussion on sports radio during the late afternoon and early evening even though the 76ers fired their general manager earlier in the day--it might have entitled you to one of the 476 chairback seats. The other 8,300 are bleachers.
Your seat might have been under a metal catwalk. It might have been wedged in a corner, your feet in another person's lap. At least one fan on each end of the stadium was seated directly behind a pole that was holding the shot clock.
It's such a historic building that Roy Williams walked the concourse briefly after Carolina's shootaround on Tuesday and discovered an archive picture of himself with black hair.
Don't expect frills. The Palestra is the kind of place where you can hit your head on a sandbag while leaving the Tar Heel Sports Network radio location perched high atop the stands. A sandbag? What's that doing there?
Oh, it's part of the pulley system that's suspending the scoreboard over center court. Of course.
Early in the second half, a Penn fan was toting a soft drink on his way back to his seat. Unfortunately, he encountered a problem: his path to his seat was blocked.
By Green and Quentin Thomas.
The Carolina bench was actually the first row of a regular seating section. "Excuse me, guys," the fan said. Green and Thomas dutifully moved apart, opening a hole for their new friend to return to yelling at the officials.
How much of a culture change was it? At home, 100 points for the Tar Heels means discounted Bojangle's biscuits. At the Palestra, 100 points for the Quakers means a complimentary cheesesteak from Abner's.
Penn games might have the highest percentage of fans wearing blazers of anywhere in America. Combine the snappy dress with the old-school lighting and throwback gym, and you half expected Larry Miller to run out of the Tar Heel locker room. You shouldn't be reading a TarHeelBlue.com summary of the game. You should be reading Ring Lardner. Some arenas are, quite literally, arenas.
The Palestra is a gym. In every good sense of the word.
Late in the game, after Carolina had stretched their lead beyond 30 points, a fan on the first row of the baseline held up a sign. You know the type. It was hyping Tuesday's chosen television network, ESPN2, so the letters "E," "S," "P," and "N" began each word.
It was the kind of sign you see in every college basketball arena in America...with an Ivy League twist. The word chosen to represent "E" was "Eleemosynarian."
Yes, really. It said Eleemosynarian Student-Athletes Playing Nice.
With about two minutes left, Danny Green, Wayne Ellington, and Ty Lawson caught sight of the sign. "Hey, do you know what that means?" they asked each other. Not surprisingly, none of them did. Don't feel bad, guys. The word even stumped former Academic All-America Jerod Haase.
Turns out, the fan's name was David Smyth and he's a big Carolina fan. And the vocabulary word of the day? It means not-for-profit. You know, as in college athletes rather than professional.
"See, you learned something today," Smyth said with a grin after the game.
Oh, we also learned a few other things. Like the fact that Danny Green can throw left-handed baseball passes. He tossed one to Ellington midway through the second half that covered about 50 feet.
"I'm a little bit ambidextrous," Green admitted in the wake of his 19-point performance.
That didn't stop the head coach from giving him grief, however. With 2:31 left Williams leaned in to Ellington and Green on the bench, where the starters were watching the reserves finish out the victory.
"If Danny was any kind of quarterback, he would have hit you in stride on that one," Williams said.
All three men cracked a smile.
Then they sat back to finish the game on the bench.
Er, bleacher.
Adam Lucas most recently collaborated on a behind-the-scenes look at Carolina Basketball with Wes Miller. The Road To Blue Heaven is available now. Lucas's other books on Carolina basketball include The Best Game Ever, which chronicles the 1957 national championship season, Going Home Again, which focuses on Roy Williams's return to Carolina, and Led By Their Dreams, a collaboration with Steve Kirschner and Matt Bowers on the 2005 championship team.
