University of North Carolina Athletics
Home Sweet Home
December 29, 2009 | Women's Basketball
Dec. 29, 2009
By Lauren Brownlow
Carmichael Auditorium has a special place in the hearts of Tar Heel fans that were around to see Dean Smith and the Tar Heels dominate opponents there, and it certainly is held dear by Sylvia Hatchell and her team. They have had incredible success there and when there are big games in Carmichael, there is no better place to be. It can literally vibrate with noise.
But the beauty of Carmichael, the new and old versions, is that even when Carolina plays a team like Kennesaw State four days after Christmas, it's a great place to see a game. The crowd was similar to the one that had been showing up when Carolina was in the Smith Center, yet it felt louder and it felt fuller.
And everything - and everyone - is a part of the experience, intertwined together. Fans can clearly see the look of disgust on Tierra Ruffin-Pratt's face when she threw the ball away. Everyone can hear the satisfying "thwack" of hand on ball when Chay Shegog swatted a Kennesaw State player's shot.
That wasn't the case at the Smith Center, where the noise seemed to rise straight up and fall flat. Coach Hatchell imploring the team to rebound was usually audible, but in Carmichael, you could hear assistant coach Tracey Williams-Johnson counting down the shot clock from ten, assist Charlotte Smith reminding Carolina to watch the weak side defensively and associate head coach Andrew Calder urging Cetera DeGraffenreid to push the ball.
"First of all, it's not as big as the Smith Center, but the environment over here, the sound baffles in the top, that million-dollar scoreboard ... the lighting is all new - it's just perfect for our game. The sound is so much better," Hatchell said. "You put 4,000-5,000 in here and this is a tremendous environment. It's very, very loud."
It's funny - when old gyms are renovated, they often lose that "old gym" feeling. But Carmichael still retains that charm during games, even if its exterior and concourses are more modern. It even had a "new home" smell to it.
But all the problem areas area gone - the locker rooms, which were already good, are now great. Hatchell and her staff used to be crammed into a tiny office space for all six of them the size of the space currently being used for the media work room. "This is like the size of your office now, this whole thing," Italee Lucas said to Hatchell during the postgame press conference.
Lucas is one of the few current players who had played in Carmichael before, though one of the masters of its heyday, Ivory Latta, was on hand to witness the reopening. So Lucas was especially eager to see the new and improved Carmichael. But despite peeking through the windows every now and then, she got her first good look just two days ago.
"A lot of us were just speechless. We were just looking in and out of each room and it was just amazing," Lucas said. "We're just very fortunate to be able to play in a building like this. The court is still the same as old Carmichael and I got a chance to play here my freshman year. So playing here again brought back a lot of memories."
And it was as if she, and her teammates, never really left. It will just be listed in later years that the team took a year away from Carmichael while it was renovated, and it will go into the trivia annals that Rolle scored the first basket and that Kennesaw State was the opponent. But neither Carolina nor Kennesaw State minded being a footnote.
Kennesaw State head coach Colby Tilley, a native of Pittsboro, knew that his team would lose. They are down to eight players due to injury and were already at a talent deficit. But he knew a lot of his players grew up dreaming of playing somewhere like North Carolina.
"I told our players, `You'll always be a footnote in the media guide. They opened up their first game in Carmichael against Kennesaw State.' But I didn't tell them what the score was going to be," Tilley said.
