University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Carolina Nights
April 7, 2009 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
April 7, 2009
Adam Lucas is the co-author of the official 2009 championship book, which can be preordered now.
By Adam Lucas
DETROIT--It seemed obvious that I had to talk to Coye Franks, because she was visibly shaking.
I don't think she knew she was shaking, but she was. It was understandable. Coye is a Carolina undergrad. On Friday, she made the 12-hour drive from Chapel Hill to Detroit because, well, that's what we do. On Monday night, she had great seats, right behind the basket nearest the Carolina bench.
By halftime of the championship game, she had already had quite a night. She'd waited in the freezing cold (and snow) for admission to Ford Field, so she could dash in and grab a seat near the front of the UNC student section. She'd seen her Tar Heels take a 21-point halftime lead. She'd high-fived her seatmates. And she'd high-fived Michael Jordan.
The legendary Tar Heel had been introduced at halftime as part of the new inductees of the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame. His path off the court took him directly by the Tar Heel students, and he almost walked by...but then he saw Coye.
He had to see her. After all, she had blue-and-white argyle painted on her face. So he reached over, slapped her a high-five, and then proceeded to high-five all the rest of the blue-wearing students.
So by the time I got to Coye, she was shaking. And now you know why.
"This is the best night of my life!" she said. I thought she was going to leave it at that, but then she yelled, "Hands down! Michael Jordan looked me in the eye!" (I am not ordinarily a fan of exclamation points, but if you'd been there you would know that exclamation points are required.)
"You know what?" she said. "The best part is that Michael Jordan and I share being a Tar Heel. I'm so proud of that."
These are the kinds of nights we have at Carolina. High-five a legend, win a title, shake a little.
After Monday's 89-72 shellacking of Michigan State, which completed perhaps the most dominant NCAA tournament run ever, I have concluded that it is possible Roy Williams may be wrong about something. Don't get me wrong. Right this minute he has fewer doubters than ever, and fans might even concede he even knows when to call timeouts. I'm thinking of changing my childrens' names to "Roy" and "Williams." If he told me the Old Well was filled with Sprite Zero, I'd believe him.
But he is wrong about something. He has sometimes said that in basketball, the lows can be lower than the highs are high. I'm not sure that's exactly right. There are more lows, because there are more losses than there are championships. But that high, that moment right when you realize that it's about to happen--not might happen, not could happen, not has a chance to happen, but will happen--is fantastic.
With about two minutes left and a 19-point lead, Mike Copeland turned to Marcus Ginyard on the Tar Heel bench. They were smiling, they were high-fiving, and they were about to be part of history.
"I don't know what to do," said Copeland, who grew up watching Tar Heel games just like this one in his den. "I don't know what to do."
Ginyard smiled back. "I don't know, either."
A few minutes later, after the first net had been cut, a friend hugged Copeland and said, "You are a Tar Heel national champion." At that moment, he realized exactly what he had to do: he cried.
He wasn't the first. As the starters were removed from the game with 1:03 left, there were more tears--Deon Thompson, Danny Green, Wayne Ellington--than dry eyes.
Crying because of happiness is the ultimate human emotion. We know we're supposed to cry when we're sad. We're supposed to smile when we're happy. But sometimes, there is just so much emotion and so much joy that we have to let it out. That's when the tears come.
"It was because of how excited I am," said Ellington, the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four. "It's because of how great it feels because of how hard we've worked. This group of guys means so much to me. We get to cherish this forever. We get to be tight-knit forever. Those streamers started coming down, and it just hit me."
Soon after those streamers came down, senior associate athletic director Larry Gallo was standing on the court. In his hand, he held a cell phone. On his face, he had a bemused expression.
"How about this?" he asked incredulously. "The President of the United States is supposed to call Coach Williams on this phone. And I'm holding it."
He just smiled.
"What a night," he said.
A few minutes later, the Tar Heels assembled for the last time on a basketball court as a team. They climbed the steps and grabbed a seat on a hastily built podium to watch One Shining Moment, the same song they've been singing in their heads since they were kids. I've sung it. You've sung it. And now, as April 6 turned into April 7, it was on those giant video boards and there were the Tar Heels running and dunking and shooting.
"The ball is tipped..."
That's when it became real. Our grandparents and parents have the Justice Era and the Ford Era. This is ours, right here in front of us. This is...well, it's not the Hansbrough Era, because he wouldn't like that. It's been more about his entire class, it's been the Green/Ginyard/Frasor/Copeland/Hansbrough Era. This is what we'll be talking about in our rocking chairs in 40 years.
I wanted to write this down, so I could remember it. But I couldn't because I was shaking.
Which is what always seems to end up happening on Carolina nights.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.
