University of North Carolina Athletics
Sports Illustrated Championship Issue On Sale
April 8, 2009 | Men's Basketball
April 8, 2009
(New York, April 8, 2009) - Sports Illustrated Presents has published a special collector's issue commemorating the North Carolina Tar Heels' 2009 NCAA basketball championship. The 84-page magazine, with a limited press run of 192,091 copies, arrives tomorrow on newsstands and at area retailers, including Harris Teeter, Food Lion, Wal*Mart, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Borders and major airports, throughout the state of North Carolina. The special edition, which will be sold at a price of $7.99, features the Tar Heels' post-championship celebration on the cover (left) with a caption that reads, "Coach Roy Williams And His Once-In-A-Generation Tar heels Raised Carolina's Fifth National Championship Trophy." Highlights of the special issue include:
BACK TO THE CAROLINA WAY--TED KEITH
With its second national title in five years, the Tar Heels have reclaimed the throne of college basketball. Moreover, they have done so with an unselfishness and class that signals a long-awaited reemergence of the Carolina way (page 10).
SI.com staff writer Ted Keith (UNC '02) writes: "Over the past five seasons the Tar Heels have compiled a list of accomplishments that even its baby-blue predecessors never amassed: an absurd .858 winning percentage; four 30-win seasons, including 70 wins in the past two seasons alone; four No. 1 seeds in the NCAA tournament; four ACC regular-season crowns (including one shared with Virginia); two ACC tournament titles; three Final Fours; and, of course, two national championships. Factor in four AP All-Americas, two ACC players of the year, a national player of the year (Tyler Hansbrough, 2008) and a national coach of the year (Roy Williams, 2006), and it can be said with relative certainty that North Carolina basketball is once again the nation's premier program. It's enough to make a Tar Heels fan giddy, a Duke fan envious and an N.C. State fan downright furious."
Keith continues: "Thanking the passer, a time-honored ritual for decades under [Dean] Smith, had become all but extinct. Now, whenever a Tar Heel gives of himself for the betterment of the team, his teammates and coaches will dutifully rise and point--not because they are told to, or because it was done before, but just because that's the way it should be. It is a gesture that Carolina fans everywhere no doubt feel like making themselves. This team, especially this senior class, headlined by the decidedly old-school Hansbrough, has been as humble and likable off the court as it has been dominating on it."
FINAL FOUR: PROMISE FULFILLED--TIM LAYDEN
In routing the Final Four's home-state favorite, North Carolina earned its fifth national title and fulfilled its prodigious preseason promise (page 42).
Senior writer Tim Layden writes: "They commenced the season with their heads pressed against the ceiling of expectation, where only historic greatness would suffice. They ended it by winning the national championship as despised spoilers, literal visitors against a team riding the desperate passions of an entire state battered by economic ruin. From beginning to end, their season was a no-win proposition, and yet North Carolina won just the same, with an efficiency that fulfilled every inch of November's demand. On the night of April 6 at Ford Field in Detroit, the Tar Heels dismantled Michigan State 89-72 and muted the Spartans' horde of followers, who constituted the vast majority of the championship-game record crowd of 72,922. North Carolina led by 16 points before seven minutes had elapsed, a ruthless assault that transformed the rest of the game into a formality. It was a performance that provided sweet validation for four Tar Heels--seniors Tyler Hansbrough and Danny Green and juniors Wayne Ellington and Ty Lawson--who returned for this season when they might have left Chapel Hill."
Says Roy Williams, on what he told Green, Ellington and Lawson after they decided to return to school: "I felt some things needed to be addressed. I said, `Let's make sure we understand each other here. If you're coming back to help your own personal situation, if you're coming back expecting 30 shots a game, we're going to have a problem. You're coming back to help our program, to help us win games.' "
Tyler Hansbrough: A TRUE BLUE BLOOD --GRANT WAHL
No player works harder - or gets pounded in return more often - than Carolina's 6' 9" pillar of strength. There will be other players who are better than Hansbrough, but none with a bigger heart or more desire (page 58).
Senior writer Grant Wahl writes: "In the office desk of his Chapel Hill home, next to the portraits of his wife and children, North Carolina coach Roy Williams keeps a framed 8-by-10 picture of a young man drenched in his own blood. No, Ol' Roy doesn't harbor a soft spot for slasher films. But he does for Tar Heels senior forward Tyler Hansbrough, and to Williams the photograph--taken a half hour after Duke's Gerald Henderson broke Hansbrough's nose with a flagrant foul in March 2007--symbolizes the epic toughness of college basketball's fiercest gladiator. `He has two cotton swabs up his nose and blood all over his arms and jersey, and he says, `How do I look, Coach?' ' says Williams, who can't help but giggle at the memory. `What a goofball.' "
THE LAST WORD: SHOUT HALLELUJAH!--LARRY KEITH
Former Sports Illustrated college basketball writer and editor Larry Keith (UNC '69) has long relished the style, integrity and success that Carolina basketball represents. As a longtime journalist, it has been difficult for him to be an impartial observer and a true believer (page 80).
Keith writes: "With a team from a town named after a place of worship, whose archenemy is the (Blue) Devil himself, basketball is a religious experience for parishioners of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The Tar Heels' performance against Michigan State brought more than victory: It provided redemption, for the players who faltered at the altar last year and for the faithful fans who breathe with every bounce of the leather totem."
PICTURES: BLEEDING CAROLINA BLUE
A photographic recap of UNC's regular season, from the Tar Heels' triumph at the Maui Invitational in November to an emotional Senior Day in March (page 12).
As with all Sports Illustrated Presents commemorative issues, this special collector's edition is separate from the current weekly issue of Sports Illustrated, which is dated April 13, 2009, and features Tyler Hansbrough, with the headline "Blue Crush: North Carolina Overpowers Michigan State."
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