University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Thanks For The Memories
March 17, 2010 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
March 17, 2010
By Adam Lucas
Here's how you know Tuesday night's first-round NIT win over a precision-drilled William & Mary probably shouldn't count as a real Carmichael game: I wore a sweater.
Longtime fans will tell you that the only reason you ever wore a sweater in Carmichael when the Tar Heels played there from 1966-86 was if you were on a crash diet that required you to lose eight pounds in a day. Opposing coaches were convinced Dean Smith purposely turned the heat up. "Did Dean turn the heat up?" Lefty Driesell asked during a conversation about the Tar Heels earlier this year. "Sure he did."
The way Driesell said, "Sure he did," was like he was discussing not an opinion, but a well-known fact. Oxygen is good. Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon. Dean Smith turned the heat up in Carmichael.
Smith and Roy Williams have both said the heat story is just a fun legend. But it seemed like the kind of thing that could be true in Carmichael, and that maybe you even wanted to be true. Spot any kid walking down Franklin Street on a frigid mid-January day wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt and you didn't think he was trying to catch pneumonia. You just thought he was going to the game.
Tuesday night, though, the temperature was fine. Somehow, this seemed wrong. You wanted to call Coach Smith, ask him where the thermostat was (Not that he would know! Of course not! No sir, no way!) and nudge it up to 80 degrees. Then the only remaining mission would be to find the flip scoreboard that used to inhabit the corner nearest the Carolina bench.
The scoreboard was another of Smith's innovations. In the days before a constant time-and-score graphic on a TV broadcast, he wanted a way to constantly know time and score when watching game film. Presto, the flip scoreboard was born. It only took television about three decades to catch up with him. As we speak, he's probably sitting at home watching whatever is a generation beyond 3D HDTV. Sadly, the scoreboard was loaned out for a traveling ACC Tournament memorabilia exhibition and hasn't been seen since.
Now, of course, all of us old fogeys want you to believe that Carmichael was way better than anything in the modern era. You should not listen to us, because we will also try to tell you that Who's the Boss was compelling television.
We'll tell you that Carmichael was louder, or that Carmichael was hotter, or that Carmichael held more magic, all while we're ignoring the fact that nothing could compare to the airplane engine noise of the Smith Center at UNC-Duke in 2005, or that the Tar Heels managed to come back against Florida State in 1993 without any Carmichael enchantment. The team, in all likelihood, makes the building special--not the other way around.
But, man, we had some fun. This was before they had invented things like video boards or suites or the concept of sports marketing. We didn't go to see the halftime promotions or the spotlights. We went for the game.
That's partly because we were just excited to get a ticket. Getting tickets to a game in Carmichael was a happening (which is part of the reason the Smith Center was built). The best way to get tickets was to be Rhoda and Bob Osterneck's pool boy. The second-best way was to get extremely lucky. You skipped other engagements if you landed Tar Heel tickets. I vividly remember going with my parents to the UNC-UCLA game at the start of the 1985-86 season. This was the game originally scheduled to open the Smith Center--clash of two dynasties, best on both coasts, etc.--but the building was running a few months late.
Carolina waxed the Bruins that day, and overmatched UCLA coach Walt Hazzard received a technical foul. I somehow felt Carmichael had goaded him into it. As Carolina fans, we weren't familiar with the technical foul, and it seemed like the equivalent of being sent to the principal's office. For a 9-year-old, this was intoxicating. I got to see a game in Carmichael...and the other coach got a technical foul! The only way life could have been better would've been to find a Nintendo under the Christmas tree that year (Duck Hunt! Yes!).
Maybe a little of that feeling crept into the night for the students on Tuesday. Look, Carmichael is about as viable for the current men's program as a Members Only jacket is at Top of the Hill on Friday night. Three-fourths of the people reading this story would have never been to a Carolina game in person if the Tar Heels still played there. But watching Deon Thompson and Marcus Ginyard and the rest of their team--and on Tuesday, more than maybe anytime this year, it felt like their team--grin through the 80-72 win, it was a nice once-in-every-20-years reminder.
At shootaround Tuesday afternoon, Williams had walked off a few of the most famous Carmichael moments for his team. "Right here," he told them, "Walter Davis hit the shot that tied the 8 points in 17 seconds game against Duke. Right here is where Michael Jordan stole the ball from Rick Carlisle. Right here we almost started 0-3 in 1983 after winning the national championship until Michael Jordan stole the ball."
All of those seem like yesterday to most of us, but to college kids they were in danger of starting to feel as ancient as black-and-white television or a world without email. Tuesday night, if only for two hours, brought them to life.
"We've heard about all those great teams that played here," Ginyard said. "It was great to be able to say we had the chance to play here, too."
In five years or ten years or 20 years--or, let's be honest, maybe even a few months--the details of the game won't matter. What will matter is that we were there, just like our dads or maybe our grandfathers, just for a night.
Next time, turn up the heat.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of five books on Carolina basketball, including the just-released book on the 2009 national title, One Fantastic Ride. Get real-time UNC sports updates from the THM staff on Twitter.
