University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: From There To Here
February 29, 2012 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Feb. 29, 2012
By Adam Lucas
Joe Holladay remembers immediately: "It's 55 miles from Evansville to Washington, Indiana," he said after Wednesday night's 88-64 win over Maryland.
Holladay, one of the lead recruiters during the recruitment of Tyler Zeller, made that drive plenty of times. It meant lots of evenings on very dark roads in Washington, roads that you're not entirely certain can comfortably fit a car in each direction.
If you relay this uncertainty to Zeller, he will laugh at you. "Those roads?" he says. "We go 50 down those roads with a semi on the other side."
No one goes 50 down those roads on the nights Washington High plays at home, at their gym fondly known as the Hatchet House. In the 2010 census, Washington had a population of 11,509. The Hatchet House seats just over 8,000 when the fans squeeze together, which is what they often did during Zeller's high school career. When you build the gym to seat almost the entire population of the town, basketball is a big deal.
Many times Holladay and Roy Williams sat on those wooden bleachers in the Hatchet House, and they had to wonder: how did we get here? What brings the nation's most prominent basketball program to this spot?
They earned his commitment, of course--Zeller sometimes fielding recruiting calls from Holladay while doing his calculus homework with one hand and holding the phone with his other hand. The two have always had a bond. Holladay didn't know the one-time Hoosier prospect would one day score 30 points on his senior day, but he knew he was unique.
His freshman season, when he was sidelined with a broken wrist--as college orientation goes, going into wrist surgery while your teammates jet off to Maui is right up there with arriving an hour early for a canceled class--Zeller made an appointment to see Roy Williams. "I'm coming back," he told the head coach. "I don't expect to play. Ed's the third post man. But I can help us going against Tyler (Hansbrough) in practice."
What future NBA lottery pick assesses his value as a practice dummy for Tyler Hansbrough? Zeller did.
Most basketball players good enough to play basketball at Carolina arrive on campus and immediately seek the comfort of those who are similarly talented. Zeller never did that. For the last two years, he's lived in an apartment with a grand total of zero teammates. He's not anti-social. He's just trying to have a realistic college experience.
"My friends will sometimes run into people who are amazed that they know me," Zeller says with a grin. He says this with a complete lack of braggadocio, as if he's describing someone else. "My friends are always surprised by that. I'm lucky to have friends who don't care that I'm good at basketball. They care for me because of my personality and because of who I am off the court."
He is friends with business majors and math wizards. Also, he is good at basketball.
Somehow, it is perfect that Zeller capped his Smith Center career by scoring 30 points in the most Tyler Zeller way possible: by going to the free throw line 23 times, making 20 of them, and adding five field goals. Somewhere, a highlight show is trying to show highlights of this kid from Carolina who dropped 30, and they're incredulous that the most exciting thing he did was swish a free throw.
Inbetween, he was immovable in the post. Late in the first half, Carolina was inbounding the ball under their own basket. Before the official even put the ball in play, Ashton Pankey--who eventually fouled out, along with Alex Len, the two primary victims of Zeller's post assault--already had a forearm in Zeller's back, trying to push him off the block. Zeller felt the contact and very nearly rolled his eyes. His expression was perfect. He'd ended Carolina's game this weekend in Charlottesville with a cotton swab stuffed up his right nostril after a particularly physical play in the post. Now this. Again.
Most economics classes don't end with blood. Just saying.
Then he went on about his game, knocking down his free 15-footers, two at a time. Then two more. Then two more. Pretty soon, he had 30, and then he was walking to the bench to the sounds of "Ty-ler Zel-ler" being chanted by the crowd.
Don't misunderstand. This is not the Zeller finale. There will be more about him in the weeks to come. But all of that will be about points and hook shots and shooting percentages and offensive rebounds. That will be about the team and about the outcome of games.
Senior Night is about other things. It's that one last in-season chance to remember how a group went from scrawny freshmen to mature seniors. It's why, on this night, David Dupont and Patrick Crouch nailing three-pointers got as loud a cheer as Kendall Marshall breaking Carolina's single-season assist record.
Zeller's parents clapped as their son was amassing the most free throws and most free throw attempts in Smith Center history. They're here for the week. Last Wednesday, they were about to walk into Indiana's Assembly Hall to watch their youngest son, Cody, play for the Hoosiers. That's when Lorri Zeller got a call from Tyler. "What is it?" she said. "I've got about 30 seconds before we go into the game."
"I just got out of practice," Tyler said. "It went fine."
"OK, that's good," Lorri said. Did she really need practice updates? No. They have never been the type of parents who need to know the details of practice.
"I won some award," her son said. "They're going to announce it tomorrow." He told her it was an Academic All-America award.
"Didn't you win that last year?" Lorri said. This qualifies as a Zeller problem. It is hard to keep the awards straight. Tyler has always told his parents to take all his trophies home, that he doesn't want to be surrounded by them. His theory is that he will appreciate them more when his career is finished.
"Well, yes," Tyler said. It was true. He had been Academic All-America as a junior. This time, though, he was the Capital One Academic All-America of the Year. "But this year, I'm number one."
That's what it sounds like when Tyler Zeller pounds his chest.
"He usually doesn't get excited about awards," his mother said, "but he was proud of this one."
He gets it honestly. During the Maryland game, his parents sat on the first row behind the scorer's table. They stood and cheered when he left the game for the last time, just like the other 21,750 fans who were giving their son a standing ovation.
But Steve and Lorri Zeller didn't truly beam until a few minutes later, when the Smith Center video boards captured Tyler joking with his teammates. He broke into a wide smile and covered his grin with a towel. Scoring 30 points hadn't caused his parents to crack. But seeing their son that happy moved them. They laughed, elbowing each other to make sure the other saw it. Their smiles lingered as play resumed. He was happy. And they were happy.
"They've been there all the way through," Tyler said. "They've supported me no matter what I did. I've never felt pressure from them to succeed. If I score two, they're happy. If I score 30, they're happy."
And that explains it. That's how Joe Holladay and Roy Williams came to sit in a place called the Hatchet House. That's how out of 344 schools in 32 Division I basketball conferences, Tyler Zeller was the country's best blend of academics and athletics. That's how we got here.
"I looked up at halftime and thought, `Gosh, I can't believe this night is half over,'" Lorri Zeller said. "I didn't want it to be over."
Us either.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of six books on Carolina basketball, including the official chronicle of the first 100 years of Tar Heel hoops, A Century of Excellence, which is available now. Get real-time UNC sports updates from the THM staff on Twitter and Facebook.
