University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: November Dreams
November 16, 2015 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
By Adam Lucas
Nearly sixty years ago, a group of teenagers from points across the United States came together and did something they had no idea would follow them for the rest of their lives.
That group was the national champion 1957 team, and five of the living members of that squad—Lennie Rosenbluth, Joe Quigg, Hilliard Greene, Tony Radovich and Bob Young—reunited this weekend and also took in Sunday's 92-65 win over Fairfield.
They represent something Roy Williams will talk to his currently top-ranked Tar Heels—a group of mostly teenagers from points across the United States that aren't that different, really, than their slightly older and grayer predecessors—about often over the next five months. There will be some games, like the win over the Stags, that are largely forgettable. But they're part of an overall experience that will be one of the most significant things the players on this year's team will ever do.
This year, they're good enough to dream. You can see it even in how they play when they're not completely focused, as they weren't for stretches against Fairfield. They're good enough to have aspirations about the last weekend of the season. That doesn't mean they're going to win a national title. But they're good enough to legitimately imagine it, which is all you can ask for in November.
Next week, they'll be in Kansas City, where the 1957 team finished their 32-0 championship season with back-to-back triple-overtime wins—yes, they won back-to-back triple-overtime games on back-to-back nights in the Final Four (Michigan State) and national championship game (Kansas, featuring Wilt Chamberlain). Even the parents of the current players weren't alive then. “I don't know that much about that team,” Nate Britt admitted after leading the Tar Heels with 17 points.
But he knows enough to appreciate the fact that sixty years later, when the names of the players are announced and they wave to the jumbotron, they get a standing ovation from the Smith Center crowd. That's a reception reserved for champions.
On Sunday morning, the '57 team and a few of their loved ones gathered for a brunch. The most noticeable trait of that team, the one Williams usually points out to his current squad when they have the chance to be around them, is that they pick up exactly where they left off the last time they were together. It's as if they just saw each other yesterday, even if it's been two years.
They've been through basketball, yes. They talk about games and wins and titles. But they've also been to each other's weddings and seen children and grandchildren born, and here lately they've been to too many funerals.
That's the kind of bond Williams wants his team to build. It's very unlikely that when they get back together in sixty years, they'll talk about the game against Fairfield. But they might talk about the night they attended the first annual Dean Smith Award and listened to John Thompson graciously accept the honor, and then two days later walked through the Naval Academy and listened to Clint Bruce speak to them about how a team becomes elite.
Britt took notes on both speeches. “At the Naval Academy, one of the things he told us that hit home to me was that everyone has to know why they're here,” he said. “We're a pretty close-knit team. We get along, and we know we're here for each other. He told us we have to have something bigger than you that you're competing for. I think everyone on our team is playing with our team in mind, and that's bigger than us.”
They've shown some on-court flashes in the first two games. But there have also been moments when they've visibly held each other accountable that bode very well for bigger situations in bigger games later in the season. Against Temple, Marcus Paige gave Brice Johnson a pointed talk when Johnson was involved in a late-game scuffle. And on Sunday, when Joel James lingered on the court to have an animated discussion with an official about a foul call, there was Britt, pulling the big man away and reminding him to keep his head in the game.
It is so incredibly hard to win a national championship. It requires the exact right mix of experience and talent and yes, luck, and a good draw and avoiding that one team that gets hot in March and dodging injuries and a hundred other things. We're only two games into a very long season, but this year's team is good enough to hope. Good enough to dream and to push themselves and realistically envision what it might be like to be on the floor in Houston in April.
Good enough that the reunion in sixty years could be a lot of fun.
