University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Sun Comes Up
March 8, 2015 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
By Adam Lucas
It was approximately 11:15 a.m. when I decided Carolina was absolutely, positively winning this game.
That's when I was sitting on the couch with my son, Asher, and ESPN Gameday came back from commercial break. “Welcome back to the Dean Smith Center,” said Rece Davis, and something about the way he said it reminded you that this was indeed Dean Smith's building, and Carolina was indeed going to win this game.
It was approximately 4:45 p.m. when I remembered Carolina was absolutely, positively winning this game.
That's when I was at the West Raleigh baseball field at practice for my son's 9- and 10-year-old baseball team. The head coach asked the players why today was the very best day of the year. The answer he was looking for, of course, was that it was the first day of baseball practice. You know, renewal on the diamond, America's pastime, Mom and apple pie, all of that.
Before anyone could answer, however, Asher blurted, “That's right! It's Carolina-Duke rivalry day!”
It was approximately 7:35 p.m. when I was convinced Carolina was absolutely, positively winning this game.
That's when all seven feet of Eric Montross bent down to where I was sitting near the Tar Heel student section.
“I. Am. Fired. Up,” said Montross, and if a man who hasn't played in this game in 20 years but still feverishly remembers the days he quite literally bled for it, then, well, this was going to be pretty fun.
It was approximately 9:08 p.m. when I was certain Carolina was absolutely, positively winning this senior night game.
That's when Jackson Simmons guarded Jahlil Okafor on the game's opening possession. That's right. Simmons defended Okafor, a sentence that might make you squirm on any other evening, but this was senior night, so Simmons was a pest, Duke couldn't get their big man the ball, and the Carolina defense eventually forced a turnover that led to a Brice Johnson dunk, a 2-0 Tar Heel lead, and a renewed certainty that this was indeed doable, and you know what, it might even be a shutout, because, well, because.
That's what we do. We find reasons to believe even when they make no sense. Skies are blue--no, Carolina blue--after what seems like six weeks of snow? You know what that means, am I right? The answer is that it means absolutely nothing, except when we fervently want it to please mean something.
Then, unfortunately, after Johnson's dunk they played the rest of the infernal, dad-blasted, cotton-picking game. I'm sorry for being so explicit, but it was agonizing, it was horrible and it was excruciating, except for when it was exhilarating. I hope you get to experience it one day if you haven't already, because it was glorious, except for when it was unbearable.
Let me try to explain to you what it was like. As you know, Roy Williams sometimes bangs his hands together so hard that he claps his watch right off his wrist. This usually happens late in the game at a key moment. On Saturday, it happened with 17:40 left in the first half, so that before Tar Heel seniors Simmons and Luke Davis had even left the game after starting on senior night, he was tossing the watch to Eric Hoots for safekeeping.
With Carolina trailing 24-23 midway through the first half but with the ball and a chance to take the lead, Nate Britt threw away a rocket of a pass. In the front row sat Eric Church, a multiplatinum country recording artist who regularly gets up on stage in front of tens of thousands of people, a man whose concept of pressure is completely different from you or I…except in this case, in which case he was exactly like you and I, because when the Tar Heels committed the turnover, Church could do nothing other than turn away from the court and stare up into the stands, his back to the hardwood, because he simply could no longer watch. At that moment, a basketball game was so painful that he could not see it with his eyes anymore, and that kind of investment in a simple basketball game is pretty great, when you think about it, and I hope you get to have that one day, except that it's horrible.
Across the court sat Tar Heel great Mitch Kupchak. He is the general manager of one of the most recognizable franchises in sports, the Los Angeles Lakers. He lives in Hollywood, where the outlandish is commonplace, and super-cool Californians yawn at things that would stop traffic here in simple old Chapel Hill. Kupchak has directed his Lakers to four world titles and has been a regular visitor to the pinnacle of sports.
So he is not an easy man to impress, especially by a basketball game featuring two teams whose ACC Tournament fortunes are already determined, whose NCAA Tournament bids are already sealed, and who could well play a much more meaningful version of this game next week at this same time. And in the second half, you looked across the court, and there stood Kupchak—because everyone stood in the second half, all of us, for pretty much the whole time, because there was too much energy to sit down—having stripped off his blazer. He was wearing just his blue button-down shirt, and he was standing and clapping, and he wanted a stop, because he was the general manager of the Los Angeles gosh darn Lakers, and wait a minute, no he wasn't, he was just a Tar Heel and could we please get a stop right here?
But by now you know that we couldn't. And a whole day of being certain of victory in this completely meaningless yet momentous basketball game was crashing down everywhere. Finally, for the first time, the Smith Center was getting quiet. Strangers who had high-fived with abandon a few minutes earlier were quietly gathering their coats and leaving without saying goodbye or, at best, maybe a shrug and a mutter or two.
What is it Coach Smith always said? A billion people in China didn't even know we were playing this game, and right now they seem like the lucky ones, because they didn't have to feel this miserable. Of course, that also means they don't know what it's like to involuntarily pump your fist and shout, "BOOM!" when Marcus Paige hits a three-pointer to go up seven in the second half, so maybe we should feel a little sorry for them.
The bottom line is that Saturday night was awful, really, and I hope you never have to experience it ever in your whole life, except that if we're lucky we'll get to do it again next year. There will be parts we can't watch and parts that make us scream and yell for all the wrong and right reasons and it will take years off our lives, probably, except for the parts where it incredibly enriches our lives. I really can't wait, and I hope I get to see you there, and by the time the sun comes up (OK, it might take the sun coming up a couple of times), I'm going to be absolutely, positively convinced beyond any rational reason that Carolina is going to win that game.
