University of North Carolina Athletics
Photo by: J.D. Lyon Jr.
Lucas: One Night In Cameron
February 21, 2019 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Reliving an unforgettable night at Cameron Indoor Stadium.
By Adam Lucas
DURHAM—They came to see one individual, they said.
Private planes arrived at Raleigh-Durham International Airport. Tickets changed hands for thousands of dollars. Former Presidents of the United States of America sat courtside.
Thank you, everyone, for coming. Please allow me to introduce you to the University of North Carolina basketball team.
Don't worry, folks. It was money well spent. After all, you got to see Lfffmmm Magghrlt drpppp thirrrtttt.
Sorry. Shouldn't be writing with a mouth full of brownies. What I was trying to say was that at least you got to see Luke Maye drop 30.
It is always enjoyable to watch people jet in for two hours and try to understand Carolina-Duke basketball, then jet out and believe they've actually comprehended what they just saw.
Here's how you know you're fully ingrained in Carolina-Duke: Luke Maye had 30 and 15, Cameron Johnson scored 26 points without making a three-pointer, and you'll think of this game five years from now and say, "Oh, that was the one where Seventh Woods was really good."
Let's talk about the celebrities at the game. No, not those guys. These guys. This was Section 19, row D at Cameron Indoor Stadium, four rows behind the Carolina bench:
Julius Peppers. Kennedy Meeks. Phil Ford. Ed Cota. Al Wood.
Give me those five in their prime and I'll play any five from Duke you want, and one of my five just plays basketball as a hobby when he needs a break from being an NFL Hall of Famer.
"Do you mind if I walk right here?" the ever-polite Peppers said before the game as he tried to squeeze into the tiny Cameron row. Julius, you can walk any darn place you want, and may I just also say that your alley-oop dunk against Wake Forest was more thrilling than any sack you ever had?
As fun as it was to watch those guys on the court, it's almost as fun to watch them in the stands. Hearing them provide commentary on the game is like watching Tar Heel alums go back and forth on Instagram, but the comments are live. Meeks, especially, is a treasure, offering all sorts of helpful advice to Mike Krzyzewski on when and how the Duke coach should use his timeouts.
At one point, a brave soul in a Carolina shirt among the Duke students a couple rows back began heckling the Blue Devils while they were shooting free throws. Alex O'Connell responded by making his first free throw, which prompted this hearty soul to scream, at the top of his lungs in a stone silent Cameron Indoor Stadium, "There is no way Alex O'Connell goes two-for-two from the line!" The free throw bounced off the rim. Meeks and Denzel Robinson gave the fan high fives. The moment should go on the fan's tombstone: Heckled Alex O'Connell. High fived Tar Heels. Won in Cameron. Briefly breathed same oxygen as Zion.
Without Williamson, whom Krzyzewski deemed the National Player of the Year in his postgame press conference, the game was contested by mere mortals. For example, Duke had only four McDonald's All-Americans remaining, and only two or perhaps three of those are likely lottery picks. That left them with little defense for someone like Luke Maye, who had a slightly unfair advantage by virtue of having been coached by Roy Williams for four years.
Maye and his Tar Heels completely dominated all forty minutes of the game. When Maye scored his last bucket, Meeks spread his national champion arms wide on row D and announced to a quiet Cameron Indoor, "That's 30! Three-oh! Thirty!" These are the moments you did not get to see on television, but the good news is you are completely up to date on the health status and national implications of a broken tennis shoe, whereas those of us who were there were left to just, you know, watch a basketball game. If you had to watch on television, you also might not know these stats, so they are provided here for posterity: Carolina has won three of four and five of the last eight against Duke.
This was not solely Maye's night. It was also Johnson, and Brandon Robinson running down a Duke fast break to create one of the Devils' 20 turnovers, and Seventh Woods scoring five points and finishing an impressive +11 off the bench, and Kenny Williams not scoring until the closing seconds but still drawing three of Carolina's five charges on the evening.
Woods arrived at Carolina when most of the key Duke players were midway through high school. He is everything that makes Tar Heel basketball fun, the ability to watch a player grow and mature and struggle and succeed. As recently as a few weeks ago, the junior point guard was struggling and wondering if maybe basketball wasn't for him anymore. His parents called him every single day, checking on him and encouraging him. "These are your trials and tribulations," they told him. "Things always get worse before they get better. This is going to be your testimony."
Roy Williams stuck with him. And Wednesday night, Woods made some of the biggest plays of the game for Carolina. This is not a sentence all the jet setters and celebrities at Cameron thought they might have to consider: Do the Tar Heels win that game without Seventh Woods? Luckily, we'll never have to find out.
"Our team just plays together," Woods said. "We are all for one and one for all, and we showed it tonight. Anybody can step up. Our team is so deep, and that's the story for us."
As Hall of Fame-for-good-darn-reason coach Roy Williams climbed the steps outside the UNC locker room after the game, he had the very rare satisfied smile on his face. What a Roy Williams type of win. "Yep," he said as he took the last steps before opening the door to the locker room and facing the media. "Yep, yep, yep."
Downstairs, this was an actual conversation that was held:
Me: Luke, you had 30 points and 15 rebounds at Cameron Indoor Stadium and got the win. How would you describe your night?
Luke Maye: "I played pretty well. I missed some shots near the end. I missed a free throw. I didn't box out well at all. I struggled on the offensive glass."
Reading that, it's hard to believe Williams didn't bench Maye, considering that it sounds like he did nothing right. Maye can do pretty much anything, but he is completely incapable of being self-congratulatory.
"If he scored 100 points," said his roommate, Kenny Williams, "Luke would still remember it if he missed the first shot of the night, and that's all he would want to talk about."
Wednesday, he remembered something else. He'd just become the first Tar Heel in 56 years to have a 30/15 game in a Carolina-Duke game (Billy Cunningham is the only other Carolina player to ever do it). This called for a monster celebration. It went like this.
In the cramped Cameron Indoor Stadium locker room, Maye sought out Shea Rush, a walk-on who was dressed and about to walk outside to see his mother. Maye stopped him.
"Hey, man," Maye said, before he went and talked to the dozens of cameras who wanted his thoughts, "thanks for rebounding for me."
Rush just shook his head. During pregame warmups, instead of getting up his own shots, Rush makes it a point to rebound for Maye, then fire crisp, game-speed passes back to him so Maye can get in a rhythm. Now, here was Luke Maye, after scoring 30 at Duke, taking time to thank Shea Rush for his pregame warmup passes.
No one does that. No one.
Rush just shook his head. "He's a special guy," he said of Maye.
The night's superstar shook the hand of the player who never took off his warmup shirt. To watch the interaction was to see two equals, just two members of a team, everyone doing anything they possibly could do to win a game. Luke Maye got 30 and 15. Shea Rush helped, and even if no one else noticed—Luke Maye did.
It's not often that the best player on the court is also the best teammate. Perhaps Luke Maye should apologize for not getting any highlight reel dunks on Wednesday. Maybe he doesn't light up Instagram. No rappers are name checking him. Perhaps he does not move the needle on television ratings.
But he did something on Wednesday that was even more notable: on his last trip to Cameron Indoor Stadium as a Tar Heel, he was a very proud member of the winning team.
DURHAM—They came to see one individual, they said.
Private planes arrived at Raleigh-Durham International Airport. Tickets changed hands for thousands of dollars. Former Presidents of the United States of America sat courtside.
Thank you, everyone, for coming. Please allow me to introduce you to the University of North Carolina basketball team.
Don't worry, folks. It was money well spent. After all, you got to see Lfffmmm Magghrlt drpppp thirrrtttt.
Sorry. Shouldn't be writing with a mouth full of brownies. What I was trying to say was that at least you got to see Luke Maye drop 30.
It is always enjoyable to watch people jet in for two hours and try to understand Carolina-Duke basketball, then jet out and believe they've actually comprehended what they just saw.
Here's how you know you're fully ingrained in Carolina-Duke: Luke Maye had 30 and 15, Cameron Johnson scored 26 points without making a three-pointer, and you'll think of this game five years from now and say, "Oh, that was the one where Seventh Woods was really good."
Let's talk about the celebrities at the game. No, not those guys. These guys. This was Section 19, row D at Cameron Indoor Stadium, four rows behind the Carolina bench:
Julius Peppers. Kennedy Meeks. Phil Ford. Ed Cota. Al Wood.
Give me those five in their prime and I'll play any five from Duke you want, and one of my five just plays basketball as a hobby when he needs a break from being an NFL Hall of Famer.
"Do you mind if I walk right here?" the ever-polite Peppers said before the game as he tried to squeeze into the tiny Cameron row. Julius, you can walk any darn place you want, and may I just also say that your alley-oop dunk against Wake Forest was more thrilling than any sack you ever had?
As fun as it was to watch those guys on the court, it's almost as fun to watch them in the stands. Hearing them provide commentary on the game is like watching Tar Heel alums go back and forth on Instagram, but the comments are live. Meeks, especially, is a treasure, offering all sorts of helpful advice to Mike Krzyzewski on when and how the Duke coach should use his timeouts.
At one point, a brave soul in a Carolina shirt among the Duke students a couple rows back began heckling the Blue Devils while they were shooting free throws. Alex O'Connell responded by making his first free throw, which prompted this hearty soul to scream, at the top of his lungs in a stone silent Cameron Indoor Stadium, "There is no way Alex O'Connell goes two-for-two from the line!" The free throw bounced off the rim. Meeks and Denzel Robinson gave the fan high fives. The moment should go on the fan's tombstone: Heckled Alex O'Connell. High fived Tar Heels. Won in Cameron. Briefly breathed same oxygen as Zion.
Without Williamson, whom Krzyzewski deemed the National Player of the Year in his postgame press conference, the game was contested by mere mortals. For example, Duke had only four McDonald's All-Americans remaining, and only two or perhaps three of those are likely lottery picks. That left them with little defense for someone like Luke Maye, who had a slightly unfair advantage by virtue of having been coached by Roy Williams for four years.
Maye and his Tar Heels completely dominated all forty minutes of the game. When Maye scored his last bucket, Meeks spread his national champion arms wide on row D and announced to a quiet Cameron Indoor, "That's 30! Three-oh! Thirty!" These are the moments you did not get to see on television, but the good news is you are completely up to date on the health status and national implications of a broken tennis shoe, whereas those of us who were there were left to just, you know, watch a basketball game. If you had to watch on television, you also might not know these stats, so they are provided here for posterity: Carolina has won three of four and five of the last eight against Duke.
This was not solely Maye's night. It was also Johnson, and Brandon Robinson running down a Duke fast break to create one of the Devils' 20 turnovers, and Seventh Woods scoring five points and finishing an impressive +11 off the bench, and Kenny Williams not scoring until the closing seconds but still drawing three of Carolina's five charges on the evening.
Woods arrived at Carolina when most of the key Duke players were midway through high school. He is everything that makes Tar Heel basketball fun, the ability to watch a player grow and mature and struggle and succeed. As recently as a few weeks ago, the junior point guard was struggling and wondering if maybe basketball wasn't for him anymore. His parents called him every single day, checking on him and encouraging him. "These are your trials and tribulations," they told him. "Things always get worse before they get better. This is going to be your testimony."
Roy Williams stuck with him. And Wednesday night, Woods made some of the biggest plays of the game for Carolina. This is not a sentence all the jet setters and celebrities at Cameron thought they might have to consider: Do the Tar Heels win that game without Seventh Woods? Luckily, we'll never have to find out.
"Our team just plays together," Woods said. "We are all for one and one for all, and we showed it tonight. Anybody can step up. Our team is so deep, and that's the story for us."
As Hall of Fame-for-good-darn-reason coach Roy Williams climbed the steps outside the UNC locker room after the game, he had the very rare satisfied smile on his face. What a Roy Williams type of win. "Yep," he said as he took the last steps before opening the door to the locker room and facing the media. "Yep, yep, yep."
Downstairs, this was an actual conversation that was held:
Me: Luke, you had 30 points and 15 rebounds at Cameron Indoor Stadium and got the win. How would you describe your night?
Luke Maye: "I played pretty well. I missed some shots near the end. I missed a free throw. I didn't box out well at all. I struggled on the offensive glass."
Reading that, it's hard to believe Williams didn't bench Maye, considering that it sounds like he did nothing right. Maye can do pretty much anything, but he is completely incapable of being self-congratulatory.
"If he scored 100 points," said his roommate, Kenny Williams, "Luke would still remember it if he missed the first shot of the night, and that's all he would want to talk about."
Wednesday, he remembered something else. He'd just become the first Tar Heel in 56 years to have a 30/15 game in a Carolina-Duke game (Billy Cunningham is the only other Carolina player to ever do it). This called for a monster celebration. It went like this.
In the cramped Cameron Indoor Stadium locker room, Maye sought out Shea Rush, a walk-on who was dressed and about to walk outside to see his mother. Maye stopped him.
"Hey, man," Maye said, before he went and talked to the dozens of cameras who wanted his thoughts, "thanks for rebounding for me."
Rush just shook his head. During pregame warmups, instead of getting up his own shots, Rush makes it a point to rebound for Maye, then fire crisp, game-speed passes back to him so Maye can get in a rhythm. Now, here was Luke Maye, after scoring 30 at Duke, taking time to thank Shea Rush for his pregame warmup passes.
No one does that. No one.
Rush just shook his head. "He's a special guy," he said of Maye.
The night's superstar shook the hand of the player who never took off his warmup shirt. To watch the interaction was to see two equals, just two members of a team, everyone doing anything they possibly could do to win a game. Luke Maye got 30 and 15. Shea Rush helped, and even if no one else noticed—Luke Maye did.
It's not often that the best player on the court is also the best teammate. Perhaps Luke Maye should apologize for not getting any highlight reel dunks on Wednesday. Maybe he doesn't light up Instagram. No rappers are name checking him. Perhaps he does not move the needle on television ratings.
But he did something on Wednesday that was even more notable: on his last trip to Cameron Indoor Stadium as a Tar Heel, he was a very proud member of the winning team.
Players Mentioned
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