Lucas: Shoes And Socks And Pants

By Adam Lucas

It was that kind of day.

Maybe you had to be in Chapel Hill, or specifically in the Smith Center, to understand how it felt. It was sunny. It was a warm 57 degrees in late January. The Tar Heels were playing. It just felt…right.

It felt right when the delivery truck pulled up to the home of Eric Hoots on Saturday morning. Carolina had received a new shipment of snazzy black and pink Jordan shoes this week, and the players needed pink socks to wear with them (look good, play good). Hoots, Carolina's director of player development, worked with Jenny Hoselton at Nike to place a rush order for the socks on Friday.

They were shipped overnight, and Hoots' oldest son, ballboy extraordinaire Brady, was waiting in the driveway to meet the delivery truck at 9:20 a.m. on Saturday. He relayed the socks to his grandparents, who quickly drove to the Smith Center and handed them to equipment manager Shane Parrish at 9:50 a.m., a cool two hours before gametime.

See, if you'd known how many things were going right on Saturday, you would've worried less about the outcome of the game, wouldn't you? And don't take the simple things like mail delivery for granted, not this year. After all, it was just Wednesday night in Blacksburg when Carolina boarded the team bus for the short drive from the team hotel to Cassell Coliseum…and the bus wouldn't start. It's been that kind of year.

At 8-10 overall and 1-6 in the Atlantic Coast Conference, we'd reached that point in the season. Drive a different route to the game, wear a different shirt, go to a different Franklin Street restaurant for the pregame festivities.

Woody taught us well: do what you do. Or maybe, given the situation and with apologies to Woody, do something different than what we'd been doing.

I wore black pants to the game. I realize this does not sound as important as, for example, Brandon Robinson's 29 points or Armando Bacot's 19 points and 12 rebounds, but we have to control what we can control. The pants could be controlled. As far as I know, I have never worn black pants to a Roy Williams-era game. Now was the time, but it took some adjustment.

"What are you wearing?" my son asked me Saturday morning when he saw the pants.

Look, you can thank me after the game.

Spike Lee was in Chapel Hill on Friday night, and what was it he once said? It's gotta be the shoes. Sure, Spike. The shoes or the socks or the pants or...something. It's gotta be the something.

And somehow, the socks and the shoes and the pants and the weather, it just felt like something good was about to happen. Assistant coach Brad Frederick is the head coach of Carolina's junior varsity team. As he walked off the court Saturday morning after his JV team's 68-55 victory, senior associate athletic director Clint Gwaltney congratulated him. "Good win!" he told Frederick.

"First one of two today," Frederick replied.

It was in the air. A few minutes later, longtime Smith Center usher Charlie Jones walked to his post at the head of the Carolina tunnel. "We're going to win today," Charlie announced.

Not long after that, band director Jeff Fuchs passed by. "Today's the day," he said authoritatively, as though a Carolina victory had already been determined.

It just felt like that kind of day.

Of course, it felt more plausible when Miami announced that, like the Tar Heels, they'd be shorthanded for the game, playing without Chris Lykes and Kameron McGusty. That was unfortunate, to be sure, but Carolina was playing without Cole Anthony and Anthony Harris and Jeremiah Francis and Sterling Manley, so everyone has their problems.

Usually, we're finicky about Carolina basketball. Did the Tar Heels play well, and did they shoot efficiently, and how was the defense, and did the lines on the Smith Center concourse move smoothly, and did you like Roy Williams' tie?

There was none of that on Saturday. It didn't matter who. It didn't matter where. It didn't matter how. All that mattered was that Carolina ended up with more points than the visiting Miami Hurricanes. And it quickly became evident that it was going to happen, behind the most efficient offensive outing of the season.

The Tar Heels played—here's a sentence you haven't read very often this year—gorgeous basketball on Saturday afternoon. They handed out 32 assists on 40 field goals, tying a Roy Williams-era record. That mark was set in 2011 against Tennessee State, and in that game current staff member Kendall Marshall had 15 assists.

On Saturday, Carolina reached the 32 mark with no player having more than seven (and that player, of course, was center Armando Bacot). Nine different players had an assist and six different players had three or more.

"In practice we worked on cutting without the ball and moving it a lot more," Bacot said. "We've been doing more movement and continuity offenses and that worked well today. Seeing everybody eat is fun."

It sure was, and Bacot was right—it felt like everyone had a highlight against the Hurricanes. The afternoon was capped when Shea Rush had a Danny Green-esque chase-down block against Miami's Fillippos Gkogkos, the perfect way to send everyone home happy. It's a gorgeous Saturday afternoon in the best college town in the country, the Tar Heels have already posted a win, and for at least one day college basketball felt fun again. Let's go by Sutton's and get a milkshake. Turn on that TV and watch a little hoops. Let me head on over to Instagram and watch those game highlights.

Of course, some of us had other plans. Just after halftime, with Carolina up by the biggest lead they've had in any game this season, my son looked over at me.

"We're going to need to go shopping," he said, "because we need to get you some more black pants."

University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Cole Anthony

Armando Bacot

Jeremiah Francis

Anthony Harris

Sterling Manley

Brandon Robinson

Shea Rush

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