Lucas: Moments

By Adam Lucas

Brandon Robinson remembers the moment.

He was warming up before a game, going through a typical layup line, when Roy Williams walked into the gym. "Look at that!" one of his excited teammates told him. "That's Roy Williams who just walked in."

"I looked at him right then," Robinson remembers, "and I said, 'I'm going to try and go crazy in this game and see what happens.'"

Robinson scored 27 points, the Carolina head coach liked what he saw, and five years later Brandon Robinson was standing at center court in the Smith Center, all alone with thousands of eyes on him.

He'd just scored 18 points as Carolina vanquished Wake Forest, and now he was tasked with summing up his Tar Heel career in his senior speech. As he walked to center court, he had a flashback: it was March 4, 2017, and he was a lowly UNC freshman watching Kennedy Meeks tear up twice as he tried to get through his speech.

"I've got a long time," he thought, "until I have to do that."

Isn't that always what we think? I have a long time until the kids leave for college. I have a long time until I won't be able to call up my parents whenever I want. I have a long time until I won't be a North Carolina undergraduate anymore.

Take it from Brandon Robinson: the long time gets short very, very quickly.

Maybe you could also ask Shea Rush. He grew up in Kansas dreaming of playing for North Carolina. But how many kids from Kansas, really, get to be a Tar Heel? The chances are infinitesimal.

Shea Rush lived it. "Since I was a little kid," he said in his speech as he directly addressed Roy Williams, "I dreamed of a moment like this. You made it possible…You changed my life. You changed the trajectory of where I will go."

That's a little bigger than a 93-83 win over Wake Forest, isn't it?

Carolina is 13-17 and yet somehow Carolina basketball is just fine. It has not been a satisfying season, and yet there were two Tar Heels reminding us that this program changes lives. Robinson got a huge ovation early in his speech when he mentioned playing on a national championship team. What he doesn't realize in 2020 is that he will be that person for the rest of his life. He is, forever in Chapel Hill, national champion Brandon Robinson, solely because Roy Williams walked into a high school gym one time and altered a player's future. Rush will absolutely walk down Franklin Street in 20 years and someone who is a little grayer than they are today will think back to that 2017 season and ask him, "Hey, are you still making those hats?"

This has to be disturbing to all those other programs who hoped 2020 would in some way signal the end of the Tar Heels as they have known them. Bad news, everybody: in addition to playing some of their best basketball for however long March might last, the Carolina family is very much alive. What is it Rush said? "The beautiful thing is that in a way, this Carolina jersey never comes off."

That's due largely to the head coach, who through all this season's frustration hasn't forgotten about the details that make him such a perfect fit.

After Rush and Robinson spoke for a class that also included Caleb Ellis, Robbie O'Han and grad transfers Justin Pierce and Christian Keeling, Williams took the final turn on the microphone. Before he began his remarks, he turned to Rush.

"You told me when you were a freshman that this was your favorite outfit that I had," Roy Williams said, gesturing to his black suit and Carolina blue tie. "I wanted to wear it on your senior night."

Rush said that during a season Carolina won the national championship. There was plenty to remember that year. There was Kennedy Meeks and Theo Pinson and Joel Berry and Justin Jackson and, really, Williams could be excused if he didn't remember every detail of his true freshman from Fairway, Kansas, or some throwaway comment Rush made during the chase for a title.

But Williams remembered the moment. And that's why he is a Hall of Fame program builder, not just a Hall of Fame coach.

Maybe you don't get to stand at center court and address thousands of fans. Maybe you aren't the fifth-winningest coach in college basketball history. But you still have these moments. Take a picture with Rameses at your last home game as a student. Text your mom at the end of another Carolina basketball season and tell her you loved all the crazy in-game text conversations and postgame phone calls. Take your kids to Franklin Street after a big win even if you aren't sure they're old enough to fully comprehend it.

Because tonight Brandon Robinson and Shea Rush would be the first to remind you that those moments are gone much too quickly.

Rush's mom, Sarah Hofstra, watched her son at center court on Tuesday night. She will tell you that Shea doesn't cry easily, which makes you understand how special Carolina basketball is to him, because his voice broke multiple times during his speech. That includes when he tried to thank Eric Hoots for his constant assistance these last four years, and when he talked about his head coach, and—of course—when he talked about his mother.

Shea Rush is not typically a crier. But he is on senior night.

By the time he began speaking directly to his mother on the microphone, she was the only person standing in section 109, everyone else sitting while she held her cell phone, recording her son's speech.

He stood at center court and told her, "You made everything in my childhood perfect," and at that moment, Sarah Hofstra passed her phone to her mother.

"I didn't want to be worrying about the phone at that point," she would say later. "I just wanted to be present."

Moms, man. Why are so many of them always so much smarter than the rest of us? And that's why Sarah Hofstra will always have a crystal clear memory--not on a screen, not through a viewfinder--of the moment her son stood at center court of the Smith Center in front of thousands of people, living a dream he'd held since he was a child.

Brandon Robinson knows there were Tar Heels sitting over on the Carolina bench who think they are a very long way away from making their own senior speech. He has a warning for them: their moment will be here too soon.

"I would tell them to cherish every minute," he said. "Don't take anything for granted. It will be the greatest four years of their lives. It's going to go fast. And you're going to wish you had that time back."

Players Mentioned

Caleb Ellis

Christian Keeling

Robbie O'Han

Justin Pierce

Brandon Robinson

Shea Rush

Related Videos