Lucas: Crowd Participation

By Adam Lucas

Move over, snow game in 2000. Make room, Duke game in 2014. I think there's a spot over there next to the Marvin Williams game in 2005, and certainly you'll see some folks you recognize if you cozy up next to that 1993 Florida State game.

In the most unusual season in Carolina history, for one of the most unpredictable teams in the Roy Williams era, something entirely unanticipated happened on Saturday afternoon at the Smith Center: in a season when the combined home total attendance so far was zero, fans helped the Tar Heels win a game.

They didn't do it all in Carolina's 78-70 win over Florida State, of course. Walker Kessler was sensational both offensively and defensively. We're going to have to decide whether this was the Walker Kessler game or the pandemic crowd game. Either is acceptable.

Caleb Love had a huge chase-down block of a showboating Scottie Barnes in a three-point game that turned into a four-point swing. Carolina—you ready for this?—made 27 of its last 28 free throws. Roy Williams won his 900^th game, and he'll largely get his wish because that total will mostly be an afterthought. It's incredibly impressive to win 900, of course. But it will be even more impressive to hopefully get a 901^st win on Monday night.

For this team, on this night, win number 15 was more important than 900 in the overall picture of the season. And they might not have been able to do it without 3,263 of their most basketball-starved fans.

Seventy-five percent of those fans were students, and they deserve the majority of the credit. They're the ones who were quick to jump back into the game when the Tar Heels put together a quick 8-0 run in less than three minutes out of halftime, instantly turning what appeared to be a lost cause into a good ol' Saturday afternoon Atlantic Coast Conference white-knuckler.

But there were others there, too. There were longtime Rams Club members like Ronnie Smith from Salisbury, waving his Carolina blue towel and urging on his Heels. There were schoolkids who have had no normalcy at all over the last eleven months but for one afternoon got to simply be a Tar Heel fan, like we've all done from the time we were sailing with the pilot to Dinah Shore handing out the Holly Farms Player of the Game award to watching Corey…uh, never mind.

And then there were the students. With 7:58 left in the game and Carolina up 59-54, those students began chanting, "Wal-ker Kess-ler." The big man had scored two straight hoops and was on his way to a 20-point performance. He had earned it.

"It was really cool," the humble Kessler said, the first time all day he'd looked even a tiny bit uncomfortable. "I don't really have any words for it other than that."

As his team emerged from the timeout huddle, Williams thought the fans were chanting, "O-ver-rated" and initially tried to quiet them. The bench straightened him out, and he grinned and flashed a thumbs up sign.

And there, that one interaction, is what's been missing these first nearly four months of the season.

"It was the best 3,200 crowd I've ever seen in my life," the head coach said. "I can't explain to them enough how much of a better atmosphere it was. I can't explain to them enough how helpful it was. I've never lost a game because of a crowd. But today they helped us win this game because they didn't give up."

You know what made it even better? Florida State is very good at playing the villain. This wasn't quite Sam Cassell loudly insulting Henrik Rodl's defense at halftime of the 1993 comeback win, but it was close enough to do the job: When Florida State took the floor minutes before tipoff, they heard a few scattered boos from the Smith Center crowd. Multiple 'Nole players in the layup line waved their arms to ask for even more noise. Then, when FSU took a double-figure lead near halftime, the Seminoles reserves again cupped a hand to their ears to request more volume.

In the second half, they got it.

"It's crazy to think it could get that loud with 3,000 people, so one-seventh of capacity," Kessler said. "It boggles my mind."

This is how the Georgia native described getting the news that Williams was inserting him into the second half starting lineup.

"He said, 'Walker, you're in. And I said, 'Yes, sir.'"

We're going to like this Kessler fella. And then he set about changing the game.

With a little help from his friends, of course. The crowd at the 2014 Duke game had to wait eight days for the Blue Devils to arrive in Chapel Hill. The crowd at Saturday's game hadn't seen a Carolina basketball game in the Smith Center for 361 days.

They were ready. And they'd been missed. We'd had to wait until the 23^rd game of the season for Kerwin Walton to release a three-pointer and the crowd to shout, "Threeeeeeee!" before it even swished through, as happened when Walton drained a three with under five minutes to play in a two-point game.

Walton's shot sounds really good in an empty gym (as Williams mentioned, each Tar Heel had to shoot 300 free throws this week—Walton made 288 of them, a precursor to his 4-4 performance on Saturday). But it sounds even better with Carolina fans drowning out the sound of the ball ripping through the net.

Everybody couldn't be there on Saturday afternoon, and it'll be at least November before the Smith Center can be packed to the rafters again. But if you're a parent who brought your current Tar Heel student up understanding how to point to the passer, or if you're an elementary school kid who knows the hometown of every Tar Heel, or if you're a 70-year-old fan who arranged your vaccination schedule to be ready for this game, you made a difference in this one.

"It was a blast," Kessler said. "We couldn't have done it without the fans. From me personally and the team and the coaching staff, thank you to all the fans who came out."

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University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Walker Kessler

Caleb Love

Kerwin Walton

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