Lucas: Manek Finds Second Home

By Adam Lucas

After a few weeks in Chapel Hill this summer, Brady Manek was looking for the right way to describe Carolina Basketball to his high school coach, Chad Rochelle. Rochelle had adopted the Tar Heels as his team years ago, so he knew all about the history and the legendary players and the championships.

But he didn't know what Manek knew, about the experience of being part of the program for the first time and the priority status the Tar Heels hold in the lives of fans around the world. Even now, Manek marvels at what we've all come to take for granted: "When I go out somewhere to eat or to Franklin Street, people know who I am," he says with a look of disbelief, as though there are plenty of other 6-foot-9 three-point shooters walking around Orange County with flowing dirty blond locks and a red beard.

So he knew exactly how to put it into context for Rochelle. "You know how big Oklahoma football is at home?" Manek asked Rochelle, speaking of the powerhouse gridiron Sooners that play 45 minutes away from his hometown of Harrah, Oklahoma.

"Sure," Rochelle said.

"It's like that," Manek said, "times ten."

Remember that Manek made the decision to pick up his life and move it halfway across the country in less than a week. Carolina assistant coach Brad Frederick made the first contact with the Oklahoma graduate on a Monday, and Manek had his first conversation with Hubert Davis on Tuesday. By Thursday, he was setting up a Friday phone call to commit to a place neither he nor his family had ever visited in person.

This was no small decision for an extremely close-knit family that saw Brady's parents follow him to games around the Big XII for four years. The only road trip they missed was Iowa State, with a series of weather issues, plane trouble and road closures making it impossible to get to Ames, Iowa.

Harrah is even smaller, a town of just over 6,000. As Tina Manek, Brady's mother, says, "We have a Braum's and a Sonic and that's about it."

But what they also had was a 6-foot-9 forward who was a perfect fit for Davis' preference for a stretch four, a big man who could shoot from the perimeter.

Prior to that Tuesday conversation, Davis' primary exposure to Manek came via two minutes of clips on Carolina's Synergy video system. "I turned it off after two minutes," the Tar Heel head coach says. "I knew he was perfect, and I knew we had to call him."

That call dramatically changed Manek's life—and the fortunes of the Tar Heels this season.

"He and Coach Davis really hit it off," Tina says. "The phone conversations with Coach Davis were different. You'd hear Brady laughing and really carrying on a conversation instead of being that quiet guy. He really opened up. Something there clicked."

That relationship made Cary and Tina Manek a little more comfortable when they loaded their car and drove 1,200 miles across the country to take their son to Chapel Hill for the first time this summer. It doesn't mean it was easy—"I bawled," Tina says simply in describing what it was like to leave her son in a place the Oklahoma natives thought had a confusingly large number of trees—but she felt Brady was in the right place.

And everyone close to him noticed it.

"From the first day he got moved in, I asked him how it was and you could tell the way he was carrying himself was different," Rochelle says. "He sounded like he felt at home. And not long ago, he said he could see himself staying in that area. That right there tells me he's comfortable there."

Manek put up 20 points in his Tar Heel debut against Loyola and has been one of the most consistent offensive threats for Davis' first Carolina team. He's scored in double figures in all but three Atlantic Coast Conference games, and even after an uncharacteristic 3-for-16 performance from the three-point line in the last three games, he's still hitting nearly 40 percent from the arc, exactly the weapon Davis saw when he watched those video highlights.

He's also been a reliably low-maintenance teammate, someone whose sole interest is winning. His passion for contributing to victories—"People think of him as a scorer, but he drew 36 charges for us his senior year," Rochelle says—is so deep that Davis has told Manek he is his own worst critic. A raucous late-game atmosphere during a win at Louisville prompted some heated words from Manek in a Tar Heel huddle; he and Davis later talked about how Manek's somewhat uneven experience at Oklahoma left him desperate to maximize this one year left in his college basketball career.

And Davis didn't try to minimize Manek's passion for winning. Instead, he told him he wanted more of it.

"We talked in my office," the head coach says. "And I told him he's been through the Big XII and the guys will listen to him because of his knowledge and experience. What I have to remember is that he had a different experience at Oklahoma than I had at Carolina. In some ways, I think he's been blown away by the experience here. And we couldn't have asked for a better experience with him. The guys love him. He got here and it felt natural. It feels like Brady has always been here at Carolina."

And his parents have added some new road trips to their travels. Manek's brother, Kellen, plays for Southeastern Oklahoma State. So consider this Manek itinerary from last week:

Tuesday: Cary and Tina flew to Greenville, S.C. and drove an hour to Clemson. Watched Carolina beat the Tigers.

Wednesday: Drove back to Greenville and flew home.

Thursday: Drove almost six hours to Magnolia, Arkansas. Watched Kellen play in a 7:30 game. After the game, drove two hours to Little Rock.

Friday: Tina took an early-morning flight from Little Rock to RDU. Cary drove 90 minutes to Monticello, Ark., for Kellen's game on Saturday.

Saturday: Tina watched Brady. Cary watched Kellen and then made the six-hour drive home.

Sunday: Tina ate breakfast with Brady in Chapel Hill and then flew to Dallas.

Monday morning: Up at 5 a.m. to make the two-hour drive to work. Full workdays on Monday and Tuesday before beginning the whole basketball process again.

"We struggle with hotel room numbers," Tina says with a laugh. "There have been a couple times we are in a hotel and can't remember which room we have. Cary has started keeping the sleeve where they write the room number so we can match it up."

The late nights and the early mornings and the hotel stays are indisputably worth it because she knows Brady is in the right place. A mother, of course, sees more than just the recognizable beard and the hair. She wants to make sure he's still that fun-loving goofball whose trademark move is to walk up behind you, tap you on the right shoulder, and stand silently over your left shoulder, breaking into a wide smile when you look futilely to your right.

That's the Brady Manek she's seen in Chapel Hill.

"He has never once acted like he was homesick," his mother says. "Knowing he was happy made it so much easier for us. He's sounded happier than ever in Chapel Hill."

To hear Brady Manek's story in his own words, subscribe to the Carolina Insider podcast for an exclusive interview with him on next week's show.

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Brady Manek

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