Lucas: This Is Fun

By Adam Lucas

Let's talk about the vertical.

With 11:25 left in Saturday's demolition of Syracuse, Carolina had already built an 81-48 lead. The game, essentially, was over.

But the fun wasn't.

That's when RJ Davis pushed the ball across midcourt, all four teammates already ahead of him pushing the pace. Davis had plenty of options. He had Cormac Ryan on the left wing and Seth Trimble on the right wing. Armando Bacot was posting up. A constant choice, of course, is for Davis to just shoot the ball himself (an even more appealing option with Bacot having the offensive boards covered), especially on this day when he was 4-for-6 from the three-point line on his way to 22 points.

Davis selected none of the above. Instead, he dribbled just across Hickory on that familiar Carolina blue map of North Carolina that is a fixture at midcourt. As he did, he caught the eye of Jae'Lyn Withers streaking diagonally towards the rim from the right wing.

Davis tossed the ball towards the basket, and then he took flight.

Well, both of them took flight. Withers, to be sure. He leaped, grabbed the pass with two hands, slammed it through the basket, and had so much altitude he had time to thank Davis for the pass while still hanging on the rim.

It was a beautiful play. Even better, though, was Davis' reaction after the ball left his hands. He took another step, and then, as he watched Withers complete the bucket, he couldn't help but jump in the air himself—maybe not quite as high as Withers, and not worth two points, but equally joyful and equally as fun to watch.

"That's what success is," Davis said on the Tar Heel Sports Network after the game. "Not only applauding for yourself, but also for your teammates. When we're making the extra pass and throwing lobs, you can see the joy throughout the whole bench. This team just has great people and teammates who overall are happy to put this jersey on and run out of this tunnel. Everyone is so grateful to run out and play in front of these fans. The Carolina family cultivates that whole energy."

And it's pretty simple: that whole energy, especially on a Saturday afternoon like this, is fun. Incredibly fun. Sold-out fun. Dunking and shooting and passing fun. There are a lot of other options to live entertainment in the year 2024. It requires an effort to spend money on tickets and coordinate parking and navigate traffic.

But the 21,750 in attendance on Saturday would overwhelmingly give you one review of their day in Chapel Hill: it was worth it.

A dose of reality: I checked all the banners before leaving the Smith Center and there are none for "Most Fun Team in January." There are still at least two months to go before the final word on this season is written, and there will be ups and downs between now and then.

But if you can't enjoy performances like this, it might be worth exploring other hobbies. Can I tell you something? Two hours of fun, of doing nothing but just enjoying Carolina basketball, is very welcome right now. This is absolutely no guarantee of future performance, but here are the other Tar Heel teams going back to Dean Smith that defeated an ACC opponent by at least 35 points:

1998 (Final Four, freakin' Utah)

2005 (national champions)

2006 (one of the most fun teams in the last couple of decades)

2007 (made regional final, ranked number-one nationally part of the season)

2008 (Final Four participant)

2017 (national champions)

2019 (number-one NCAA Tournament seed)

2021 (The world was coming off Covid and a lot of weird stuff happened)

Being in the building for the latest version of that type of rout meant you could watch Elliot Cadeau force Carolina's pace upon Syracuse, sprinting past the defense and finding another open teammate for a basket. Sure, the second half sequence when Cadeau bounced a no-look pass to Davis on the baseline, and then the senior immediately found Armando Bacot with a bounce pass for a dunk, was nice on television. But it was perfect in the Smith Center, when you could enjoy the crowd murmuring, "Ohhhh" for Cadeau's pass but then increasing several more decibels for Davis' feed.

How good was the Tar Heel crowd? It even provided depth at key positions—like scoreboard operation. When the video boards went on the fritz midway through the first half, everyone in attendance was left without knowing the current score. No problem—enter Lydia Waddell, a UNC student from Lexington, N.C., who was helpfully positioned in the corner of the risers nearest the UNC bench.

Lydia simply grabbed a white board and kept the score constantly updated, the 2024 equivalent of the famous flip scoreboard in Carmichael Auditorium. The scoreboards eventually came back on line—it was a little more complicated than just unplugging them and plugging them back in, the way you'd do at home—and Lydia was able to do other things with her white board, such as track "Points Until Biscuits" in the second half. Dean Smith invented the flip scoreboard, but even he never thought of the Points 'Til Biscuits board.

We all knew this game had to end with biscuits. At some games, the Smith Center crowd chants, "We want biscuits!" as if they are pleading for them.

This game, that chant wasn't necessary. If it had been, it would have been more like, "We're getting biscuits." It was already a foregone conclusion—but still plenty enjoyable for the players on the bench and the fans in the seats when Duwe Farris split a double-team, James Okonkwo hit a pair of free throws, and Rob Landry dropped in a three-pointer to get the Heels to 103.

It was just that kind of afternoon. And sometimes it's worth remembering, most places don't do college basketball like this. We get accustomed to it because it's normal to us, but it's decidedly abnormal. The size of the crowd and the energy in the building on a Saturday afternoon and the lights and videos and the cheering for players exiting the game who have made a big contribution and all of it, really. Only at the Smith Center do you get moments like this: 2005 national champion Marvin Williams, one of the nicest people on the planet, was shown on the video board in the second half. He got a well-deserved big ovation.

And it was only if you looked very closely that you noticed that sitting right behind him was Vance Honeycutt. Only at Carolina, folks, do you get the national champion and 15-year NBA veteran in the shot…and right behind him, completely unnoticed, is a future first-round major league baseball draft pick, just being a normal college student a month before his Diamond Heels open the season.

Saturday's energy was equally electric behind the scenes. Through Dream on 3, nine-year-old Colburn had spent yesterday at Carolina's practice, and then received tickets to Saturday's game. There are lots of teams and individuals making an admirable effort to give kids like Colburn a positive experience. Hubert Davis makes certain that the Tar Heelsl are trying as hard or harder than anybody. Colburn got a big hug from the head coach in the postgame UNC locker room, and then drew a huge roar—and a ton of smiles—from the Carolina players when he showed off his post-win dance moves.

"It's a Saturday afternoon ACC game," Hubert Davis said. "The energy is always live. There's a lot of excitement for how this team is playing. For us to stay the course and celebrate and move forward, there's still so much room for improvement. It's a joy and a pleasure to be able to coach them."

And, right now, just as much fun to watch them.

Scoreboard Slider

University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Armando Bacot

Elliot Cadeau

RJ Davis

Duwe Farris

Rob Landry

James Okonkwo

Cormac Ryan

Seth Trimble

Jae'Lyn Withers

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