Lucas: Booming

By Adam Lucas

CHESTNUT HILL—For the first time all afternoon, the Tar Heels looked unsure.

Carolina had just dispatched Boston College, 76-66, to improve to 7-0 in the Atlantic Coast Conference. They'd battled and pushed and dunked just enough, and now it was time to celebrate.

Head manager Ragan Copeland was holding the Bumpboxx (those of you of a certain age would recognize it as a boom box, and it now travels with the team in addition to leading them out of the Smith Center tunnel before home games), and the team was circled in the middle of the visiting locker room, ready to dance.

But to what?

The Tar Heels don't have a routine celebration song. Instead, they pick a different one for the postgame dance party each time they get a big win. Right now, though…well, the silence was very close to deafening.

Suddenly, a savvy play from a veteran: "I've got one!" came the call.

Almost immediately, the Bumpboxx cranked "Grove St. Party," and a complete free-for-all ensued.

You've heard about the chemistry on this year's team. You can really see it in moments like these, when every single player and coach on the roster seems to truly enjoy being around everyone else.

As the dance party wound down, suddenly Harrison Ingram remembered a key oversight.

"Hey!" he said, "One more for James!" That would be James Okonkwo, who played eight minutes in a relief role, slammed home a dunk to punctuate the first half, and grabbed an offensive rebound in the second half.

The West Virginia transfer had played in only two other ACC games this year, but he was an important part of this particular win, and Ingram wasn't concerned about his own double-double—he wanted to make sure Okonkwo enjoyed his key role and felt the moment.

As in, really, really felt it. The celebration might have gotten a little aggressive.

"Everybody was hype in there," Okonkwo said on the Tar Heel Sports Network about the melee. "I was protecting my neck, and the back of my neck is still red."

The exact identity of the individual who smacked Okonkwo on the back of the neck as his teammates danced around him is still unknown, but it opened the door for a perfect Hubert Davis moment.

"Yo, who was that?" Okonkwo asked. A brief moment of silence fell over the locker room. Just then, Hubert Davis stepped in. "James!" he said. Was someone in trouble? Was the head coach tired of the shenanigans and ready to address the team?

Davis grinned. "It was Jonas!" he shouted.

Nearby stood Jonas Sahratian, arms crossed, a wry smile on his face, the one person in the entire locker room who would never, ever receive any retaliation from any Tar Heel. "Ohhhhhhhh," went Okonkwo's teammates, and the party continued.

They are equally together on the court. At the close of the first half, the Tar Heels had the final possession, a situation when Davis might normally call a timeout. This time, even with an unfamiliar lineup on the court, he chose to let it play out. Elliot Cadeau and Okonkwo have not had a huge amount of minutes on the court together this year.

But that doesn't mean they aren't connected. So, when Okonkwo saw Cadeau begin to penetrate, he knew exactly what to do.

"I know how Elliot plays," Okonkwo said. "He drives to the rim like that and he likes a finger roll or a lob. So I stayed ready, it went in the air, and I went to get it."

The result was a momentum-grabbing two-handed lob dunk that gave Carolina a three-point halftime lead and suitably inspired the sellout Conte Forum crowd that may have been at least 40 percent Tar Heels.

That was just one of two lobs executed by the nation's fourth-ranked team, the other an even more spectacular grab and one-handed slam by Ingram during the second half.

Not all of the afternoon's 15 assists were that pretty, as it was a workmanlike game. But that type of sharing the ball has become a trademark of a team that currently doesn't seem to care who gets the points as long as someone gets them.

"Eleven guys played," Hubert Davis said on the THSN. "And for everybody, you can point to a play that helped us win today. It was a great team effort."

And it's not all hugs and dance parties. In the tradition of the very best teams, any misstep is subject to being highlighted at any moment. In Friday's practice, Okonkwo threw down a vicious dunk on…uh, on a teammate who shall remain anonymous. All the rest of his teammates immediately started screaming. Even Saturday, an assistant coach stopped by Okonkwo's locker as he was answering questions. "Make sure," the coach said, "you ask him about his dunk yesterday."

Okonkwo just grinned. "I'm not going to air my boy out like that," he said.

"You can just tell this team has great chemistry," Okonkwo said. "From the second we leave practice to get on the bus, everyone is together and locked in and laughing and accountable for each other. It's really rare to have a team with this amount of chemistry."

So they lingered in the locker room on Saturday, reliving specific plays or recalling a certain moment of trash talk. It was snowing outside in frigid Boston, so the bus could wait.

But this is also why this year's team works. Before they could get too jubilant, assistant coach Jeff Lebo paused in the middle of the locker room. "Guys!" he barked. "Let's get ready and go. We've got a game on Monday night!"

They dutifully began packing up their travel bags. Wake Forest awaits in less than 48 hours. And so, hopefully, does the boom box.

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University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Elliot Cadeau

Harrison Ingram

James Okonkwo

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