WRAL Sports Fan

North Carolina

Except for outcome, actress Judd enjoys trip to Smith Center

By Sam Rosenthal

Nov 19, 2008

Chapel Hill, N.C. — When you think of University of Kentucky fans, one name comes to mind: Ashley Judd.
Judd majored in French at UK, but she left school before graduation in 1990 to pursue her acting career. The choice paid off for her, as she has appeared in such films as “De-Lovely,” “Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood,” “Double Jeopardy,” “Simon Birch” and “A Time to Kill.”

But diploma or not, Judd claims Wildcat basketball as one of her loves. She makes appearances at major Kentucky rallies and games, and even appeared on the basketball team’s calendar one year wearing a Wildcat jersey and not much else.
Tuesday night, Judd crossed enemy lines and entered Chapel Hill’s Smith Center, where she watched her alma mater lose to UNC, 77-58.

And the audacious actress even sat … well, stood … in the front row of the UNC “risers” student section, wearing a white T-shirt that upon which the word "KENTUCKY" blared forth in dark blue writing for all to see.

Judd said she attended the game to “make good” on a promise she made to UNC students during an Obama-Biden rally in Chapel Hill. “I spontaneously blurted out to a group of really wonderfully motivated, very engaged students that if they would carry North Carolina for Obama – which would be very significant given it hasn’t voted Democratic since Jimmy Carter – that I’d come stand in the student section,” Judd said.

“So you can imagine how uncomfortable I was on election night when the returns didn’t come in, and I had to wait, and wait, and wait to find out the result.”

At the Smith Center on Tuesday evening, Judd did not have to wait nearly so long to find out the projected winner of the blue-versus-blue battle: UNC controlled the game from the start, as Kentucky never led for an instant.

But politics took precedence over sporting rivalry for Judd, so she knew she had to come. “I was very emotionally invested in the presidential election this year, and I very briefly campaigned on behalf of Senators Obiden and ... I did it again, Obiden! I said that all the time when I would get fatigued as the day wore on,” she said.

And by the time she made that comment, Tuesday had worn on – the game started at 9 p.m. and ended shortly after 11. “It didn’t go Kentucky’s way,” she said, “so we had a long night. We had a long night.”

Based on her apparent basketball IQ, Judd could’ve pursued a coaching career had the acting gig not worked out.

“Our ball-handling was really poor, and I think your defense was really strong, too,” she said. “Our offensive rebounds are pitiful – we do not get a lot of second looks. We gave up way too many points in the paint this first half – it was ridiculous.”

Judd said Kentucky’s Patrick Patterson needed to touch the ball more often. “I think that he got a little mixed up on the switching-post defense that (the Tar Heels) were running – that seemed to perplex him,” she said.

She said she enjoyed getting her first glimpse of the Wildcats’ freshman class, even though nobody “did anything that knocked me out.”

As for UNC’s performance? “I think Carolina looks really strong,” she said. “They played really well tonight and gave us more than we could handle.”

But the final score mattered less to Judd than the final in the North Carolina voting, where Obama indeed secured the state’s electoral votes. So Judd hardly minded the good-natured flack that Tar Heel fans gave her in the risers, which she returned in due course.

“I really loved talking to the student section, on the left in particular,” she said, referring to the fans on the left side of the risers – not the Democratic students, in case you thought otherwise. “My buddy next to me is a double-major in Poli-Sci and religious studies with a minor in social justice – my kind of kid!”

Judd enjoyed the evening, despite her team’s struggles. “I had a really nice time,” she said. “The game, not so much. The company, very good.”

So while she took a stand for Obama-Biden – or, as she put it, “Obiden” – during the presidential campaign, Judd entered and exited the Dean Dome in a much more bipartisan manner.