WRAL Sports Fan

North Carolina

Carolina years marked by wins, losses, hopes for a title

By Sam Rosenthal

Mar 17, 2009

Chapel Hill, N.C. — Sam Rosenthal, a UNC senior, has covered the Tar Heels the past two seasons for WRAL.com. In this essay, he writes about the journey his senior class has taken at UNC and shared with the seniors on the Carolina basketball team.


How do you view the Carolina chapter of your life?

Thousands of graduating UNC seniors will answer that question when they graduate May 10 – the finish line of a four-year marathon.

Tyler Hansbrough, Bobby Frasor, Danny Green, Mike Copeland and Marcus Ginyard made that journey as well –as Tar Heel basketball players and fellow Carolina students.

Each stayed four years – Ginyard is staying for a fifth – even though Frasor said Green could’ve entered the NBA draft last season, and Hansbrough could have after any of his college seasons. “I never would’ve guessed that all of us would still be here,” Frasor said.

But then Frasor, his teammates, and their UNC classmates probably never would’ve guessed many of the things that took place during the past four years – four years that will become etched in the school’s history books on May 10.

“Each year,” Green said, “has its own little chapter for me.”

Chapter One:

The UNC Class of 2009 will always remember its freshman year, beginning with the choice to enroll at Carolina.

Senior Michael Chasin hails from Southern California. “Part of me making my decision to come here over a place like USC and Michigan was the [2005] team,” Chasin said.

“I told my dad, ‘If UNC wins this year, it’s a sign. I should go there.’"

The Tar Heels won the 2005 NCAA National Championship, and Chasin came to Chapel Hill, with Hansbrough, Green, Frasor, Ginyard and Copeland.

The basketball team lost virtually all of its players from the 2005 champions, but emerged as one of the ACC’s surprise teams in 2006.

“Nobody gave us any chance to win any games, and to win at Duke on Senior Night, and almost win the ACC, and we just accomplished a lot of things that people didn’t think we could,” Frasor said.

The Tar Heel team went 12-4 in the ACC and 23-8 on the season.

Chasin remembers Hansbrough scoring 40 points against Georgia Tech, and every Tar Heel freshman remembers when UNC won 83-76 at Cameron Indoor Stadium on Senior Night for Duke’s J.J. Redick and Shelden Williams. UNC students remember where they watched the game, what they experienced, and what ensued on Franklin Street after Carolina pulled off the upset.

“When we beat Duke, I just remember running as fast as I could up to Franklin,” Chasin said. “I had never experienced a rush like that. I got sick the next day, but it didn’t matter, it was worth it.”

It was as close to a national championship celebration as UNC students have had during these four years _ even though many expected to have won one by now.

On the court, the season ended on low notes: Boston College defeated UNC in the ACC Tournament, then George Mason’s improbable Final Four run went through Carolina. And off the court, the year was marred first by a freak accident in which two students fell from a dorm window and one died, and then with Mohammed Taheri-Azar’s SUV rampage through campus, which injured a number of students and traumatized many more.

Chapter Two:

UNC welcomed a star-studded recruiting class for the 2006-07 season, featuring Brandan Wright, Wayne Ellington, Ty Lawson, Deon Thompson, Alex Stepheson and Will Graves.

Tragedy again struck the campus community, this time involving the basketball team and the student body: A hit-and-run accident killed Jason Ray, who had been Rameses, the Tar Heels’ mascot. The accident occurred while Ray was with the team at the NCAA Tournament.

Carolina went 31-7, but what students and players vividly recall was the overtime loss to Georgetown in the Elite Eight, when the Heels held a late 10-point lead late.
“One of the most depressing nights of my college career,” Chasin said.

Last season, the Tar Heels amassed a 36-3 record and went 14-2 in the ACC (winning the conference title). Naturally, countless Tar Heel fans thought their year had come. UNC only lost three games, but each hit the Heels harder than the first. It started with a home loss to Maryland, followed by a home loss to Duke that few fans anticipated or handled with ease.

While the team suffered a crushing defeat later on in the season, the biggest loss of all had nothing to do with basketball. Student Body President Eve Carson’s murder flattened the campus. In fact, it completely overshadowed the home Duke game, the game which usually overshadows everything else.

But sports help people to cope with life, often times, and the Tar Heels lifted the school’s spirits after Carson’s death. The Tar Heels won the ACC Tournament, and then romped into the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament, scoring more than 100 points in their first two games. Then they defeated a quality Washington State team in a non-UNC type of game, 68-47, to reach the Elite Eight for the second year in a row. They made it one game further by beating Louisville, largely thanks to the late-game emergence of Hansbrough’s jump shot.

Next, they faced Kansas, Williams’ old team. As Franklin Street prepared for a massive celebration and a trip to the national finals, UNC came out flatter than month-old beer. The Jayhawks took an astounding 40-12 lead and held off Carolina the rest of the way, dashing the players’ and the students’ title hopes once again.
After that game, Hansbrough told the media: "We've had a good year, but I don't think anybody's goal here was to be one of the top four teams in the country. It's to be the top team. I'm frustrated with that."

After UNC beat Duke, 79-71, on Senior Night, a reporter asked Hansbrough: “There’s still some who will say, ‘This won’t be complete unless you cut the nets down in Detroit.’ Is that the way you feel?” He responded: “I’m not going to say that right now. We’ll see what happens.”

But it seems that much of the campus community feels that way. For sure, many crave a national title – some expected to win as many as three during their college careers.
“I just hope to win a national championship,” said senior Kristine Duboy. “I think it would be a fun experience to win, but it isn't going to make or break my time here. It would just be going out with a bang.”

But Chasin said there’s “a ton of pressure” not only on the team, but also the students, to get it done this time around. “I think every senior is upset that they missed the '05 season by one year and got to hear about all the people a year older than us brag about winning and getting to experience the insanity. I want that feeling of the last second in the finals winding off the clock, and just going off the walls.”

Still, the students look at their time here with perspective and appear to appreciate what has happened during the past four years, national championship or not. Many of them treasure the idea that they attended Carolina during “The Hansbrough Era.”
We’re seeing one of the greatest college basketball players right now, and we don’t even notice it,” said one UNC student, senior Robby Piercy. “… Looking back when we’re older on our four years here, how lucky we were to see (Hansbrough) play. To see a jersey retired is pretty special.”

Hansbrough’s teammate, Thompson, agrees. “I’ve been able to watch history ever since I’ve been here, watching what he’s been able to do over his four year career,” Thompson said. “It’s something that a lot of people won’t be able to see.”

But it’s about more than Hansbrough. It’s about Green, and Frasor, and Copeland, and the walk-on seniors, and Ginyard – even though he redshirted this season and will graduate next year. To this point, the Tar Heel Class of 2009 is a combined 118-22 since its freshman season, and 50-14 in the ACC.

Sure, Hansbrough is the school’s (and soon to be ACC’s) all-time leading scorer, and he leads the NCAA in career free throws made, but Green is the one who set the school record for most victories played in: 116. And it’s Frasor who put the fans in stitches with his Late Night with Roy comedic videos – and who had rumors swirling around a possible romantic evening he spent with ESPN’s Erin Andrews. And it’s Copeland who enjoys himself as much as, and probably more than, anybody in the Smith Center during Tar Heel games. And it’s Ginyard who retains the respect of his fellow players and peers on campus as a key component of what Williams referred to as “the nucleus of our program for the last four years.”

“That’s a class to remember, because there’s not going to be another class like them that comes in,” Lawson said.

Frasor added, “For four years we’ve gone to class together, study hall together, worked out together, practiced together, lived together – you know, just how close we are, me, Marcus, and Tyler, especially, and Danny … It’s just something I’m never going to forget. I’m always going to be close to these guys, and it’s been special to be a part of something like this.”

When asked what this senior class means to him after the Duke game, Williams said, “This team will always be one thing to me: A team with ability, yes, but great character – and great characters. I have a hard time being around our team without laughing. And I have a hard time,” he continued, fighting back tears, “being around this team without realizing how lucky I am.”

The fans agree. Many of them feel a special bond with this group of senior players.
“The seniors provide the maturity that we need to win a national title. They’re invaluable, both as people and as basketball players,” said senior Alex Díaz. “They all have roles just as we as students have roles. They were thrown into their roles as freshmen, inexperienced, just like us. And they’ve grown into their roles just like we’ve grown into our roles.”

“Watching them every game for the past four seasons, you definitely feel like you know them personally,” Chasin said. “I know I have, as well as most people, have engaged in conversations or hung out with some of them at some point, so watching them on TV or at the Dean Dome you definitely feel a closeness.”

Chasin and others said that much of that had to do with the players staying all four years. “I feel like these players, more than most in college basketball nowadays, felt a connection to this campus and the students,” Chasin said. “Hansborough in particular has expressed multiple times in interviews that he loves the campus and never wants to leave, and I definitely know how he feels.

“We seniors all know that feeling and dread May 10.”

But May 10 – graduation – will come and go, and the coming weeks will decide if this UNC senior class leaves with a national title.