Basketball memories blossom in spring
Apr 8, 2009
Researchers in New York have isolated a chemical that can erase memories in rats. This may be developed into a drug that would allow humans to dispel specific memories. One can easily imagine a future in which Maryland’s Gary Williams administers a drug to Greivis Vasquez that would shortcircuit the guard's recall of his next opponent, thereby avoiding provocative comments like claiming "ownership" of Cameron Indoor Stadium prior to visiting Duke, or dissing Conference USA before facing Memphis in the NCAAs.
Here and now Williams surely remembers, and will remind others, that his Terps were the only team to defeat both participants in the 2009 national championship game, North Carolina and Michigan State. For the rest of us, that is merely a curious quirk, a sidelight to a season that ended with a grand flourish for the ACC’s fourth NCAA champion in nine years.
Oh, sure, not everyone is happy to see North Carolina win another national title. You don’t have to be a Duke or N.C. State fan, or disgusted by corporate bailouts and CEO’s golden parachutes, to be tired of watching the rich get richer.
Miami’s Frank Haith, who grew up in this state, surely wasn’t alone in his reaction when media members ripped ACC coaches collectively (excepting those with NCAA titles to their credit) following a poor performance in the ’09 NCAAs. “Make sure you tell those writers in North Carolina,” Haith said, “players make coaches look good. North Carolina and Duke have all the McDonald’s All-Americans.”
Not all, actually. Only 15 between them, with six more coming next season.
These days UNC’s success and its eight very-blue chippers don’t engender the level of animosity once regularly aimed its way, especially not since Mike Krzyzewski’s Duke program became the ACC’s top gun in the early 1990s. But that’s apt to change now that Roy Williams has emphatically returned his alma mater to the top of the heap with his second national championship in five seasons.
This year’s NCAA title is UNC’s fifth overall, matching the combined total achieved by the Blue Devils (3) and Wolfpack (2).
The Tar Heels’ 2009 performance, particularly the ending, was worthy of savoring for years to come.
We’re apt to encounter all manner of speculation on the prowess of the current unit and where it fits in school and conference history. There’s compelling evidence to argue this team was among the best the ACC ever produced. The 2009 champs won 101 games in three seasons, most ever in that span by an ACC program. They won 70 games in two seasons, most ever in the ACC.
North Carolina won each of its NCAA games by double-digit margins en route to the title, a feat last accomplished by Duke in 2001. It went to consecutive Final Fours, a burst last matched by Maryland in 2001 and 2002. The Heels became only the sixth squad since UNC in 1982 to start and finish the year atop the AP, then to culminate its season with a national championship. Their penultimate matchup with Michigan State was no contest.
Most, if not all, of this year’s North Carolina starters will soon make a living as professional players. How well they fare in the NBA draft and, later, on the court, will provide a further measurement, however inappropriate, to quantify their talent.
Over the next few weeks speculation on the intentions of Ellington and Lawson, who have eligibility remaining, could reach a fever pitch. More likely, the near-inevitable partings will be prompt and greeted with scant popular resentment or regret. We're quite familiar around here with the joys and vagaries of high-level, high-profile collegiate basketball.
The quest for NCAA men’s titles, and its aftermath, has become as much a part of our early spring as the lustrous pink of redbuds, yellow blankets of pollen, luminous green of leafing poplars, and taunting frosts nestled amidst days that hint at summer. Visits to the Final Four by squads bristling with collegiate stars grace our horizons, even as development-spawned light obscures the celestial variety.
Teams from North Carolina, Duke, or both have been to 18 Final Fours in the past 24 years. That's a basketball habit few of us want to kick.
But amidst the measuring, the weighty historical pronouncements, there are individual stories and a great collective tradition to be celebrated, too.
Williams’ mannerly, well-spoken young men arrived at the Smith Center on Tuesday afternoon fresh from Raleigh-Durham airport. They came dressed in sport jackets, most wearing ties, their decorous appearance yet another lingering, telltale trace of Dean Smith’s Carolina Way.
Arriving on stage one by one, some to great ovations, players, coaches and a smattering of staff sat in a crescent facing a floor and lower deck of permanent seats packed with Tar Heel fans. Above and around the assemblage, tangible signs of the Carolina continuum hung from the rafters: 21 light-blue banners here as a salute to UNC’s ACC champions, eight banners there commemorating No.1 rankings. More ACC championship banners (12), 17 Final Four banners. White banners, larger than the others, listing NCAA appearances, Southern Conference titles, the perfect (32-0) season of 1957, NIT berths, Naismith Hall of Fame inductees.
And, of course, across from the stage, the largest banners of all hung from the high, arched ceiling, marking four previous NCAA titles and a disputed crown claimed by the school for 1924. Prior to the team’s arrival, a slow pan across that array was shown on the building’s overhead video screens. When the camera paused beside the 2005 banner, and lingered portentously, the crowd cheered, perhaps the first ovation in history for an empty space.
UNC’s players had practiced in that building for months and years on end, had doubtless been exhorted to visualize their own championship banner beside the others. Holding the game ball, Frasor especially spoke of adding a bedspread-sized reminder of 2009’s ultimate success just where the crowd wanted it.
The ceremony, like the season, was over relatively quickly. What endured, beyond the banners and the records, were memories only the most rabid members of the Anybody But Carolina (ABC) club would want to erase.
