Nicole and I executed her birthday present this weekend, a weekend trip to the Duke at North Carolina game in the Dean Dome in Chapel Hill. Nicole has been a Tar Heel fan living in the Hoosier state since before I met her (and she was 14 when I met her), but never had the right opportunity to go to a game in the Smith Center. Those who know me well are aware that I am not shy from a road trip/sports fan experience, but coaching high school basketball really limits those out-of-town opportunities between early November and early March. The season-ending Duke-UNC game typically coincides with the first weekend of our post-season play here in Indiana. This year, the college basketball calendar is a little later than normal if you haven’t noticed and unfortunately our team here at Lawrenceburg did not advance out of the sectional last weekend. When you combine those two things, Duke at UNC was on the table this year for us and I threw as much of it together as I could prior to her birthday on November 9 and surprised her with a “you are going to Duke at UNC” note in her birthday card. I spoke with her boss and made sure she was off work, planned coverage for Lucas and Logan with my mom and her parents (thanks again Mamaw Dotty, Grandma Trudy and Papa Jeff), lined up our typical dog-sitter months in advance instead of last minute like I normally do, booked a hotel in Chapel Hill and had a couple early leads on tickets that came to fruition over Christmas break. I love the fact that my wife loves hoops as much as me. A few people gave me “husband points” for such a sweet, well-planned, unique gift. I’ll take good husband points however I can get them and whenever I can get them, but I also scored a trip to college basketball’s best rivalry for my wife’s birthday. I kind of felt selfish about it! Had we won the sectional, Nicole would have been in an unenvious situation of either skipping a Duke-UNC game with tickets in hand and hotel booked or calling a friend or family member to join her in Chapel Hill and skipping our regional. I certainly wish myself and our team could have put her in that spot, but that wasn’t meant to be and my calendar was clear, so we hit the road Friday, 512 miles from Lawrenceburg to Chapel Hill.
Anyway, every part of the trip delivered, starting with the 2019 Nissan Altima that had only 650 miles on it when we fired it up and over 1700 when we returned it 54 hours later. We love our kids more than anything, missed them every hour we were gone, and guessed what they were doing about a dozen times, but getting in a car and taking off without kids was something that we probably took for granted for the 13 years of our relationship prior to kids. Doing a trip that was supposed to be a little over eight hours in a little over eight hours with total control over the radio and food selections the whole time was a welcome blast from the past for us.
We arrived at Chapel Hill on Friday night around 8:30 and intentionally waited to eat a late dinner in Chapel Hill instead of settling for a sandwich out of a bag in the car. We ate at Top Of The Hill, a local restaurant and brewery right off campus on Franklin Street. While they didn’t necessarily have a specialty cuisine (their specialty would be the beer that they make right on site), it was outstanding food and drink on a third-floor restaurant with views of both campus and the majority of the strip of restaurants, bars and shop on Franklin Street. After that, we popped in and out of a couple other establishments Friday night, interacting with both locals and tourists like ourselves. The crowds were not overwhelmingly large for the night before a big game, but certainly enough people to create an energy. We even ran into Indiana-born and raised Tar Heel great, Sean May, one of Nicole’s all-time favorite college players (current director of basketball operations at UNC). He was the MVP of one of the best basketball games I’ve seen in person, the 2005 Tar Heel national title win over Illinois in St. Louis. We headed back to our hotel, via a pit stop at Insomnia Cookies, around 11:30 pm. I’d say the younger crowd was just probably getting going at that point, and I’m certainly not afraid to admit that’s my time to find the television remote and a pillow.
We took full advantage of being tired from a full week of work, a long drive on Friday and a hotel without kids on Saturday morning and slept in and got an intentionally slow start on Saturday morning. We eventually headed to the highly recommended Breadmen’s, and it didn’t disappoint. Wall-to-wall Tar Heel athletic (not just basketball) posters, newspapers, ticket stubs with a delicious breakfast selection (the birthday girl’s favorite meal of the day) was a great way to start the day. I conceded that I would not enjoy a Carolina BBQ joint on this quick trip as that isn’t Nicole’s favorite type of food, but fortunately for me Breadmen’s had a BBQ plate that was available for breakfast that did the job. It was pulled pork with a vinegar based BBQ sauce. Throw a couple eggs and some hashbrowns down with that and consider this breakfast meal was pushing lunch time after our slow start and that pretty much filled me up for the day, at least until I tried to unsuccessfully fight off the urge for the late night post game meal. I don’t think the vinegar based BBQ sauce is one I’d choose back home or in the deep south compared to other options, but it is popular with Carolina BBQ and when in Rome, do as the Romans do.
After a stroll around campus, we caught up with a couple friends of ours from Chicago at the sports bar Four Corners and passed the early afternoon there. Nicole and I had ended up there the night before and the crowd was sparse and we had a beverage or two and were able to talk with the owner, the friendly wait staff and even Sean May who popped in for less than 30 minutes with a couple friends, but long enough for me to introduce myself and point out our connection of the Hoosier state and for Nicole to grab a picture with one of her all-time favorite college players. On Saturday, there would be no small talk with the owner or the wait staff as the place was packed and electric. It wasn’t too crowded to where you couldn’t talk to your group, but crowded enough to have a great vibe and keep us there the entire time until we started to make our way to the Dean Dome at about 4:30 for the 6 pm tip. Having experienced Four Corners both on a non-packed evening and an exciting Saturday pre-game atmosphere, I’d recommend it under any circumstances. The staff is good at what they do and friendly, the place is well decorated with plenty of Carolina history to read and celebrate, the food and drinks are reasonably priced and while I didn’t actually eat there, everything that got carried past me looked delicious.
For those that didn’t or wouldn’t pick up on the name of the bar, it is named after the Four Corners Basketball offense, for which Coach Dean Smith is credited as the innovator of. Speaking of Coach Dean Smith, I had heard of this when he passed away in 2015 and was reminded of it by a local Friday night in Chapel Hill. When Coach Smith passed away in 2015, he left in his will $200 to each player that earned a letter under him (unofficially over 180 players) with a note that said “Enjoy a dinner out on Coach Smith.” To put it simply for me, that is one of the coolest stories I’ve heard. There’s enough negativity around sports, and college basketball in particular right now, but stories of goodwill are out there as well, but this one is really awesome to me. As a high school coach, I certainly care deeply about all the players I’ve coached that have made it through our program and look forward to watching those relationships over time as we all grow older. If any of you guys are reading this, my heart is in the right place toward you, but can’t guarantee that my bank account is or will be to do something like this!
We walked in the Dean Dome with 50 minutes left before tip, grabbed a coke and some popcorn and headed to our seats in section 222. The Dean Dome is really a beautiful arena inside. It is a simple and effective design and they didn’t outsmart themselves with the color pattern of the seats and signage. It’s Tar Hell blue and white and then more Tar Heel blue. As a Notre Dame graduate and fan, something that always bothered me about Notre Dame games was the wide variety of colors that filled the stands (blue, green, gold amongst the normal whites and grays) and there was never a dominant color in the crowd like you get at places like Nebraska, Michigan State, and obviously North Carolina. Being in the sea of baby blue (in a black Jordan brand shirt myself) was really awesome. The banners in the Dean Smith Center are a sight to be seen. There are plenty of them, and they are extremely well-organized, simply designed and visible from everywhere. At every turn of your head, you know you in the arena of one of college basketball’s finest programs. Another thing that was extremely impressive to me was the small number of Duke fans in the stands. Like all road teams, they got their small allotment of tickets where the Duke blue was visible, but in the other 20,000+ seats, you saw very little. I give a ton of credit to the Tar Heel fan base for keeping ticket that carried such extraordinary value on the secondary market out of the Duke fans’ hands, especially considering this was a Saturday game against a team that is 11 miles away. It was a great game and the environment was electric, start to finish. As a fan, I have been to more big football games than basketball games. College football is such a celebration with pageantry like no other sport at any level. The entire weekend and pre-game experience of a college football weekend is unmatched, but the atmosphere for two hours inside the Dean Smith Center was nearly impossible to touch. Basketball has some built-in advantages over football in this regard; the arenas are smaller and hold sound better, the game is faster paced and over in just over half the time, and you don’t have to worry about the elements of being too hot, cold, or wet. When you put 100,000 plus people in a football stadium, inevitably you have lots who are there because it’s the place to be and aren’t super-concerned about what happens on a particular second and six. Sometimes, you have people who use the game as an opportunity to rest up (sometimes, literally) between the pre and post-game activities. I think that is typically avoided with a big basketball game. I’m not saying that you had 21,750 basketball gurus in the crowd, but I am saying you had nearly that number hanging on every possession, cheering and pulling for each trip like the game was in the balance. The in-game experience at the Dean Dome last night was as good of a sports environment that I have been a part of start-to-finish. I’ve been to my share of games with great finishes (this was not one of them, the Tar Heels were icing it with free throws in the last minute) where the electricity, intensity and volume in the arena are all through the roof in the closing segments. Those things were through the roof in every segment on Saturday night.
As for the game, it was a high level game between two high level teams. After a back and forth thirty minutes, North Carolina went on a mid-second half run to open up a 15 point lead and then held off a late Duke run (that seemed inevitable) to secure a 79-70 win and a share of the ACC regular season crown. RJ Barrett was phenomenal at times, but did end up needing 27 field goal attempts to get his game high 26 points. The Tar Heels, riding a balanced attack all year, put four in double figures, including seniors Kenny Williams and Cam Johnson. Luke Maye, the third UNC senior celebrated on senior night, added 16 rebounds and 7 assists from Luke Maye who was not one of the four to get in double figures on a night where he struggled shooting. Coby White, who has had an outstanding freshman season but struggled at Duke on February 20, including in his individual matchup with Duke’s Tre Jones, sparked the Tar Heels in the second half with fourteen of his twenty one, including eight in the game-changing run.
After the game, we caught back up with our friends from Chicago at Linda’s Bar and Grill on Franklin Street and de-briefed for a bit on the weekend while watching Michigan and Michigan State and consuming more calories than are recommended to be consumed after 8 pm. We caught an Uber back to the Sheraton and got a decent night’s sleep (time change included) before waking up early and knocking out those 512 miles before 4 pm on Sunday.
As we head into a wide open NCAA tournament, which I plan on blogging and talking about on our podcasts my share so I will just briefly touch on Duke and UNC here to wrap this post up, these are two of the twelve or so teams that have a chance to cut down the nets on April 8. These are also two teams that could head home in the round of 32 or 16 and be considered as a tourney disappointment. Both of these teams are extremely talented, but not without flaws or question marks. For Duke, the obvious situation right now is Zion Williamson, who did not play their last six games (including the first UNC game which he left less than a minute in). All indications are Zion is back for the ACC tourney and beyond and that is obviously a huge impact. He was the most dominant player in college hoops for the majority of the season and gives Duke the inside scoring threat that they missed last night and much of the past three weeks. Zion’s absence might be equally missed on defense as Duke has yielded 70 or more in four of those six games, after only giving up 70 or more five times in twenty-one games between the Gonzaga loss and the Zion injury. Duke is limping into the big dance (by their own ridiculously high standards), but this is the same Duke team who was labeled as unstoppable early in the season. At full strength, Duke’s biggest weakness on the offensive end has been their perimeter (and free throw shooting at times). They can drive the ball, score in transition, score in the post, score off turnovers and score on offensive rebounds. Teams that rely on great three-point shooting teams typically don’t win and win big in March so a full-strength Duke team on offense is as ready to win in March (and April) as anyone. If they have Zion at full strength and can get back to defending to the way they were in December/January, they are still as dangerous as anyone, even though they won’t enter this tournament as the unanimous favorite that most thought they would for over half of the year.
As for the Tar Heels, they are capable of beating anyone on any night. That’s pretty obvious when you go through the gauntlet of the ACC schedule at 16-2. They’ve improved as much as anyone since day one, as they suffered non-conference losses to what turned out to be an average Texas team and were embarrassed at Michigan before losing again right before Christmas to Kentucky. When Santa Claus was at his busiest, many had UNC pegged for middle of the pack in the ACC and last night they were cutting down their Dean Dome nets as regular season co-champs with Virginia. North Carolina’s balanced attack on offense can be a major asset in March. They don’t count on one guy to go get them 25 every night, but have five guys that could. Cameron Johnson is solid in every aspect, Coby White can score in bunches, Luke Maye has produced in big games over and over, Kenny Williams is capable and Nasir Little is as dangerous a sixth man as there is in the country. The Tar Heels are older by their own standards, playing three seniors a lot of minutes. North Carolina has never built the reputation as a lock-down defensive team and a lot of that has to do with the pace and tempo they play at, but their guards can really defend and they have the ability to create offense with their defense. North Carolina can offset a poor perimeter shooting night if they have one by creating more possessions and opportunities in the game and eventually wearing down and outscoring their opponents. The thing that this UNC team lacks compared to their great teams in 2016 and 2017 is that ability to just physically pound teams on the offensive boards and with their ability to score inside. Kennedy Meeks and Isiah Hicks may not go down with the fanfare of Antwaan Jamison and Tyler Hansbrough, but those two had the ability to just physically dominate inside and find ways to score even though they weren’t necessarily offensive centerpieces. I love Luke Maye as much as anyone, an under-recruited four year player who has overachieved and gotten the most out of his ability, but he and this Tar Heel team aren’t as physically dominant inside as some that have hoisted the championship trophies in the past. That said, there is plenty in the strengths column of this Tar Heel team to give fans hope that they can win six in a row in the big dance in March and April.
March Madness is upon us. One month from right now all the conference tourneys and the entire NCAA tourney will be over. There are so many ways it could play out and that’s the fun of it. Enjoy! I look forward to discussing on podcasts and blogs.
As for this weekend, it was great to cross the Dean Dome off my sports bucket list and to be with Nicole for her first trip which was ultimately a victory over Duke in a top-5 matchup. I’ve been in an empty Cameron Indoor Stadium twice, but never for a game. One does not get a big UNC fan a trip to a Duke game for her birthday, right? What if the Tar Heels are playing too?
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