Carolina vs. Duke in the Final Four. Can you believe it? This state is gonna go nuts this week.
For more than 80 years the Tar Heels and Blue Devils have never played each other for a national college basketball championship. That’s remarkable, considering their rich histories among the NCAA’s roundball blue bloods and their many Final Four appearances. But they will play Saturday. Never thought I’d live to see it.
So what will happen between now and Saturday in the state of North Carolina? Well, the TV, radio and newspapers will be full of it. Less work will get done at the office or school, more talking it up. There’ll be enough trash-talking to fill the Wilkes County Landfill. Here’s my contribution: Caleb Love will bring a rocking chair to the scorer’s table Saturday, ‘cause he and the Heels will send Coach K into retirement right then and there.
Yes, I’m a Tar Heel fan, ever since that frustrating 1968 Final Four game against Lew Alcindor, John Wooden and UCLA, which dominated. Later, I got to go to school at Carolina for four years plus two summer sessions thanks in part to a Chatham scholarship and went to all of the basketball games. I’m Carolina, blue and through. I have a piece of the old Carmichael Auditorium floor hanging in my office, UNC national championship pennants on the wall and enough UNC shirts for an army (thanks, kids).
What can compare in North Carolina to UNC vs. Duke in the Final Four? Let me count the ways. News of Fort Sumter in the Civil War? Nah. Too somber a time. Our forebears in North Carolina didn’t whoop it up as they did early in “Gone With The Wind.” News of Japan’s surrender in World War II? They danced in the streets in New York City but not on Main Street, Elkin, at least I never heard anything.
OK, how ‘bout this: suppose everyone in the hometown packed Main Street in anticipation and extreme excitement to greet the Second Coming. Now that might top Carolina vs. Duke on Saturday, but that’s about it.
Here’s a revelation. During my senior year I took a fancy to the picturesque, pastoral Duke campus. It started with free movies on Sunday nights at Duke. I saw 007 Roger Moore in “The Spy Who Loved Me” at Duke. Chapel Hill had nothing like it.
Then I discovered Duke Gardens, a park on campus that looks like something plucked away from Biltmore house. To impress I’d take my girlfriend there on pretty Sunday afternoons, and much later took my wife there as well.
Walking from the gardens to my car, I once crossed the Duke quad and turned to see Duke basketball coach Bill Foster coming from Duke Chapel with his wife hand-in-hand. I nonchalantly nodded and he nodded back. Wow. Dean Smith never did that with me; I never saw him on campus except at courtside. Duke became a buddy of mine.
The second-most noise and pandemonium I ever experienced was the famous eight points in 17 seconds game in Chapel Hill, 1974, Carolina vs. Duke, regular season closer, my freshman year. A furious Carolina comeback in which the Heels scored eight points in the final 17 seconds with no three-point shot available thanks to some nifty pressing and Walter Davis (Hubert’s uncle) hitting a jumper from the sideline hashmark 35 feet away as the buzzer expired. From the bleachers I just knew the shot was going in when it left Davis’ hand, so I didn’t yell my head off as did the others but just stood silently and took in all of the fullness of the melee. Un-bee-leev-able.
But the most noise was in a Super Sunday game, Carolina vs. Maryland, when Phil Ford hit a 360 shot on John Lucas. Ford’s 360, a playground HORSE move he invented, involved twisting his body, coming down with his back to the basket and opponent, then jumping up, twisting to rotate full circle and shoot. Ford did it at the foul line on his big point-guard rival at the time. I was in the second-to-last row in the far south end of Carmichael. And the noise that wafted up from the floor crashed into me like a big wave hitting in the surf. I felt my hair blow.
I’ve watched two national championship games in Chapel Hill in arenas on the big screen. After the UNC wins, people packed shoulder-to-shoulder on Franklin Street, the main drag in Chapel Hill. They climbed up on trees, yelling and cheering, and on traffic-light posts. They started a bonfire in the town’s center, Franklin and Columbia streets, and danced around and even jumped over the flames. It was a party/riot without comparison.
But those national championship games were not against Duke, the buddy those on my side of the fence love to loathe. Yes, college basketball does not dominate sports interest here as much these days after the pro teams moved into the state. But the 8-mile college rivalry’s still like Democrat vs. Republican, USA vs. Russia.
It’s like the buddy who always seems to get the girls, get the promotions. It’s like the buddy who always seems to find a way to get under your skin. You keep him as your buddy because he’s been your neighbor and bud for as long as you can remember. But if a good-natured, head-to-head opportunity arises, you stick it to him. Duke is Eddie Haskell on “Leave It To Beaver.”
Thus the Franklin Street mob will step it up a notch Saturday if Carolina can beat Duke, and probably vice versa on the Duke quad, even if it is just a national semifinal game, not the finals. Just ‘cause it’s Carolina vs. Duke.
It won’t be the Second Coming, but it would be the next closest thing.
See you there.
Stephen Harris returned home to live in State Road.
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