Although the sting of the men's basketball team's 91-85 loss to North Carolina is slowly beginning to fade, the rivalry between the two schools never will. To offer a consolation to those fans who find the loss particularly hard to deal with, I have compiled several reasons which will help restore each reader's faith in being a Blue Devil.
I had the chance to see Sunday's game firsthand, and the first thing you notice upon entering the Dean Dome is that a gigantic monster has vomited Carolina blue throughout the stadium, and no one has bothered to clean the mess up. The seats are blue, the rafters are blue and even the trim in the elevators is that sickening shade of pasty, wimpy blue. Take solace in the fact that we have a much more aesthetically pleasing school color and that Cameron Indoor Stadium is not bathed in it.
Speaking of rafters, it came as a shock that they did not memorialize the fine contributions of senior walk-ons Charlie McNairy and Webb Tyndall Sunday afternoon by hanging their jerseys from the rafters-they have for everyone else. About two dozen jerseys hang from the ceiling, yet only a third of these are actually retired; the rest hang just to honor certain players who likely paid their way to be up there.
As if that isn't enough of a fire hazard, UNC documents everything else even remotely successful to the program by means of banners. Scan the sky (oops, sorry-it's just the ceiling awash in baby blue paint again) and you will find banners documenting every NCAA Tournament appearance, whether or not the Tar Heels actually did well. I'm surprised there were no banners documenting individual regular-season game wins, given the capriciousness with which Carolina seems to hang them.
On to another key point. What exactly is a Tar Heel, anyway, and why would a school choose it as its nickname? I guess somewhere along the line, someone with an inkling of sense realized that a Tar Heel does not make a very good mascot and decided upon a mascot related to the Tar Heel-a ram. I know, as much as I think about it, too, it still doesn't make sense. In over 200 years of the school's existence, no one at North Carolina has learned that Duke is not spelled D-O-O-K, so considering their slowness in learning sensible things, it is not surprising that the symbols of the school itself do not make sense.
When people pick up Carolina game programs, they may be delighted to find more personal information about the players than simply height, weight and position. They have the opportunity to learn such facts as "Best book I have ever read" (surprisingly, this section was left off of a number of the athletes' bio briefs), "Person in history, past or present, I would like to meet" and "Interesting fact about myself." Below, I will list a few of my favorites.
¥Charlie Felix Harvey McNairy's interesting fact about himself is that he can usually hear his younger brother Jack yelling from the stands during games (likely not for McNairy), and one of his favorite foods is Mama Mac's mini-cheesecakes.
¥On another interesting food choice, sophomore Ryan Sullivan salivates over Jamaican beef patties with cocoa bread.
¥Junior Makhtar Ndiaye's interesting fact that he is "a very good dancer." He probably gets these abilities from one of his favorite foods-Sonya's soul food. And who would've guessed that sophomore Vince Carter was a drum major in high school?
¥The athlete freshman Michael Brooker most admires is Webb Tyndall. With admirations like that, he is not likely to achieve his post-school ambition of playing NBA basketball.
¥And my personal favorite, senior Serge Zwikker's favorite thing about playing basketball is: te-chie-yahh. No lie.
Where do the players learn such nonsense? From their own coach, of course. Dean Smith opened his post-game press conference by muttering, "It was hot out there. They told me yesterday the air conditioning was broken and there was no way to get it fixed, but our players are drinking a lot of water." Were it not for Smith's assistant coaches, who hopefully speak in complete, coherent sentences, Carolina fans would be in trouble.
As a final point, UNC students celebrated the win Sunday night by going to Franklin Street and burning... a stack of newspapers. So to those Carolina students, save some of that paper for us-we'll be needing it as kindling for our benches in the coming weeks.
Amber Isak is a Trinity senior, and despite the fact that she will be graduating in May, she would like all Carolina students to know that she will probably be seeing them sometime soon in the future, when they will be working for her.
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