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Sports

When you say “Carolina…”

By Frank Heath

I have an admission to make, a confession even.

On the night of January 4, 1971, I did not go directly to sleep when my mom turned off the lights, at my bedtime, 8:30 – nor did I even try.
And really, what self-respecting 8-year-old could have slept, given the fact that North Carolina was hosting the despised South Carolina Gamecocks at Carmichael Auditorium at that very instant, with early control of that year’s ACC regular season race at stake?

Huh uh. As soon as Mom was safely back downstairs, I located my battery-powered transistor radio and slid it under the pillow, turning the volume up just loud enough that I could make out the game call (I believe that may have been Bill Currie’s last year as the UNC sports “voice”) – and got my fill of UNC whipping up on the undefeated and second-ranked Gamecocks.

Even after the final score of 79-64, Tar Heels, was safe in the record books, I listened on until all of the post-game interviews and recollections were over; and suffice it to say, I did not manage a lot of sleep that night. UNC had been unranked entering the game, having suffered through a tougher-than-expected 18-9 season the year before; and with All-Everything player Charlie Scott having graduated, expectations were down for the Tar Heels in 1970-71.

The South Carolina basketball team was, along with lima beans, one of the first things that I understood I needed to truly hate. I blame this on my family members – my father did little to hide his disdain for the Gamecocks and their turncoat coach, Frank McGuire; nor did my brother Charlie, who had a special grudge against a South Carolina forward named John Ribock.

South Carolina had been a thorn in UNC’s side for a few years, winning some games they probably shouldn’t have; and in addition, the guys on the USC team were so blatantly ugly, not to mention nasty, that they presented pretty easy targets for a young kid’s ire.
Beginning with John Roche – the All-America guard who was their sneering leader – and continuing with big men John Ribock, Tom Riker and Tom Owens (the “Trees,” as my dad called them), not to mention that sniveling little guard Kevin Joyce, I knew ‘em all, and harbored nothing but the worst hopes for their individual and collective demise and collapse. (It was as if, in more recent times, Christian Laettner, J.J. Redick, Danny Ferry, Shane Battier, Bobby Hurley, Mike Gminski, Gene “Tinker Bell” Banks, “Jay” Williams, Robert Brickey and Chris Duhon had all played together on the same Duke team, perish the thought.)

Defeating the 1970-71 South Carolina team when it was at the very apex of its power (no one except UCLA was ever ranked first back in those days, so No. 2 was about as good as it got) – represented pretty much the pinnacle of a sports moment for UNC, its fans and still-young coach Dean Smith. I think it was from that moment – 11 p.m. on a Wednesday night in the winter of 1971 – that there really was no turning back from a path other than that of Carolina, and basketball – and the inextricable linking of the two for a kid growing up in Chapel Hill in the late 1960s and ‘70s.

A couple of months later, when UNC lost to that same South Carolina team in the ACC Tournament final in a 52-51 heartbreaker that kept the Tar Heels out of the NCAA Tournament, I sunk into a depression for days.

A year earlier, when Scott and his teammates Eddie Fogler and Jim Delaney – both tough little guards who were the first of many Tar Heel players who I would admire and do my best to emulate – graduated and left Chapel Hill, I had come to know a sense of loss that accompanies the end of a basketball season and the moving on of the seniors.

Now I was becoming aware that in sports, as a fan or a participant, there will be good days and bad, and lots of ‘em.