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MILL intro: Jiminy Christmas

Originally published February 26, 2009.

Jiminy Christmas

Good golly, it must be nigh on March. You can tell because it is darn near impossible for some people to discuss the game of basketball without slipping in a flippin’ curse word. I mean, jeez, the season is heating up.

Even our very own Coach Williams had a lip malfunction on the radio after the Maryland game. The FCC might have stepped in, save the coach’s obvious embarrassment, rapid retraction and self-deprecation. He should be forgiven. He was, after all, talking about a defensive effort that had just inspired many, many expletives among the Carolina faithful.

We the basketball fans of this small patch of earth occupy a unique space during the coming of spring. As a focal point of the world of college hoops, we get to see ourselves depicted on numerous short highlight and b-roll montages documenting the basketball rivalries along Tobacco Road.

Greensboro blogger and Tar Heel fan Ed Cone recently commented about an HBO documentary: “It was OK, probably informative for auslanders, who will be forgiven if they come away thinking that the state of North Carolina consists of one farm, one road, two universities, and a barber shop.”

In a way, though, the collective concentration of a sizeable percent of the local populace narrows down to what transpires over 90 or so minutes on the floor of Cameron or the Dean E. Smith Student Activity Center.

Many of us are just shy of religious about it. There is reverence and ritual and blasphemy. For some, there are strongly held beliefs about one’s personal adherence to ritual and how that translates into what transpires between the two teams on the floor. I’ll not question the faith of others except to say that unless you’re in the arena yelling your lungs out, you have no effect on the game. Sorry. That’s just how I feel about it. The beauty of basketball is that it’s such an interesting game — an active game, an intricate game, and one you can get lost in.

But don’t confuse yourself with the team. Woody Durham, who quite possibly does have the telekinetic power to cause perfectly good free-throw shooters to miss by overly praising them, often admonishes UNC fans to honor their rituals – to “go where you go; do what you do” – in those dire times when the game comes down to the wire. That’s nice. You do that if it makes you feel better. But the outcome will be decided by the young people on the floor. And they know perfectly well where they need to go and what they need to do. They need to play some frickin’ defense.

Go Heels. — Kirk Ross