Hark the sound . . .

Of Tarheel voices; singing clear and true . . .

This is a little late in coming as the Championship game was three weeks ago tonight. However, it still deserves mentioning that we the North Carolina Tar Heels are the National Champs and it doesn’t really get old talking about it. As you know, I am a devoted fan of both the football and basketball programs. It’s great to have another National Championship. I’m also excited to talk to Roy about it over dinner tomorrow night. True Story.

I do have to take a little credit for the title. I did scream at Wayne Ellington for two years for sucking. I also constantly badgered Deon Thompson for not pulling his weight and often times resembling a sea lion on the court. I also encouraged Ty Lawson to stop being such a wuss and just play. They all turned it around and helped Tyler Hansbrough win the Title for UNC.

Tyler is easily my favorite UNC basketball player of all time. He played with such energy and emotion that it was hard not to love him unless you cheered for other teams. He always wanted to win no matter what and it showed in how he played on the court. His inner white-boy came out often in the victories. I’ll never forget his dance after beating Clemson in early 2008. I find it very funny that these mannerisms lead more and more people to hate him. Those things just made me love him even more. It made him appear a little more human than the other athletes that never show any emotion in their wins. His list of accomplishments is long at UNC, in the ACC, and even the NCAA.

I have my favorites from those lists. Tyler like the rest of us hated Duke. One favorite thing that he did was knocking off JJ Reddick as the all-time scorer of the ACC. It’s really hard to like JJ but he did call Hansbrough to congratulate him and I think that he wrote a poem as about it as well. I find that pretty classy. I wonder if JJ knows that one of Hansbrough’s personal favorite achievements is ruining JJ’s Senior Day when UNC beat Duke at Cameron Indoor; excuse me at Hansbrough Indoor Stadium during his freshman year. He also won there all 4 years which has not been done in a long time. It’s really going to be sad watching games without him on the court next season. At least he is leaving on top where he belongs.

Some of you may recall we won the title in 2005. At that time, I really wanted to win so that we could be back on the map. After Gutheridge ran our program into the ground; the fan in me really wanted to be on top. A lot of people blame Daugherty for that 8 win season but it wasn’t his fault. Gutheridge never took the time to recruit anyone. He thought that Carter and Jamison could be on the team for 8 years be in reality they couldn’t. In 2005, I wanted to win it for me which sounds silly but I did. This season, I wanted it for Hansbrough. You can really love a player when they play at such a high level and stay 4 years. It is sad that it is so rare due to the NBA stealing the best NCAA talent. I remember him getting punched in the face by Henderson and it angers me to think about. But I’ll always remember his hustle, intensity, heart and dorkiness which made him more real.

I have nothing major to report on the personal front. We went home and visited the families for Easter as Elizabeth finally finished her busy season. Michael got to pass me in go-karts with computer assistance. It’s strange to have her home before 8 PM but it is a welcomed change. Kipnasty and Leslie had their son (Brooks) on March 12th if you hadn’t heard. He missed greatness by two days but we still have high hopes for the youngster. The Crafts are quickly approaching parenthood as Katie is due the first of June. Babies popping out all over the place these days as the Mitchells are due in May as well.

I don’t know if many of you know but Elizabeth’s brother Peter is heading to NC State next fall. We were going over meal plans and other things with him last week. It is an exciting time. As we were talking about it, I let out a wolfpack howl for him. I then talked about how cool it would be to be able to be drinking and then howl like a wolf in college. There are not any ram noises that I know of. I then went on to talk about the cool little hand wolfpack symbol that you could do. I would have loved to do that too but again UNC has nothing. NC State has all of these awesome little things!! At UNC, we don’t have anything really cool like that. I was telling this to Peter and Elizabeth and she looked down and pointed at her UNC National Championship Shirt and she said “Yeah, they have a couple cool things but they don’t have THIS!”