Corey Gear, right, a Fayetteville resident, was visiting Chapel Hill on Monday with his three sons when they stopped to see the inside of the Dean Smith Center. While there, they got to watch UNC basketball player Bobby Frasor practice. Standing next to Gear are his sons Amir, 8, and 3-year old twins Jalen and Jelani. PHOTOS BY AVA BarLOW FASCINATING RHYTHMS BY A LV IS DUNN ”I do believe in biorhythms. I think some the projections. And I have made some too serendipitous. They don’t get it. days you’re in a little bit of a funk.” uncanny calls. For the record, certain categories With those words back in 2000, Tar So now the whole process is my Tar do seem to be more important to some Heel coach Matt Doherty set my mind to Heel hoops superstition. And it appears players. The Emotion arc always seemed celestial wandering and my most lasting that a number of other folks have made most crucial to Raymond Felton and more Carolina basketball superstition was born. reading the divinations part of their ritu- recently a high intelligence mark bodes Birthdays in hand, I began to “run the als too. Early-season games may get 100 well for Danny Green. Rashad McCants rhythms.” views, while the Dook game this year dialed quite predictably consistently defied the That same season, I watched as the up over 300. Clearly several somebodies biorhythmic predictors. It seemed he was fortunes of Joe Forte and the team nose- are out there checking in. Of course, some from another planet. Planet X, if you will. dived side-by-side with the bottoming out folks also add their two cents, even their By the way, I don’t look ahead, but some of the biorhythms of key players. Over time, own superstitious traditional two cents. A trends can be projected. It appears that a I discovered that calculating the “ritmos” poster known as UNC2003 is compelled to team-wide convergence of some sort is in and posting them at www.accboards.com add to every thread that we are “d00med.” order for late March, early April. was fun. It also helped me be aware of People are counting on me. It’s be- opponents’ strengths (eventually I began come part of the karma. It’s how, to quote Dunn’s biorhythmic predictions appear to prepare the rhythms for challengers Woody, I “go where I go and do what I do.” about 24 hours before any game at www. too). Other fans enjoy playing around with Some people think it’s foolishness; others, accboards.com AN OUTSIDER MOVES IN BY ST E V E PEH A I grew up in Seattle following the Wash- Now, having married a native Chapel I’ve been to the Dean Dome and even ington Huskies during the John Wooden Hillian and moved to the South, I have been shaken the man’s hand. I’ve sat across from years. I saw UCLA play once: Bill Walton infected with Tar Heel Fever. Twice a week Roy Williams at Sutton’s. I’ve brushed by scored 24 points in the first half and drank during the winter months, we raise the Tyler Hansbrough on Franklin Street. (Is he Gatorade from the bench for the entirety rafters here at home as my wife paces the really 6’9”?) Never has a team so domi- of the second. (Man, the way he could lift floor, harangues the refs and makes sure nated my life. True, there are nights when I that bottle was pure poetry in motion.) That we get back on D after a bucket. Up until secretly wish I could be watching “Ameri- about sums up my childhood as a college last year, we even had a dog that would can Idol,” but just between you and me, basketball fan. It all came down to how bad bark at Duke players when they went to the I’m happy as could be with my little slice of we were going to lose to UCLA. free-throw line. Blue Heaven. 4 carrborocitizen.com/mill + MARCH 2009 MILL TOURNAMENT WHEN YOU SAY VIEWING “CaROliNA...” BY FR A NK HE ATH PARTIES I have an admission to make, a con- Beginning with John Roche – the All- fession even. America guard who was their sneering On the night of January 4, 1971, I did leader – and continuing with big men not go directly to sleep when my mom John Ribock, Tom Riker and Tom Owens turned off the lights, at my bedtime, 8:30 (the “Trees,” as my dad called them), not – nor did I even try. to mention that sniveling little guard And really, what self-respecting 8-year- Kevin Joyce, I knew ‘em all, and harbored old could have slept, given the fact that nothing but the worst hopes for their North Carolina was hosting the despised individual and collective demise and col- South Carolina Gamecocks at Carmichael lapse. (It was as if, in more recent times, Auditorium at that very instant, with early Christian Laettner, J.J. Redick, Danny control of that year’s ACC regular season Ferry, Shane Battier, Bobby Hurley, CHEER YOURTEAM race at stake? Mike Gminski, Gene “Tinker Bell” Banks, Huh uh. As soon as Mom was safely back “Jay” Williams, Robert Brickey and Chris TO VICTORY… downstairs, I located my battery-powered Duhon had all played together on the transistor radio and slid it under the pillow, same Duke team, perish the thought.) See all the men’s college basketball action turning the volume up just loud enough that Defeating the 1970-71 South Carolina while you shop! I could make out the game call (I believe team when it was at the very apex of that may have been Bill Currie’s last year as its power (no one except UCLA was ever Beginning with the ACC Tournament at 12 noon the UNC sports “voice”) – and got my fill of ranked first back in those days, so No. 2 on March 12 and continuing throughout UNC whipping up on the undefeated and was about as good as it got) – represented March Madness…whenever games are being broadcast! second-ranked Gamecocks. pretty much the pinnacle of a sports Even after the final score of 79-64, Tar moment for UNC, its fans and still-young Cheer while you shop, and have fun with your friends as Heels, was safe in the record books, I listened coach Dean Smith. I think it was from that you cheer your team to victory. We’ll have free snacks, on until all of the post-game interviews and moment – 11 p.m. on a Wednesday night in food specials, trivia games, games of skill and even a Fan recollections were over; and suffice it to say, the winter of 1971 – that there really was Fashion Show on Saturday, March 14 from 12-1 p.m. I did not manage a lot of sleep that night. no turning back from a path other than UNC had been unranked entering the game, that of Carolina, and basketball – and the Thanks to our friends at Radio Shack and Dish Network having suffered through a tougher-than-ex- inextricable linking of the two for a kid for providing the most important thing…big screen TVs pected 18-9 season the year before; and with growing up in Chapel Hill in the late 1960s to watch all the action! Join us near A Southern Season All-Everything player Charlie Scott having and ‘70s. and Customer Service. graduated, expectations were down for the A couple of months later, when UNC lost Tar Heels in 1970-71. to that same South Carolina team in the See the Customer Service Center near Roses for all the details The South Carolina basketball team ACC Tournament final in a 52-51 heart- was, along with lima beans, one of the breaker that kept the Tar Heels out of the first things that I understood I needed NCAA Tournament, I sunk into a depression to truly hate. I blame this on my family for days. members – my father did little to hide his A year earlier, when Scott and his team- disdain for the Gamecocks and their turn- mates Eddie Fogler and Jim Delaney – both coat coach, Frank McGuire; nor did my tough little guards who were the first of brother Charlie, who had a special grudge many Tar Heel players who I would admire against a South Carolina forward named and do my best to emulate – graduated John Ribock. and left Chapel Hill, I had come to know a South Carolina had been a thorn in sense of loss that accompanies the end of UNC’s side for a few years, winning some a basketball season and the moving on of games they probably shouldn’t have; and the seniors. in addition, the guys on the USC team Now I was becoming aware that in SHOP MONDAY –SATURDAY: 10 AM – 9 PM | SUNDAY 1 – 6 PM were so blatantly ugly, not to mention sports, as a fan or a participant, there will 201 SOUTH ESTES DRIVE | CHAPEL HILL | 919.967.6934 nasty, that they presented pretty easy be good days and bad, and lots of ‘em. WWW.UNIVERSITYMALLNC.COM targets for a young kid’s ire. MILL MARCH 2009 + carrborocitizen.com/mill 5.