[authors note- I wrote this on March 28, 2021, just 96 hours or so before the Great K Defeat of April 2...]
Silence in Heaven
When I was a kid, I used to giggle at the little blurbs in Sports Illustrated that read “This Week’s Sign That The Apocalypse Is Upon Us.” I don’t know if they still have that little inset box in there - I stopped reading Sports Illustrated after I moved on from the Swimsuit Issue to less high-brow publications.
But at this point, today, this morning, I am sitting at my office in Greensboro rendered totally and completely hors de combat by UNC’s win over St. Peters last night in the Elite Eight. Not because of any special significance of that game itself, but because of the aftermath that rose like a spectre over the next week of my life, immediately upon expiration of the regulation clock.
UNC v. Duke in the Final Four. Carolina and Dook playing each other in the NCAA Tournament For The First Time Ever. In Coach Davis’ first season as head coach, in Coach Krazrewsky’s last season at Duke. The last time Duke and Carolina were even in the same Final Four, in 1991, they never even played each other. More than that, that same occasion featured now-Coach, then-Junior Guard and three-point legend Hubert Davis’ last trip to the Final Four, which ended in a loss to then-Roy Williams’-coached Kansas, who themselves went on to be beaten by Duke/Krzychoska in Duke’s regrettable back-to-back season triumph. All this, to wit, is only coming to pass after an unranked Carolina team literally humiliated No. 4 Duke in Cameron -- in front of dozens of storied Dook program alumni (and, it is reported, even one or two former NBA players) - at the end of the long Dark Blue Carpet farewell season, Coach Krewchesfski’s last home game. And now these same teams are meeting in the Tournament for the First Time Ever in no less a venue than the Superdome in New Orleans, whose hardwood and bleachers and seats stood witness to both the 1982 and 1993 championships won by Dean Smith’s teams.
There is a lot going on here.
I was born on December 1, 1978. Tar Heel Born, as the Song goes. My father graduated from Carolina in 1974; his father before him graduated in 1947. 204 years before that, in 1743, an emigrant Scot named Stephen Shaw landed on the banks of the Cape Fear River and settled in Onslow County. They are, you might say, from whence I came. I continued in my life to be Tar Heel Bred. Growing up with my grandfather, we turned the TV volume off in order to listen to Woody call the game over the radio. I got - and cherished - commemorative Coke bottles from the 1982 and 1993 championships under Dean Smith. I met Coach Smith at a Rams Club meeting, I hung posters of JR Reid and Jeff Lebo on my wall growing up in the 80’s, and I cheered alongside thousands of faithful as HUUUUUUUUUUU took the Court of the Dean Dome in the early 90’s. I still hate Christian Laettner. I married a Carolina girl, and I read to my children about DTH columnist Ian Williams’s hatred for Duke amounting to “an infernal passion undying.” One day I will no doubt die, and then I will unquestionably and satisfyingly be a Tar Heel Dead.
The day after I was born, in the beginning of what I will here refer to as the Epoch of Stephen, Duke and Carolina played a game in Greensboro, NC - the very same city where I now live and raise what will hopefully be a house of 4th-generation Tar Heels. That fateful 1978 game featured a 78-68 Duke win. In the 107 recorded UNC-Duke matchups since I was born, UNC’s record stands at 54-53. Yet in that same span, Duke has outscored Carolina by a margin of 8,339 points (Duke) to 8,329 points (UNC). As quite possibly literally the newest Tar Heel Born fan on the morning of Dec. 2, 1978, I feel personally responsible for that 10-point loss and for the ensuing 10-point scoring deficit that has accrued over my life time. (To put this lifelong debt in perspective, we are talking about an average margin of victory by Duke of slightly less than one tenth of a point (93 thousandths of a point) per game; and still there is the consolation that Carolina has won more games).
I think I am getting a little overwhelmed by the significance of life at this point. It’s like the multiple story arcs of a fine novel, having been written across literally the last 43 years of my life, are coming to an ultimate intersection amidst a truly unforeseeable climax.
Thousands of students and fans stormed Franklin Street earlier this month after the Devils’ Defeat by Davis. Like many of my kinsmen in Carolina Blue, I myself have rushed Franklin Street probably a half-dozen times or more. Several I know for certain included resounding defeats of Duke during the Coach Guthridge era, including a 97-73 drubbing that I personally attended my freshman year, and the 85-83 win at Cameron where Joe Forte waltzed in to 23 Steps post game and announced that drinks were on the house. Indeed the Franklin Street Mob tradition is believed to have its origin in the very first gathering on Franklin that formed after UNC defeated - wait for it - Kansas, in 1957, winning the first ever NCAA Tournament Title for Carolina under Frank McGuire. If we pull this off on Saturday, I might have to drive to Chapel Hill and walk the last 3 miles from Carrboro, just so I can say I Was There. Might as well bring the kids..
There is simply way too much going on here. Even if Carolina drops this game to Duke, there is still a chance that Duke can lose in the Championship to Bill Self's Kansas team. Before Self, Kansas was coached by none other than Carolina's just-retired Roy Williams. And before he came to Carolina, and before he hired Roy Williams as an assistant coach and before he recruited and coached Hubert Davis, uber-predecessor UNC icon Dean Smith was at Kansas being coached by Phog Allen, who literally learned the game from Dr. James Naismith himself, the inventor of basketball. This is starting to take on all attributes of a cosmic singularity in the basketball universe. We may just find out that it is, indeed, Turtles All the Way Down.
This cascade of recent events is more than just a sign, and the End Times may now be upon us. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are long, long gone, Sports Illustrated. We have now officially reached the point of Revelations where, on Saturday night, the Seventh Seal of the Book of the Providence of God will be opened. Actual students from the Southern Part of Heaven will do battle against actual Blue Devils for the chance to become National Champions. The true nature of Good and Evil will be revealed. The contest of Gryffindor vs. Slitherin will be decided for all time. As the Good Book says, upon the opening of the Seventh Seal, “there will be Silence in Heaven” - I just pray to God that it is not silence on Franklin Street on Saturday night, but utter and unrelenting and perfect glorious madness.
