My Favorite Heelz Moments

I love Carolina Basketball. And while nothing compares to the awesome awesomeness of being a UNC student in April, 1993, I still always look forward to this time of year. Some of my favorite Carolina Basketball moments:

#5 The Christian Laettner Kentucky Freshman Stomp. Where were you for the once-ESPN-designted #1 college basketball game of all time? (Is it still considered that? If not, what game is?) It was 1992, the East Regional Finals, and I watched it in the bottom bunk in my dorm room. The piano player stopped. Jaws dropped. Did Laettner actually step on a KY player's chest? After a dead ball? That rat bastard! What does this have to do with Carolina Basketball? It solidified Kentucky's hatred of Duke and that's always a good thing for Carolina fans (especially ones whose families on both sides hail from the bluegrass state).

#4 Freshman Year Camping Out for Basketball Tickets It was winter. It was cold. We were determined and we weren't giving up our spaces in line. It just so happened in our favor that one of our next-door dorm neighbors was a DJ with a sophisticated sound system only walking distance away. The cold air turned to balmy sweat as we passed the time dancing the night away. It was the best impromptu dance party I've ever been to. And we got good tickets.

#3 %&$# The Grant! %&$# The Grant! %&$# The Grant! ACC Tournament Sunday. Either 1997, or 1998 (I think). I was writing a Federal Even Start Family Literacy Grant proposal that was due the next day. I wasn't finished with it, and although I took time out to watch UNC win (I think we beat Duke that year) I couldn't really afford to give away more hours celebrating on Franklin Street, so I told my living-room full of Tarheel fans to go on without me. Pleads turned into chides turned into demands turned into threats, and before I could say "implementation of the long-term strategic planning goals and objectives," we were all chanting %&$# The Grant! %&$# The Grant! %&$# The Grant! at the tops of our lungs.
(Note: the grant wasn't funded but it came close)

#2 The Whoop-Ass that Carolina is Going to Bring to Duke on Feb. 7 How big of a team are you? Bring. It. On.

#1 1993 Championship Night I won't even elaborate on how utterly crazy things got that night, what with the drinking and the rain and the blue paint and the crowds and me somehow falling down at Linda's and cutting my chin and walking home to D-28, crying and bleeding and by myself, and getting in some stranger's car who was a perfect gentleman and gave me a ride home only to be greeted by my roommate and her boyfriend who were both EMTs and thought I needed stitches so took me to the ER at UNC Hospitals and waited me with me (on her birthday) while I got sewn up and drove me back home at some absurdly late (but really early in terms of the next day) hour only to fall asleep with a wounded chin for maybe two hours, but got up right on time, because I was so contientious, and opened the Student Union Building at 8:00 AM, (because I was a supervisor, after all) to be told by an underling, "You don't look too good," but finished my shift and took advantage of being one of the very first people on campus to get my commemorative DTH, which I've since, of course, lost.

'Mon Heelz.