Light Blue Reign: How a City Slicker, a Quiet Kansan, and a Mountain Man Built College Basketball's Longest-Lasting Dynasty - Softcover

Chansky, Art

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312650167 ISBN 13: 9780312650162

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin, 2010

Synopsis

Includes new chapter on the surprising 2009-2010 season

The inside story of how one of the most successful college basketball programs in the nation was built

The 2009-10 NCAA college basketball season marked the 100th anniversary of North Carolina basketball. The UNC Tar Heels have won two NCAA championships since 2005, and own more victories over the last half-century than any other college team.

But it wasn't always that way.

For most of the first 50 years the team existed at UNC, the sport was an afterthought. But that all changed in 1952 with the arrival of Frank McGuire. When Roy Williams and the Tar Heels won the 2005 and 2009 national championships, they could thank Frank McGuire and his protégé, Dean Smith, for starting the tradition of triumph. Art Chansky, who has covered UNC basketball for more than 30 years, constructs an intimate narrative of how three dramatically different coaches built the longest-lasting dynasty in college basketball.

The banners of those teams hang in the rafters today, warming the hearts of all those who have worshipped UNC's Light Blue Reign over the last fifty years―and counting. Part history, part centennial celebration, Light Blue Reign is not simply about one team's victories―it's about the dedication, passion, and love for a sport that players and fans of any loyalty will understand.

About this title

About the Author

Art Chansky is a veteran journalist and the author of three books on UNC basketball, including Blue Blood. He is also a sports marketing executive who developed an all-sports competition between Duke and Carolina called the Carlyle Cup. He lives in Chapel Hill with his family.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

PROLOGUE
One for the Ages
THE chartered jet carry ing the 2009 national champions broke through the clouds on its approach to Raleigh- Durham Airport and entered a wide expanse of Carolina blue sky. The team, coaches, support staff, and university administrators aboard  were finally home after six days of sun, cold, and snow in Detroit and the NCAA Final Four.
Their approach was smooth— not aborted twice, which had happened fi fty- two years before when North Carolina’s fi rst na­tional championship team returned from Kansas City on an East­ern Airlines propjet. That plane almost did not land because an estimated 5,000 fans had broken through what ever security they had in those days and swarmed near the runway.
This time, the North Carolina Tar Heels  were greeted by the high- tech stuff of the twenty- first century, or at least the 1990s. Cameras replaced people for the moment.
ABC- TV’s Chopper 11 hovered in the airspace above the ter­minal, waiting for the team and travel party to board three buses for the thirty- minute trip back to Chapel Hill. The TV he li cop ter would trace every mile of the ride down Interstate 40 and their victory lap as the buses snaked through the UNC campus.
The lower level of the Dean Smith Center had filled with about 12,000 people of all ages, thanks to the afternoon schedule and public school vacation, which allowed excited Tar Heels fans from seven months to seventy years old a chance to welcome their latest hoop heroes. Inside the light blue arena, four large video screens were showing live coverage of the buses, which  were accompanied by police escorts fore and aft as they traveled the last mile up Man­ning Drive.
The biggest roar from the crowd came when the three tiny white rectangles on the screen turned down Skipper Bowles Drive and parked behind the huge octagon, where North Carolina had won fourteen games on the way to first place in the ACC and another No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament. In the arena, the four fascia scoreboards had been lit up with the final score: UNC 89, Michigan State 72.Adjacent electronic signs read: 2009 NATIONAL CHAM­PIONS.
Finally, the buses emptied out, heightening the anticipation of the fans inside, and video cameras now scanned the crowd. The cameras panned up to the five national championship banners hanging from the raf ters, and then they focused on the empty space next to 2005, which would be fi lled in a few months.
The crowd cheered impatiently.
How long would it take the team to walk the few hundred feet through the tunnel and climb up on the stage where twenty- four chairs had been arranged in a perfect oval?
At the other end of the court stood a media platform with a phalanx of cameras ready to record the moment. On the wooden playing floor in between, which was covered by a blue tarp, stu­dents moved toward the stage while behind them in the open areas children cavorted with their parents and cheerleaders- to- be cart-wheeled the time away.
The portion of the UNC pep band that had not made the bus trip to Detroit set up in a corner of Section 105 and readied to sub for the regulars, who  were still on the road from the Final Four. The band blurted out the Tar Heels’ fight song and “Rah, Rah, Carolina.” People waiting at three open concession stands in the concourse scurried back inside when they heard Woody Durham, Voice of the Tar Heels, bellow: “Isn’t this great!”
Durham said he told the players on the plane ride that they had had a pretty good party the night before on the court at Ford Field and afterward in the hotel. However, that was nothing compared to what was going on at home. Then he walked off the stage.
Some cheered while others conjured up their ultimate fantasy: to be at courtside when the Tar Heels won it all and then, a mo­ment later, to be among the Chapel Hill fans who fl ooded Frank­lin Street.
Durham returned a few minutes later with a small table that he set down right in front. “We have something to bring out and we need a place to put it,” he said. At long last, he introduced the traveling party one by one. The Tar Heels, all looking weary, wore coats and ties— not the blue blazers and gray slacks of the Mc-Guire era, but classy by modern standards.
Some of the players carried camcorders pointed at the crowd.
Bobby Frasor cradled the ball from the national championship game. Danny Green cracked everybody up when he said, “But did you see how we won it,” and then he got provoked into doing his jersey- pulling Jump Around dance. Girls in the front row held up “Marry Me” signs as the last player was called: Tyler Hansbrough walked out to the biggest roar of all.
Finally, Roy Williams arrived holding the national champion­ship trophy, which was draped by one of the nets that had been stripped about fourteen hours earlier. He put it down on the table. “It doesn’t get any better than this,” UNC’s favorite son said to cheers,“winning a national championship for our alma mater. These guys took me on one fantastic ride.”
Williams looked up at the video boards as Carolina’s own ver­sion of “One Shining Moment” played: Tar Heel highlights only, which Williams watched with misty eyes.
Standing only 5’10”, Williams had grown into a coaching giant over the weekend, winning his second NCAA tournament title in five years and, perhaps more important, returning Carolina bas­ketball to its greatest heights of the past. After enduring a painful transition from the Dean Smith years, the program seemed all the way back in every mea sur able manner— with the same spirit of the soul that a Tar Heel fan could fi nally feel again.
Joining Smith and eleven other elite coaches who had won at least two NCAA titles, Williams was positioned to match those who had won three (Bobby Knight and Mike Krzyzewski) and four (Adolph Rupp).
On the home front, which was as important to many UNC grads, his Tar Heels had reclaimed the superiority that Duke en­joyed for much of the last twelve years since Smith retired with a 26- 14 record against Krzyzewski- coached teams. Leading a pro­gram that still owned the most victories, NBA graduates and TV exposure in the 55- year history of the ACC, Williams’ two na­tional championships and three Final Fours had come since the last time Duke was there in 2004.
He was in the prime of his life and career, coaching at America’s most famous basketball school and using a fast- paced pro playing style that maximized his inherent recruiting advantages. Who wouldn’t want to play for this guy? His fifth Final Four team in the last eight seasons had the perfect blend: a point guard who led an explosive fast break and scored enough to become ACC player of the year, wing shooters who had the green light to fire away, and post men who started every offensive set by looking to score them­selves.
But this season was far from how easy it seemed at the end, when Carolina fulfilled its long- time mantra of playing hard, play­ing smart, and playing together at the highest level.
The 2009 Tar Heels made every coach’s dream come true— reaching this peak per for mance at exactly the right time. They did it by repairing a defense that, only weeks before, couldn’t stop dribble penetration or shut down a hot outside shooter. On of­fense, they shared the ball so expertly that they appeared impos­sible to stop.
The coach sought such perfection all season and was rewarded with the most dominant NCAA tournament per for mance in his school’s storied history, leaving absolutely no doubt about which was the best team in the country. Even so, Williams had fought through what he called “one of my hardest years in coaching.”
The Tar Heels began in the polls as even more of a favorite for the national championship than Barack Obama— who had scrim­maged with them during his campaign— was in the presidential race. TV talking heads said they could be the fi rst undefeated team since Indiana in 1976.
Then, one by one, injuries reduced Williams’ deepest roster ever to a number of question marks. Marcus Ginyard’s off- season ankle surgery was not healing. Hansbrough began the season sidelined by a potential stress fracture. Promising freshman center Tyler Zeller suffered a broken wrist in the second game, leaving Williams mo­mentarily with only two post men, ju nior Deon Thompson and freshman Ed Davis.
Among Williams’ biggest fears was that Hansbrough would not be healthy enough to reach the rec ords he could surely break after returning for his se nior season. The work horse of few words from Poplar Bluff, Missouri, had become the standard for staying in school when he refused to leave after a third straight season when he was unanimous All- ACC and consensus All- American, and he had won almost every national player of the year award given out.
Hansbrough hated to do it, but he sat out some practices, and he sat out three starts at the season’s onset before returning to score 50 points in the last two games of the Maui Classic. Those who were looking for parallel universes noted that the 2005 na­tional champions had spent Thanksgiving week on what Hawai­ians call the Valley Isle, carving up three unranked opponents by a total of 63 points. Four years later, the Tar Heels devoured three foes by 89 points. A matured Ty Lawson won the Maui MVP award with 22 points and 11 assists, his only double- double of the entire season, against eighth- ranked Notre Dame.
The ultra-disciplined Hansbrough sat out a fourth game for safety’s sake and then returned with a vengeance for the ACC– Big Ten Challenge in Detroit. He had 25 points and 11 rebounds in only 27 minutes as Carolina trounced tired and dinged- up Michi­gan State 98- 63 on the experimental raised floor in the middle of Fo...

About this edition

• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0312650167
• ISBN 13: 9780312650162
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400