Tuesday night’s game against the Tar Heels couldn’t be more critical. Not from a strategic perspective and the need to win some ACC games, but from a personal perspective. We all heard the jeers from the Tar Heel faithful during their exodus from Carter-Finely having been beaten by a single point: “Wait till basketball season!” exclaimed a baby-blue clad frat boy lookalike with blonde highlights while high fiving another equally stereotypical Tar Heel fan. Well… it’s basketball season and the difference between expectations and reality could not be any more different. Carolina, projected to be at or near the top of the ACC standings and NC State, projected to be at or near the cellar of the ACC standings.
Which takes me to what we can do to help the Wolfpack tomorrow night.
At this point, it has become abundantly clear that Roy Williams has blown a gasket.
Exhibit A: Roy kicking out a Presbyterian fan from the Dean Dome for innocently shouting: “You’re going to miss it Deon!” The Tar Heels won that game handily 103 – 64. After the game, this is what Coach had to say:
“When an idiot runs out on a field, what they do now is they don’t show the idiot, it gives them more publicity…”
“I don’t think anybody should yell anything negative at our players. Period. Let’s not make it a bigger thing than it is. But I just don’t think anybody should yell negative things toward our players who come in on our tickets to watch our game.”
Besides the obvious syntactical error in Roy’s comparison, it’s a little astonishing that a coach at any division 1 program would get his panties in such a wad over an opposing fan cheering for his team…
Exhibit B:
Reporter: “What can we do to get better?”
Roy: “We can do a lot of things. You can’t do anything. The players and the coaches, we can do a lot of things. You? You can’t do anything.”
Woody Durham: ” Geez coach, a little harsh don’t you think?”
Note about Exhibit B: It has come to my attention that Exhibit B was made up off of InsideCarolina.com. When I read this, I didn’t even think about the possibility that it may not be true, after all, that is quintessential Roy Williams right there…
Exhibit C:
Roy: “I have more desire in my little finger than all of the dadgum Carolina fans in the world. I can’t be concerned about any negative things.”
When all this came out especially the “You’re going to miss it Deon” episode, I couldn’t wait for the Tar Heels to play Duke at Cameron. I figured the Crazies would absolutely destroy ole’ Coach for his pathetic public statements. But why wait?
The Duke Basketball Report gave us an exceedingly fair rundown in their article State Spanks Duke 88 – 74. But one area where they did hit us is the lack of an identity from the student section. And I have to agree.
And also a word about the State crowd. The RBC has all too often been a wasteland. Not so this time, and good for them.
However, it’s been awhile, and State fans left a certain amount of their identity behind in Reynolds. It was pretty clear that a lot of what they did they learned from TV, and some of it they need to work on. Many of the chants were straight out of Cameron, right down to the cadence. The airball cheer has long since gone out into the world from CIS, where it was born, but the clapped salutations for players is precisely what happens in Durham.
As their program continues to improve, though, State’s kids will re-create their own identity.
Along the same theme, they need remedial dressing instructions. If you want do the wacky student body thing, party hats are not going to cut it, nor will white robot face masks.
We have a friend who is a State grad who told us years ago that the difference between Cameron, and (then) Reynolds is that at Cameron, they chant in unison but at Reynolds, they just scream their heads off.
The tradition was broken after State moved to the RBC, and as things turned out, State fans have been too dispirited to get around to restoring it. We don’t think the fake sound meter made it over, which is too bad, and there’s no doubt lots of other stuff which has been forgotten too.
There’s a lot of truth to that. And what better time than RIGHT NOW do we have to right this ship. We’re a young team with a long way to go, but I tell you what, the electricity in the RBC during the Duke game was undeniably a factor. We, the 6th man, have to become a factor again. We have too much history and too much tradition to make Raleigh an easy win between ACC games.
So students, this is a plea from an alum. ORGANIZE! Get together! Be creative! Roy has given us a TON of ammo to really come out and hit them hard, get under their skin, see if Roy will try to kick out one of us from our own building. I don’t want to be a Cameron copycat, but to have our student section be effective as theirs would be awesome. It has to start somewhere, just as theirs did. What better time than right now?
