You know what’s the best thing about getting older? The older you get the more experiences you have, and the more experiences you have the more you get to compare those experiences against others that you’ve had. Thus, as someone who graduated around the turn of the millennium, I have a lot of good experiences to draw on.
This weekend’s 81-78 win over Duke had me thinking about how amazing it would be to have been in the building for that moment. All of the videos with all of the angles that have come
out were filled with that roar building, then the momentary silence as Dixon passed it over to Trimble and Trimble hoisted the shot, and then the sound explosion as it popped into the net. Moments like that are ones that when you’re there, there’s nothing like that.
I’ve been extremely fortunate to have gone to a lot of UNC games. I’ve gone to enough to where several blend together. I was even present for December’s CBS Sports Classic win which was an incredible atmosphere with a similar late game comeback even if it didn’t have near the same impact as the Duke win. One extremely memorable game was a blowout win against Boston College in Chestnut Hill, but I honestly don’t remember much about the game or the atmosphere.
Then my mind transports back to college and reminds me of being in the building for the 1998 win over Duke in Chapel Hill. It was the first UNC/Duke game that I attended in person, it was the first without Dean Smith as coach in four decades, and it featured the most memorable dunk that wasn’t.
The elation of that win was my first Franklin Street rush, and because the band was so big, I actually got to spend the second half just watching instead of having to worry about playing. It was such a great moment but—can you really call a game with the missed dunk the best you have ever attended?
So, for me, I have to go back to January 27, 2000. UNC versus Maryland in the Smith Center, aka “The Snow Game.”
To put this into perspective, you have to set the scene. Two days prior the Chapel Hill area had been blitzed with a foot and a half of snow. If you’ve lived in North Carolina for any amount of time you know that even a few inches of snow will paralyze the area for a while, and this much snow basically shut down the area for a week. The combination of the deep snow and cold that followed just kept the snow around seemingly forever. On January 26th, Carolina and Maryland were scheduled to play, but they moved the game one day to Thursday, January 27th to allow for a little more cleanup. That said, you knew that there were going to be a lot of people who weren’t going to be able to make the drive to Chapel Hill and watch because of just how difficult it is on a normal day to get to the Smith Center.
Band members at the time would play every other ACC game unless you were a senior, and as I wasn’t yet this just happened to be a game that I wasn’t scheduled to play. That made it more fun because I could just watch, and thanks to those connections I managed to secure a lower level ticket about ten-ish rows behind the UNC bench. This was important, because by having a ticket in the lower level I was allowed to go ahead and claim my seat.
Why was this important? Well, you may be at an age to where you don’t remember, but student seating at the Smith Center was even worse than it is now. Students had about 1500 sporadic locations in the lower level and then several in the upper. There were no risers, and the lottery for this game had already come and gone. The lucky students with lower level seats made sure to show up, but otherwise if you didn’t have a lower level seat you had to start your watch upstairs. However, it quickly became clear just how many people weren’t going to be able to make it, and so an announcement was made right before tip that everyone was free to go downstairs—on the understanding that if the ticket holder showed up they had to relinquish their seat.
Thus you had a Smith Center that wasn’t full, but it was loaded with a bunch of cabin-fever students who relished the opportunity to surround the court and stand the whole game to make themselves heard. The Tar Heels would go on to win, and students celebrated by rushing the court.
Yeah, back in 2000 a blue blood program rushed the court because we were so happy that we felt like we helped that win.
That game, as you know by now, was the landmark event that created the risers section that has seen so many amazing victories and is the one cherished by students to obtain. We weren’t able to convince the money in the arena to give up all the seats around the floor but they were at least able to help the atmosphere some.
It’s not often you can say you attended an event that was a landmark moment in a program’s history—and for me this will always be the most memorable game I attended. So what’s yours, use the comments to let us know!
