You saw two teams going in opposite directions Tuesday night. Unfortunately, the team trending downward is Carolina, which suffered its fifth defeat in the last seven games and its fourth loss in the Smith Center this season, scoring its fewest points ever in Dean’s Dome. The Tar Heels have now lost at home seven times […]

If any of the Tar Heels slept a wink Wednesday night, they awoke Thursday at the crossroads of their basketball season. They played well enough to win at Duke – in fact, should have won – but a heartbreaker like that can sometimes have a more negative effect than if they played hard, did some […]

Dean Smith won three of his last four games at Cameron Indoor Stadium, but the one he lost may have represented the greatest coaching job of his 36-year career that would end after that season. His Tar Heels had won at Cameron in a 1994 thriller over first-place and 2nd-ranked Duke behind 20 points from […]

Monumental events often make me go back in time to recall what was happening 10, 20, 30 years ago. The passing of Dean Smith, whose legacy will live forever, came almost cosmically as the basketball season heads into the home stretch with February Fretting before March Madness. So what was going on at those various […]

I remember my first (and only) interview with Dr. Linnea Smith the year after she married the famous basketball coach at UNC. A psychiatrist, she was confidential by nature and knew her husband preferred privacy over the very public figure he had become teaching and coaching a game that was growing faster than he ever […]

Virginia has now played 73 basketball games in Chapel Hill since the first in 1911. The Cavaliers have won eight times, including Monday night’s 75-64 surgical execution of the Tar Heels in the Smith Center. Ironically, UVa won that first visit on February 24, 1911, by the score of 18-15, which sounds every bit as […]

Some Carolina basketball teams, particularly for the last two seasons, have not been especially lovable. We had the “going small” debate in 2013 and the affaire d’PJ last year. The current Tar Heels, despite their obvious foibles, have become solid fan favorites for the first time since the 2011 and 2012 Elite Eight teams. The […]

If Carolina supposedly has the “wine and cheese” crowd, the N.C. State Wolfpack fans from here on in must be known as the doggy downers. I guess that’s what losing 16 of the last 17 games to your arch rival will do to the home crowd’s excitement and confidence going in – even three days […]

If you just enjoy watching sports, it was a dawn-to-dusk smorgasbord of games that began with a double-overtime win by still undefeated Kentucky and ended with what might have been the last time we see one of the greatest quarterbacks in football history. If you had a dog or two in any of the fights, […]

Despite widespread reports last week that UNC football would name Gene Chizik as its new defensive coordinator, sources close to the university and athletic department say the vetting process for the former Auburn head coach is still going on. This, apparently, is a much more detailed review than has occurred with past coaching hires due […]