7 Things You Should Know About The Tar Heels
1) WE CALL WES MILLER A NERD. "He really loves studying and gets after the books. He's kind of the old guy on the team— you know, those old guys who are always looking up facts and bringing up things and reading the newspaper. We tease him about being a nerd."
2) WE CALL ME PSYCHO T. "Our strength coach named me my freshman year. We were all lifting, and it was pretty intense, and some yells came out. He called me Psycho and stuck with it. We call Brandan Wright Mothman, because of his long arms, and Deon Thompson Big Slop, because it took a while for his height to catch up to his weight."
3) OLD TAR HEELS LOVE THEIR ALMA MATER. "A lot of them come back to play pickup ball. Sean May, Marvin Williams, Jackie Manuel, Antawn Jamison, Brendan Haywood, Shammond Williams, Hubert Davis. Oh, and Raymond Felton. He's hard to go against. Who's the best? Tough to say. They're all pretty good."
4) TAR HEELS LOVE THEIR PING-PONG. "Pretty much everybody on the team plays, but the best are me and Dewey Burke. Not everybody can hang with us. We play Texas-style, too: The first time someone scores two points in a row, the loser pulls his shirt over his head and the winner drills him with the ball. It's fun. Coach just laughs at us."
5) BOBBY FRASOR THINKS HE'S A RIOT. "He's funny sometimes, but sometimes not. He tells really corny jokes. Like, 'Did you hear about the fire at the circus? It was in tents.' Or, 'How come the skeleton didn't go to the party? Because no body would go with him.' Yeah, it's awful. But kinda funny. Sometimes."
6) WHEN WE'RE BAD, IT'S DRILL TIME …"The toughest practices are drill days— usually a punishment for not playing good D the game before. We'll work on defensive slides over and over and over again. Coach will point in one direction, and we have to get down in our defensive stance and slide that way. Then he'll point in another direction and we slide that way. Over and over and over. It's very tiring."
7) …BUT WHEN WE'RE GOOD, IT'S MOSH TIME. "We have a mosh pit in the locker room after big wins— a big road victory or a particularly huge win at home. This year we've had one, when we beat Ohio State. Everybody gets really physical, jumping around against each other. Even Coach gets into it. In fact, he's pretty aggressive."
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