
{"id":9096,"date":"2010-02-18T11:35:33","date_gmt":"2010-02-18T19:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=9096"},"modified":"2010-02-18T11:35:33","modified_gmt":"2010-02-18T19:35:33","slug":"hoops-fans-come-to-terms-with-disappointing-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2010\/02\/18\/hoops-fans-come-to-terms-with-disappointing-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Hoops fans come to terms  with disappointing season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Beth Mechum<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Staff Writer<br \/>\n<\/em><br \/>\n\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Three more wins until UNC has 2,000,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Woody Durham exclaimed at the Celebration of a Century Alumni Game last Friday night at the Smith Center. Add in that win against N.C. State Saturday night, and now it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s two.<\/p>\n<p>That sounds impressive \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and Woody certainly said it in a way that made it sound impressive \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got to imagine that for the planners of this year-long 100-year celebration of Carolina basketball, 2,000 wins by this point in the season was a foregone conclusion.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>That game against College of Charleston was probably already checked in the win column, and at least one more ACC win seemed likely, if not a sure thing.<\/p>\n<p>But players, coaches and fans alike have had to adjust their expectations. It hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been easy.<\/p>\n<p>Newspapers are reporting that Deon Thompson won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t leave his room and Marcus Ginyard\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s once-vibrant and positive twitter feed, chock-full of inspirational quotes, has been quiet of late. Roy Williams\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 unfortunate Haiti comments are fodder for blogs, and even the women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s basketball team is unranked for the first time since 2001.<\/p>\n<p>Fans, both young and old, grew accustomed to the Carolina way of at least being competitive year after year, and are now coming to terms with what almost all are calling a disappointing season.<\/p>\n<p>Carrboro Mayor Mark Chilton, a former UNC student, puts things in perspective.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s definitely not as bad as Haiti, but it is bad,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Chilton said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When you win the national championship, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to get cleaned out by the NBA. <\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I still have a lot of confidence in the coach and in the players that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m optimistic, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not going to be a season we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to look back and boast about.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Heather Hall, a UNC senior and avid Carolina fan since birth, said she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tried to stay confident all season, but that confidence took a big hit during the Maryland game, when she heard Maryland\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fans\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 shouts of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153NIT, NIT.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve always loved Carolina basketball and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m really one of those people who sticks with the team through thick and thin, but this season something feels amiss, something\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not right,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said.<\/p>\n<p>That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a common question among UNC fans \u00e2\u20ac\u201c what exactly is wrong? This year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s recruiting class included one of the top five players in the nation, John Henson, and three other All-Americans.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m excited to continue to watch them grow and continue to become better basketball players over the next three years,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Hall said.  \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think we have another national championship in the near future.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the kind of optimism that comes with the afterglow of a 2009 NCAA Championship season to look back on.<\/p>\n<p>Katie Payne, a 2009 graduate still living in the area, was expecting a letdown anyway after a whirlwind 2009 season with players she considered her peers.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I felt like the players who were here during the majority of my four years here were my team, which is why I have such strong ties to Marcus Ginyard,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Payne said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It makes me sad that people are being so hard on them. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not like they are not trying; they are just a young team trying to get their feet and trying to find themselves.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Local sports columnist and Cat\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Cradle owner Frank Heath has years of experience with the up-and-down nature of college basketball and sounded quite serene about it all.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I guess I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m just sort of taking each game as a journey in and of itself, as opposed to  looking at it from a point of view that Carolina fans often do, which is, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcAre we going to win the national championship this year?\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Heath said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a hard transformation to make, but my goal as a fan is to be a fan in the moment.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>And of course as the saying goes, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always next year. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a clich\u00c3\u00a9 most sports fans have grown to live by, and now Tar Heel basketball fans are no different.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Beth Mechum Staff Writer \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Three more wins until UNC has 2,000,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Woody Durham exclaimed at the Celebration of a Century Alumni Game last Friday night at the Smith Center. Add in that win against N.C. State Saturday night, and now it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s two. That sounds impressive \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and Woody certainly said it in a way that&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9096"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9097,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9096\/revisions\/9097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}