#GDTBATH

I bleed Carolina Blue!

I couldn't be very much happier with my loyalty than I am right now following the 2022 March Madness, aka the NCAA Men's D1 Basketball Championships! Well, maybe a little bit happier, like perhaps if we'd won, but I have to say that a lot of my buddies ate a sizeable portion of crow thanks my good ol' Heels bracket-busting antics this year!

I have a bunch of really old friends! I have had them a really long time AND they're really old!

As I have stated on this Blog in previous posts, my friends are very important to me. Most of the time we agree, especially on the important stuff, but when it comes to the teams we support in the wide variety of sports we pay attention to? Well, let's just say we have more than our fair share of "discussions". Some of the the most heated ones surround our allegiances when it comes to March Madness but I've never wavered from my complete devotion to the UNC Tar Heels, a relationship that goes back to my very early years. They've provided fans like me with year after year of tremendous ACC rivalries, deep runs into the tournament, and incredibly talented players ... anyone recall a skinny freshman, last name Jordan, knocking down the winning shot in '82?

If you really don't follow NCAA hoops, I'm not at all sure why we're good enough friends that you'd be reading this. HaHaHa ... just poking fun! I'd like you to know that my Tar Heels have proven to be the class of the NCAA for many, many years, and as only one example, hold a number of indicators of long, storied success like holding the record for the most Final Four appearances. CLICK HERE if you wish to read more about those records. TBH, I love watching all of the NCAA schools that make up the Madness because I find the tournament of extreme entertainment value, far greater than the NBA in my books. I'm on the edge of my seat each year as some underdog makes a run in the tournament ... St Peter's this year ... ousting long established blue chip programs by embracing the one and done nature of the Madness. 

I wager that almost any fan of college basketball has heard of North Carolina, but there may be less who could recall the coaches responsible for that incredible longevity in the national limelight. My love affair with UNC started in grade 5 thanks to an east end playground legend from my Johnson Street PS days, Jimmy Stevenson. They were his team,  and as a newbie hoopster, I really looked up to Jimmy so I of course followed in his footsteps. 

I have not regretted it a single year since. 

The coach when I was 10 was the unbelievable Dean Smith, a legend of the game who, for a short time, held the record for the most number of career wins until some skinny West Point grad from down the road recently took it over ... Coach K is easily in to top 5 to ever coach D1 basketball and has my deep respect ... despite where the school he coached. During my time rooting for the Heels, I was a huge fan of Coach Smith until his retirement in 1997 (and shed a couple of tears in 2015 with his passing). I tolerated the the Bill Guthridge years (not a huge fan though), was luke warm with the Matt Doherty years, then did a jig when Roy Williams returned to Chapel Hill in 2003 after a successful stint in Kansas. Williams both played and coached at UNC. 

The 2021-2022 season became one of note when former player and coach Hubert Davis replaced the retiring coach Williams partly because Davis is the first African American head coach in UNC history, but it's mostly about his abilities, not his skin tone. Following their 23-8 season, Davis was recently named the Clarence “Big House” Gaines College Basketball Coaches of the Year by the National Sports Media Association. Additionally, the publication CollegeInsider.com named Davis the John McLendon Award as the 2021-22 National Coach of the Year. The award covers all divisions in college basketball from D-I, D-II, D-III, NAIA and NJCAA.

One of the Dean Smith thumbprints on UNC program is what he coined, "The Carolina Way" and it embodied his personal philosophy surrounding a successful life but enshrined in it was his method of coaching the entire athlete. He believed in following a process that would keep his players focused on the things they could control. It was never about the wins, and in fact, former players say Smith rarely mentioned winning to them. It was all about the process.

The Carolina Way is essentially something simple ... PLAY HARD; PLAY SMART; PLAY TOGETHER. 

Unfortunately, like all great things, people occasionally lose their way and being constantly in the limelight like UNC leads to a lot of opinions finding "ink" in the mass media, opinions that might be counter to the Carolina Way. If you'd like to read more about UNC's stumbles CLICK HERE but I'm going to leave it at that for this post. For me, the proof is in the pudding ... the pudding being the records held plus the tremendous graduation stats.

Quite a while back, I put watching my Heels live at the Dean Dome on my bucket list, and I was as giggly as a school girl when I realized that dream in 2019. I have been blessed with a wife who is eager to share all of my craziness, and willingly tags along as we trapse around North America visiting college campuses for games. The atmosphere in the Dean Dome is electric, the signs of legendary success hung from the rafters in prominence, the fans as loyal as any in the world, and the smiles as wide as the Grand Canyon. I'm 1 and 0 at live UNC games, a streak that will be put to the test when we can finally enjoy NCAA events live again without worrying about infectious ailments. 

As for April 4th, 2022, it was indeed #gdtbath ... a Good Day To Be A Tar Heel!