Mike DeCourcy
When a spectacular young basketball prospect named Harrison Barnes was arranging an official recruiting visit to North Carolina, the Tar Heels did not ask that he time his visit for a big fall weekend when thousands of fans bleeding powder-blue school spirit would be gathered to pay homage to the football team. No, they brought him to see some Carolina alumni play pickup hoops.
Vince Carter was there, and so were Jerry Stackhouse and Antawn Jamison and Raymond Felton and Brandan Wright and Marvin Williams — and 21,750 spectators, Michael Jordan among them, cheering as though the Tar Heels were drilling Duke in early March.
If you want to understand why North Carolina is a college basketball blueblood, what better picture could we paint?
Bill Self’s Jayhawks enter the season ranked No. 1 in SN’s preseason countdown.
“They’ve got a great tradition. That alumni weekend—they get kids down there at the right time,” Texas coach Rick Barnes says. “You look up in the rafters, you see what they’ve done — not only in the past but very current.”
Carolina, Kansas, Kentucky, …
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