More Than A Tobacco Road Sweep

ACC-Big Ten Challenge brings together the best of each conference in a special place.

To college basketball fans, it’s a small patch of heaven: Three schools with championship banners and fanatic followings.
For three days this week, the ACC-Big Ten Challenge provided an opportunity available in only one place — Tobacco Road.
Michigan at North Carolina State on Monday. Indiana at Duke on Tuesday. Ohio State at North Carolina on Wednesday.
It was a Tobacco Road sweep. But it’s the memories of the flavor of the games — and the chance to savor college basketball history — not the results, that linger.
“I think here we take it for granted, I really believe that,” said North Carolina coach Roy Williams, a native of North Carolina who was an assistant to Dean Smith for 10 seasons before coaching Kansas for 15 seasons. Williams returned to Chapel Hill in 2003, becoming part of Tobacco Road again.
“The years I was at Kansas I used to sit back and say ‘Wow, it is eight miles away, 20 miles away with the games you have,”’ Williams said. “If I was a retired coach living in this area I’d suck up to every one of those coaches and make sure I had tickets every night. And then just sit there and watch some of them sweat and some of them get ticked off, and then go back, lay down on the bed and say I get to watch two more of them tomorrow night.
“I think it’s something special that we have that nobody can say they have, and they can’t emulate what we have. It’s pretty special around here.”
North Carolina State
At the RBC Center, the 7-year-old home of the Wolfpack, the school’s two national championship banners hang with one celebrating the 2005-06 Stanley Cup, courtesy of the NHL’s Carolina Hurricanes who share the building.
On game night, pucks are a distant thought.
It’s all about red.
The signature moment that fires up the crowd each game is when the trumpet players, anywhere from 15 to 30 of them wearing red-and-white striped shirts, bolt from their seats behind one basket at the start of a media timeout and head for one side of the crowd.
They play a few quick bars to encourage that section to stand and cheer, then repeat it two more times at other sides. They end their frantic performance by running in front of a section of students and breaking into the school fight song. By the time play is about to resume, the whole building is standing and cheering.
Lowe admits the RBC Center, which seats 19,722, doesn’t have the homeyness of Reynolds. Close your eyes, though, and the noise level isn’t far off.
“Obviously when you come in here it’s a huge, huge arena so you’re thinking you won’t get that closed-in feeling,” Lowe said. “Our fans get into it and get so loud they get our guys going. This is a beautiful facility. It’s hard not to like it.”

Cameron Indoor Stadium. The 66-year-old building, shrine to many, is the home of college basketball’s most fervent fans — the Cameron Crazies.
To get the first look at them, walk around the outside of the building and come upon Krzyzewskiville, the tent city set up for big games to decide who gets the right at the first chance for the prime spots — not seats — in the student section.
North Carolina
The Smith Center is named for the man who’s the winningest coach in Division I history — for a few more weeks anyway until Bob Knight passes him.
Former coach Dean Smith is the face of Carolina basketball, and the building that bears his name is one of the most underrated in college basketball.
With a capacity of 21,592, the 20-year-old arena with theater seats has received an unfair knock as the home of a “wine and cheese” crowd.
To help erase the staid image the Tar Heel crowds always have had compared to Duke and N.C. State, rows of those cushioned seats were taken out from behind one basket a few years ago. Now, students stand on risers there the entire game. The grease paint is a different shade of blue than that of their Duke counterparts, but the intensity level isn’t far off.
Staid no. Proper, yes.
When some students began chanting “over-rated” at Ohio State near the end of Wednesday’s game, coach Williams had the public address announcer tell them to stop.
“That’s not the way we cheer here at Carolina,” he said.