I haven’t been to many basketball games in my time, 2 Hawks games, 4 Bobcats games and now I can add a UNC Tar Heels game to that list.
As I said earlier, I surprisingly won a nice weekend package as part of a competition a client of my work ran, 2 nights hotel, tickets to the North Carolina Tar Heels vs. North Carolina State Wolfpack game last Saturday, a hospitality brunch and a signed UNC jersey. Pretty sweet I thought, so off to Chapel Hill we headed on Friday night, we made pretty good time and arrived around 9pm to check in.
The next morning we went to downtown Chapel Hill to The Carolina Inn for a big, all you can eat brunch before heading to the game. Now I’ve seen college basketball on TV before, I’ve followed the last 3 or so March Madness’ pretty religiously (failing each time) but I had no idea what to expect. What I got was 2 hours of noise the likes I’ve not heard since the days of going to Ibrox to see Rangers play
I think it was a combination of the band in one corner, the very boisterous student section on the other side and us being so far back that noise reverberated off the roof, but my ears were ringing for hours afterwards. Yeah, also, for tickets that was part of a competition, you don’t expect to be in the 3rd row closest to god… But it was all good.
The game it’s self was a blowout in favour of UNC, NC State barely led for the first few minutes before UNC just burned them with defensive rebounds and lights out shooting, proving why they are ranked number 1 in the country. Enjoyable, well as enjoyable as a blowout could be.
While we had no affiliations to the game (Go Dawgs!) we enjoyed the people watching, and the near choreographed routines that everyone, except for us, knew… People watching at it’s best.
I would say you should go see a UNC game if you can, but apparently it’s a loooong wait for tickets, so nevermind.
We spent the rest of the weekend in Chapel Hill, Robyn compares it to Athens, GA. in terms of look and general vibe, you can take that how ever you want. It’s a college town with lots of bars and restaurants, and not a lot of parking. Hopefully this weekend we don’t have to head back to the Chapel Hill area, 3 out of 4 weekends was more than enough…
Tar Heels vs. Wolfpack – January 12th 2007 (set)
Originally uploaded by FLC.