From Chapel Hill to St. Louis...
 

and the Tar Heels are coming home the 2005 NCAA men's basketball champions........ Way to go, North Carolina!!!!!!!!!!!

:-d :-d :-d :-d :-d :-d :-d :-d :-d

It was kinda tough for me this year; North Carolina born, yet my son is in his first year at Ga.Tech! I ragged him after they got beat by UNC in the ACC tournament final. That day I just had a feeling UNC would go all the way.

Way to go 'Heels!

(From a MD Terp!)

Shoulda heard the Franklin St. commotion -- I could, from 2 miles away! Not a lot of teaching going to happen today! RDU will be the place to be! (A travel note, just to keep it Fodorish -- so if you're coming or going through RDU today, there may be some uproar there.)

>:D< \:D/ :-))

when they won in '93, i was in grad school at carolina and was part of the franklin st revelry.

last night, i was screaming all alone with kids asleep upstairs and a husband out of town for work.

i much prefer the former though it is fun any way you watch it.

yea heels!!!!

It is killing this old Demon Deacon to say so but...GO HEELS.

Well, as the only Illini fan, congrats, you out played us last night, or I should say May outplayed our big men last night (I'm still not convinced he's not a 30 year old in disguise!). HOWEVER, our Illini are better day in and day out and we couldn't be prouder of them. My husband is a die hard Tar Heel Fan and I have always been a Duke fan so this was a double blow for me last night, But thanks to Roy Williams for going to UNC so Bill Self left (good riddance!) and we got Bruce!

As I told my husband, the Cub fan of the family, after last night, I now know what Cubs fans have felt like for all these years!

P.S. GO Illini and Go Duke! There's always next year!

Amazing day!!!!!!!!!!! The sky is Carolina blue, and all is right with the world. I was there with friends at the Dean Dome last night, and it was never louder, even during a close Duke game. I am glad we got to play the top ranked team for the title last night. It makes it all the sweeter. It was also pretty cool for me getting to see my two alma maters play in the regional final last week. Also on a traveling note, I traveled all over Chapel Hill on the way to work and couldn't manage to find a copy of the Daily Tar Heel.

The sky IS Carolina Blue today, and to all the basketball analysts who had already crowned Illinois, you need to wipe your faces! :-d The Tar Heels are the BEST, and as Bruce Weber said last night, nothing could be done about Sean May......... But Illinois is a great team, which makes this championship all the more meaningful. But the best team DID win....... GO TAR HEELS!!! :-d We're singing *Blue Heaven* on Tobacco Road today! ;;)

Oh my. Bonniebroad--you actually think the analysts had crowned IL!!???? Who are you listening to?????????

I am so proud of the Illini and the fantastic season they've had. It's been so much fun watching this wonderful group of guys. Call my a sore loser, but I'm broken hearted that James Augustine played only 9 minutes because of ridiculous foul calls. Sean May is allowed to travel, charge, and shove his way to the bucket. JMHO

Congrats!

We are so disappointed, because this Illinois team really is a team to be proud of. They never act like anything else but a team, off and on the court.

As old as I am, I hope once before I die that any one of my teams come in first. Any of my teams, but especially baseball. We are always second. Out of 11, out of 50, out of 200 whatever sport or number involved, it's often been second.

From: the Second City

Sunbabe, Ill. had more illegal screens than Billy Packer could mention. Refs didn't get everything. Good second-half comeback by the Illini, but May counldn't be stopped.

Yea, Tar Heels!!! Bunch of light blue clad sleepy people at work today.

Funny, Billy Packer praised Illinois for their screens and picks in the first half. When IL made a run in the second half, all of a sudden everything became an "illegal screen" and all the Illini doubters jumped on the bandwagon.

Congrats to UNC. Like I said, call me a sore loser but I'm just a broken-hearted fan.

JJ5 - Just be patient. I am a huge Red Sox fan, and this has been an awesome half year for me. I take it you are a Cubs fan. Lots of us Sox fans are rooting for you.

The sky is Carolina Blue here in Virginia too! Agreed ncgrrl, I really needed that cup of coffee this morning.

Sunbabe, bad or missed calls cut both ways. It didn't change the outcome of the game.

OK,Bonniebroad, surely you jest when you say that all the media were on the Illini bandwagon!!!!!!! They were doubted and second guessed from the moment they were on the SI cover in the preseason! For pete's sake, Seth of CBS picked against them for EVERY game of the NCAA tourney (including picking them as one of the potential 1st round upsets!) and Packer didn't even know our team's players names last night "De RON Willaims" (it's pronounced Darren) PLEASE! This is the championship game and you can't even get the guys name right!!!! But then again it was Billy "Mr. ACC" Packer.

OK, that's my rant but really don't try to say that the media loved the Illini! The sports media loves the ACC, rightfully or wrongfully, and if UNC, Duke, UCONN, Syracuse or Arizona aren't number one (yes, I know those aren't all ACC teams), they have a stroke!

What comes around goes around.
UCLA was king of the hill for years.
Anybody seen blue Bruins in a final 4 lately? I haven't.

In the women's bracket, some funny things happened on the way to the coronation. Tennessee and LSU both got whipped by a couple of upstarts.

I agree that Illinois had too many doubters this year, but I was not one of them. Where does it say a great team has to come from a certain conference or even a good conference? St. Joes went farther than expected last year, UNLV could never have been confused for a team with a great conference, and the Big Ten was actually much better than all but a few this year and is usually very good.

What the prognosticators really got wrong was that UNC couldn't play defense, Illinois would win if the score wasn't in the mid-80s, Illinois would win if they made even 7 or 8 threes, and UNC couldn't win if it didn't stop offensive rebounds (I was in that camp). What they did get right was that Sean May was too much to handle. Felton was what made this team go though. He made an immediate impact every time he came back in the game. As for Billy Packer, he can be very pro- ACC at times, but he is detested by Carolina fans because he really doesn't like UNC very much. He doesn't like Duke either. He is also very critical of everything and rubs people the wrong way. At the Dean Dome last night, people started chanting "Woody, Woody" because they wanted to listen to Woody Durham (the Heels announcer) instead of Billy.

I happened to see the news on this for the last few weeks in two states, Michigan and Illinois, as I traveled and put in the pier etc. Michigan gets much more "east" highlights and talk, and the media rarely mentioned the Illini, except for the Coach Weber "talk".

And Illinois was never, ever considered a possible "winner" by any of the announcers I saw. They even picked Louieville on Sunday. And we would have won if the 3 shots would have been going down. Not!- last night.

And I am a White Sox fan, and not a Cubs fan. The Cubbies have the entire nation, they don't need me. But my father is a Cubs fan and he is 86. He doesn't have long to wait. He was actually at their last World Series choke in 1945 right before being shipped out to Italy. The Cubs are never going to win, because there is no incentive to get good players, when most of the people who come to your games and buy expensive tickets- aren't even looking at the game itself.

My Sox have finished in second place in their division for years and years. We get so little attention, that it isn't common knowledge outside of Chicago.
Or else they get to the playoffs- and get eliminated first 3 game tier. I don't have a lot more time to be patience. But at least I've got my grandkids going to the Cell all the time, so I know some of mine will get to see it eventually. If laws of probability hold true. I would take a 1959 at this point.

"Woody, Woody, Woody"

Would have preferred Woody Durham as the announcer (and I'm sure the Illini fans would have preferred their radio announcers). I tried to listen to the radio and watch the game, but the tv delay makes it impossible now. How about instead of Jim Nance and Billy Packer we have Dick Enberg and Len Emore.

I was at Wal-Mart earlier today and championship t-shirts are $10.83 ($12.83 for xxl and xxxl).

Go Heels Go Heels Go Heels Go Heels Go Heels!!!Go Heels Go Heels Go Heels Go Heels Go Heels!!!Go Heels Go Heels Go Heels Go Heels Go Heels!!!Go Heels Go Heels Go Heels Go Heels Go Heels!!!Go Heels Go Heels Go Heels Go Heels Go Heels!!!Go Heels Go HeGo Heels Go Heels Go Heels Go Heels Go Heels!!!els Go Heels Go Heels Go Heels!!!

Sunbabe, I'm with you. I don't wanna be a whiner or a sore loser either so know I shouldn't even say anything. But IL got screwed on the calls last night. Yes, they missed way too many shots. But, as close as they came, you can't help wondering what would have happened had the calls gone the other way. As it is, I have a very broken-hearted 15 year old on my hands who is afraid that he'll never see Il in the championship game again. As he was telling me last night before the game, if they won last night, there was a chance they'd do it again in the next few years because they'd have so much more of a recruiting advantage after a win. But now they've lost that recruiting advantage. A problem NC never has had, nor never will have.

A friend and I just drove to Chapel Hill during lunch to try to get a Daily Tar Heel, but even with two printings no luck. Did get a Chapel Hill paper anyway. My News and Observer just isn't close enough.

JJ5 - Sorry about the confusion between White Sox and Cubs. You are right about the White Sox getting little attention. Personally, I think Illinois relied too much on the three last night, and Carolina did a good job of switching defenses to keep Felton out of serious foul trouble early and to guard the perimeter. Illinois also had to work a lot for each shot down the stretch and ran a lot of time off the clock. The Illini did miss some open shots, but if they hadn't been hot in the middle parts of the second half they wouldn't have been in the game anyway. No disrespect to Illinois or their ability to comeback, but Carolina has been a second half team for the past month, and I expected them to go for the knockout punch early in the second half like they did against MSU. I think they tried, but Illinois is better than MSU and put up a gallant fight.

Should have added that he's been a Cubs fan all of his life. So he's no stranger to heartbreak!

CAPH52,

Tell your son the team will recruit good players. The team is hungry, and the coaches will say something to the best recruits "With you on our team, we would win, you would be the MVP, all we need is you on our team" Coming in second is great for recruiting. Coming in last in RPI rankings isn't good for recruiting.

It's obvious Illinois has a great coach, and he'll keep the team going strong. Your team will be in the Final Four for years to come.

The thing that amazed me about the last three weeks of this season was that in my Michigan home, and listening to several East Coast stations, you would think that there were three teams in the Final Four. In the intro to the Sunday game, they didn't even have the profile for Illinois, and gave Louieville and Michigan State about 20 minutes "analyzing" talk each.

And it is senseless, like arguing strikes or balls, but if those threes would have been falling, instead of ins/outs as they were- and if they didn't have at least 2 traveling occasions totally missed on NC's behalf-it would have been a different story.
Everything you noted is also true, yet this would have meant far more to Illinois and that school's economy and sports programs than it will ever mean to NC.

And Go Travel, please. You say "GO" to your team BEFORE you play, not after you won. Tres gauche'

ncgrrl, I sure do hope you're right! Sadly, IL usually seems to have a hard time recruiting even the good Chicago area players. (I know that for at least two of the current players, IL wasn't their first choice.) It's nice to think that this past season might change that.

Personally, I was thrilled to have SIU (which I attended) in the tournament and would love to see them get farther next year. But, as dim as my hopes are for U of I right now, I know they have a better chance than SIU.

Yes,CAPH52, dim hopes. In fact this team was FROM Illinois. Augustine was from Mokena, in my own school district. We had one player from Texas (Williams???)Anyway, we are from the Midwest, and as such we are realists. SIU, NIU, UofI- aren't likely to be shipping in ringers any time soon.

CAPH52, I didn't know you were a Saluki!
I was down there in '64 & '65 and my son went there as well. Been to any Haloween parties?? LOL!

Swalter518, I did not say ALL the media was pro-Illinois. I was talking about the majority of the analysts on ESPN and at Sportsillustrated.com, i.e., who did indeed pick Illinois over Carolina to win it all, in the last week leading up to the championship game.

For the record, I think Illinois is a really great team, and I can understand your tremendous pride in them, all you Illini fans. But Sean May and Raymond Felton really showed up last night, and there's not much you can do about that! :-)

I do not agree that Illinois got bad calls last night. I think both teams got some good calls and bad calls, and that's as it usually goes. Most of the ACC fans that I know can barely stand Billy Packer, who seems to bend over backwards to avoid saying anything good about the ACC teams, especially UNC. (Many ACC fans feel his is the first voice you hear when you arrive in Hell, as some witty sports reporter stated last year! :-d )

It was a fabulous game....... the top two teams in the country .... all that it should have been!

OK, so we've established that Big 10 and ACC fans (maybe with the exception of Wake) don't like Billy Packer so why the H@#@ is he still on?! I think we've found common ground-get rid of Billy Packer-what do all you Carolina fans say?!

Swalter518, we Carolina fans would LOVE it if he moved to Mars!!! Some of my family has met him socially and were quite UNDERwhelmed! :-) I will even choose Dick Vitale over listening to Billy! Vitale has the world's biggest mouth BUT he strikes me as a real nice guy............ and he does know his stuff!

Bonniebroad, I'll agree with you there on Vitale and at least he's fired up! Packer contradicts himself and doesn't even pretend to be familiar with most teams, i.e. mispronouncing names of starting players in the championship game!

Did any of you Chicagoans hear Boors and Bernsteins interview with Billy Packer last Friday on the SCORE (WSCR)? Wow, did he ever come across as a first class jerk!

Meant to say "last Thursday" (and should have put an apostrophe on Bernstein! Sorry about that. But, bottom line, Billy Packer was a real jerk!

Yeah, I have always thought Vitale seems like a genuinely nice guy who has his head in the right place (annoying, yes, but still ok). Packer has his head somewhere else most of the time. I bet the refs really love Packer because he constantly criticizes calls. Then he turns around and says something completely crazy.

Yeah, I have always thought Vitale seems like a genuinely nice guy who has his head in the right place (annoying, yes, but still ok). Packer has his head somewhere else most of the time. I bet the refs really love Packer because he constantly criticizes calls. Then he turns around and says something completely crazy.

Now talk about conflicting sentiments. My friend's fiancee attended the game with us. She is an NC State grad, so as a right of passage, she doesn't care much for UNC, and she was originally from Illinois, not far from Urbana-Champaign. Her parents are huge Illini fans. She pulled for UNC for her fiancee's sake, but I think the evening really got to her after a while.

Even Wake fans would like to see Billy head on to his next job, Greeter in Hell.

Notes from Chapped Heel:
1. Daily Tar Heels disappeared from newsstands almost immediately and an investigation is beginning -- seems suddenly eBay is flooded with issues of the paper for sale. Since it's supposed to be free to the community, at NC tax expense (more or less), resale may be deemed a crime. In any case, it was very hard to come by a copy.

No one here is a tenth as sore a loser as someone who wrote a letter from Chicago to the Chapel Hill News:

http://www.chapelhillnews.com/opinio...-8665753c.html

YIPE!

Well, bless her heart, Cassandra!!! ;;) Isn't she a good sport! :p