For 10 seconds I clutched the hands of my best friends, gathered around a television in a dorm room. For 10 seconds we held our breaths, hoping, wishing, praying that we could hold on. For 10 excruciating seconds we begged the basketball gods to be on our side. And in those ten seconds we still had hope. Then he made it. The room fell silent, the Dean Dome fell silent, and an entire campus of 35,000 plus students fell silent. Disbelief, disappointment, hurt, sadness, too many feelings to even describe. Everything hit us at once. Then there was a numbness, an emptiness inside. Our entire world had fallen apart in 10 seconds.
There are die hard Carolina fans out there, and there are die hard Duke fans out there. The tobacco road rivalry is one steeped in tradition. Every season we at Carolina have two goals: Win a National Championship, and beat Duke. These games are circled on calendars as soon as the schedules are released. The anticipation of these two legendary basketball teams colliding is so intense that it can tear families apart for weeks at a time. But you have no idea what this means to us, the students, unless you've walked in our shoes. If you are just a fan, you probably got up this morning and went through your regular routine, and had a pretty normal day. Not us. You probably smiled today, even laughed. Not us. You probably even turned on the news or ESPN to see what else was happening today. Not us. Today was a very cold and quiet day for us. What you may not understand if you haven't been here, is that we live for this. No, we REALLY live for this. The hatred that courses through our veins for that school down the road can not be put into words. The disgust we feel for that man who goes by the name "Coach K" is burned into our minds. And after last night those feelings rose to an innumerable level. Simple fans stress over this game for weeks, but it never leaves our thoughts. If you haven't been in our shoes, then you don't understand.
March 3rd is on all of our minds. It's our shot at revenge. And it's the one thing that can make this pain go away. If we can go into their house and take back what they took from us, it will numb the pain a little bit. One thing is for sure, not one person on this campus will stop loving our Tarheels. Tyler Zeller is still our hero, just like the rest of them. No matter how many mistakes they make, no matter how many shots they miss, and no matter how many games they lose, they will always be OUR team. We are Tarheels born, we are Tarheels bred, and when we die we are Tarheels dead, and at the end of the day no one can take that away from us.
I don't care how old it is, it makes me happy
