A Simple Message For A Difficult Task

CHAPEL HILL - North Carolina senior Kenny Williams has one simple message for the freshmen going into the game at Duke on Wednesday night:

“Be ready.”

Williams, who’s experienced the UNC-Duke rivalry four times since arriving in Chapel Hill, knows what playing at Cameron Indoor Stadium is like more than most of his teammates. That makes him the perfect person to talk to if you’re a UNC freshman preparing for your first experience of this rivalry, especially in Duke’s hallowed hall.

“We were just talking about it in the weight room earlier about how their fans can get a little bit crazy and, if you’ve got some dirt, they’re going to do their best to dig it up,” Williams said. “So, we just told them to be ready for that and just to stay focused on the game as much as you can.”

Still, until a players actually experiences Cameron, especially wearing Carolina blue, they won’t fully understand playing in front of 9,000 plus screaming fans that absolutely despise everything UNC.

Or, at least for senior Cameron Johnson, that’s what his first experience in Cameron Indoor with “North Carolina” written across his chest was like.

“What I was told going into this game last year was that your expectations might be here, you might think, ‘Oh, this is going to be the craziest game you’ve ever played in.’ Level that up a bunch of times and that’s what it’ll be like. And that’s what I did, and it was pretty spot on,” Johnson said.

For freshman point guard Coby White, however, the word he used most to describe what he thought the game would be like was far less serious than some of his teammates.

“It’s gonna be fun,” White said with a smile. “(It’s) kind of a hostile environment, they (Duke fans) don’t care, they’re reckless with their mouth. But it should be fun. It’s almost like a high school gym because everybody’s all on top of you so it should be fun.”

While the Tar Heels possess talented freshmen just like Duke, they also have something that the Blue Devils don’t: experienced seniors.

That could be huge for UNC, especially if Williams, Johnson and Luke Maye produce against the nation’s top-ranked team.

“It’s huge (having experienced seniors),” Maye said. “Especially on the road, first one, just trying to help our young guys. You’re going to make a couple mistakes here and there, but the biggest thing is learning from them and limiting those as best we can. And, with that, I think we’re going to have a great opportunity to get the win over there.”

Getting a win won’t happen unless everybody on the eighth-ranked Tar Heels is ready, no matter if it’s their first or last time experiencing one of the most hostile environments in all of college basketball.