(Note: THI is naming the greatest former UNC football or basketball player from each of the 50 states. The criteria is the player had to live in the state he represents at some point before arriving at UNC. The duration doesn’t matter, he just had to live there. College and pro careers were factored with a lean toward their UNC accomplishments.)
C.J. Hooker had options coming out of high school where he could have gone to college and played basketball. But the draw of going to North Carolina and getting a chance to play for the fabled Tar Heels was too much to pass up.
So, in 2001, Hooker, a 6-foot-2, 188-pound scoring dynamo from Palmer, AK, (43 miles from Anchorage) made the 3,434-mile trek south to Chapel Hill. Though, it wasn’t as if he was completely foreign to the Old North State.
“My family is originally from North Carolina,” Hooker said. “Both my mom and my dad won state titles in high school basketball in North Carolina. They went to John A. Wilkinson High School in Belhaven, NC. The high school no longer exists.
“My dad was stationed in the Coast Guard and that's how we ended up in Alaska. He retired up there and bought a house. He wanted to finish raising me and my younger sister up there.”
Ending up at UNC wasn’t a huge stretch for Hooker, but what about earning a spot on the Tar Heels? That wasn’t a seamless occurrence.
Hooker was one of the top high school players in Alaska winning his team’s MVP award as a junior before earning conference MVP and first-team all-state honors as a senior. He scored 20.1 points and grabbed 10.2 rebounds per game that year while carrying a gpa of 3.9 on a 4.0 scale.
Hoping to play for his favorite school, Hooker shunned preferred walk-on offers from Arizona and Gonzaga plus Princeton heavily recruited him. He was in regular contact with then-UNC assistant coach Doug Wojcik about going through the process.
In Hooker’s first year at UNC, 70 players tried out for eight JV spots. He made it and played two seasons with the next step being a spot on the varsity, he’d hoped. But Matt Doherty was let go and Roy Williams came on board, which concerned Hooker given his relationship with the prior staff.
“I actually looked into a tryout out as a wide receiver on the football team,” Hooker said. “But was convinced by Eric Hoots to still give bball a shot when coach Williams and his staff were hired.
“(Assistant) coach Jerod Haase ran the tryouts and let us know anywhere from 0-2 people would make it, as the team already had 15 players on it. I ended up being the one they kept and played two years for coach Williams.”
Those seasons were the 2004 and 2005 campaigns, the ladder was capped with Williams’ first national championship and UNC’s fourth.
It was a major adjustment for Hooker, however. This was the big time and was a completely different level.
“Being on the team was an immediate shock for me,” he said. “One, from a talent perspective, as I've never played with a collective group of guys of that talent level at one time ever. And two, from the things that come with the territory: Everyone recognizing you everywhere you go, not only on campus, but malls, other gyms, cities, restaurants, everywhere.”
Hooker, who is currently an operations coordinator at Fast Lane Consulting And Education in the Research Triangle area, scored 22 points as a Tar Heel and has a national title ring to show for his effort and contributions to the program.
He takes tremendous pride in what he was fortunate enough to experience and for the lasting effect of those two seasons.
“Everything that you hear about entering UNC basketball is becoming part of a multi-generational family is true,” he said. “And it doesn't matter how you join the team, once you're a part of it, you're a part of it.
“I definitely formed lifelong bonds with many guys on the team and still talk to them very often. It's funny because now most of our guys are coaches and fathers now. It's fun to see how we change over the years.”
And there’s even more.
Although a walk-on, Hooker still managed to make ESPN’s Sportscenter.
“This is one of many ways I learned the reaches of UNC basketball,” he said. “We played Virginia at home my junior year, and I drove to the basket and got an And-one. And Brad Daughtery was commentating and said he wanted to see me on Sportscenter, and sure enough, I made the highlight and my parents got to see and record that.
“That was always a very special moment to me because before I ever picked up a basketball, they were huge UNC fans from the Charlie Scott to the Phil Ford days and so on.”
Hooker’s jersey isn’t hanging from the rafters, though the 2005 banner is, and he hasn’t gone down in history as one of UNC’s all-time greats. But that’s okay, his experience is still a valuable part of Carolina’s immense history, and his story speaks to what has made UNC hoops so special for so long.
It’s personal for Hooker, but his experience represents so many, as well, as he perfectly articulated.
“It was much more than a dream come true.”
