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Deal ends Friday!!!
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CHAPEL HILL – The official attendance for North Carolina’s 72-51 win over Michigan on Wednesday night at the Smith Center was 19,938, but it might as well have been several hundred thousand.
Given what the Tar Heels experienced in their cavernous home arena last season, in which fans were only allowed in for the final two home games, and at a maximum of 15 percent capacity (3,263), the near-filled Dean Dome was busting at the seams.
It wasn’t lost on the players, either.
At times, they appeared to play to the crowd with gestures of excitement, and simply elevating their verve to a level few of them have experienced.
“It felt good, it felt great,” said sophomore guard Caleb Love. “Just having the fans in there – I love our fans – they were into it the whole game, the whole 40 minutes. We just feed off them and let their energy play off ours.”
A couple of times, Love clearly looked into the crowd to feed off of its energy, but he gave it right back to them. As he did so, the fans got louder, especially after some highlight-reel plays during the Tar Heels’ 43-18 run in the second half that allowed them to pull away from the No. 24 team in the nation.
But it wasn’t just a treat for the younger Heels that missed out on experiencing a normal basketball season a year ago courtesy of COVID and its effects. Armando Bacot, who started as a freshman during the 2019-20 campaign and played before many full houses at the Dean Dome, identified this night as truly special.
“Definitely. I would say it was an unusual feeling, and a feeling I – and I’ve been here for three years – never really got to experience,” Bacot said, alluding to Carolina’s 14-19 record two years ago, which clearly impacted crowd energy at home games.
“Obviously, my freshman year was rough and last year with COVID. So, having a chance to win a big-time game like this versus a big-time university with all our fans here, sold out crowd, it was great.”
UNC averaged 15,852 for its first three games, though the Smith Center didn’t always appear that full, and the energy was different.
So, as Carolina turned a 29-29 game into a laugher, the noise in the building got louder, the energy more palpable, and the element of the sixth man had arrived, especially for a group that previously didn’t know that kind of reality.
“They want their own stories,” UNC Coach Hubert Davis said. “And I felt like tonight they have their own story, their own testimony of playing in front of a Smith Center crowd that I can't remember for the longest it hasn't been like this, almost two years.”
March 3, 2020, was the last time a crowd close to what was on hand Wednesday rocked the Smith Center. That night, the Tar Heels beat Wake Forest to improve to 13-17 before a crowd of 21,280. That was 636 days ago, and in some respects, forever ago for younger Tar Heels.
“I was super happy for the freshmen and sophomores who got to experience this and really get to see what Carolina basketball is about,” Bacot said.
And that absolutely was their first foray into such an atmosphere.
