UNC Basketball Museum

Today, I visited the recently opened Carolina Basketball Museum, just a couple buildings away from the Dean Dome. It's a very fancy place with all sorts of memorabilia and highlights. Admittedly, parts are a bit cheesy, but it's definitely the first museum to get me teary-eyed reliving all my favorite plays over the years. It was funny to watch other people watching highlights too, and see their reactions to games played over a decade ago, like the guy shouting, "Oh come on, Montross, get that ball!"

Overall, it's a fun place. As my sister said, "This is first time I've actually enjoyed going to a museum!"

For me, one surreal part of the experience was watching footage from the 2005 championship game. I completely missed this game and most of the 2005 season while overseas, so I had followed their progress from game recaps, but had never seen the highlights before. For the first time, I got to see Felton's key steal and free throws that sealed the game, as well as some other highlights. I couldn't believe that I had really never seen any of that before. Almost every Carolina fan except for me has vivid memories of that game and the celebration afterwards, but all I remember is waking up the next day and reading the espn.com recap and box score and then being really happy and smiling hard. I was particularly proud of Sean May's stats and how this final game consummated his development into a complete beast. But it was a little awkward because I couldn't even shout or get too excited in my room because no one else even knew what college hoops were. I tried to explain how happy I was to my apartment mates, but they were like "Uh, good for you!...I guess." Although I was very happy about the championship, I feel like I missed what a lot of my fellow UNC students consider their favorite college memory.

Besides my memories from reading espn.com the day afterward, most of my happy memories come from reading the Daily Tar Heel front page spread, which was posted on the wall of my psych lab, about a year after the game. I remember being unusually fascinated by the paper, like the Sean May fist pumping photo where it looks like his jersey in in his mouth, and the Felton pullout quote about his key steal and free throws. It was all a little foreign, but I could just happily stare at that poster completely fascinated by the emotions on the faces of the players and coaches.

This comparison is pretty extreme, but it'd kind of be like going into a coma in 1968, then waking up in 1973, and completely missing all of the lunar landings. You read about it and see pictures of joyous people celebrating and astronauts with moon rocks. Then a few years later, you happen to see actual footage of the guys bouncing on the moon and people celebrating, and you think, "Wow, that's what it was like!" followed by "...too bad I totally missed it. I wonder if it'll happen again sometime so I can celebrate too..."

Let's hope for the best!