By Adam Lucas
Georgetown assistant coach Jeff Battle didn’t hesitate.
An hour before the game, Battle was asked in a Tar Heel Sports Network interview what stood out to him most about this year’s Carolina team. Battle knows the Tar Heels and knows the Atlantic Coast Conference. He spent over a decade in the league as an assistant coach with Wake Forest from 2001-14. So he understands what makes a quality Carolina club.
And this year’s identifying Carolina characteristic?
“Their size,” he said immediately.
Then the Tar Heels went out and proved it in an 81-61 victory over the Hoyas, the most decisive defeat a solid Georgetown team has absorbed this year. If it wasn’t Caleb Wilson (20 points and 14 rebounds) it was Henri Veesaar (18 points and 15 rebounds).
They’re very good separately. But they’re especially devastating together. Stop Wilson and Veesaar is going to get the rebound. Force Veesaar to give up the ball and it might be to Wilson, the nation’s leading dunker (28 so far this year) who is likely to try and cram the ball through the rim. Carolina played 80 minutes of basketball this week in going 2-0 against Kentucky and Georgetown. At least one of Wilson or Veesaar was on the court for 79:01 of those 80 minutes.
A play early in the second half perfectly illustrated Wilson’s approach. With three minutes gone in the half, he took the ball strong against Georgetown Julius Halaifonua. There appeared to be some contact that wasn’t called, but it didn’t matter. Wilson simply regathered the ball, elevated again, and tried to dunk it again. This time, Halaifonua was whistled for the foul, and Wilson hit a pair of free throws (he was 6-for-6 from the line on Sunday and now is converting 77.1 percent of his free throws this season).
It’s one thing to have the mental toughness to not pause to complain about the uncalled contact or sulk after seeing your dunk attempt blocked. It’s also one thing to have the physical ability to leap, return to earth, and then leap again so quickly.
It’s unique to have them both, and that’s Caleb Wilson.
Veesaar, meanwhile, played a very physical game against a stout Hoya club. As advertised, he’s capable of stepping outside the three-point line and hitting from the perimeter; he hit two three-pointers on Sunday. More unexpected has been his willingness to compete inside the paint. This is a game that will serve Carolina well when they inevitably run up against another opponent that tries to, as Hubert Davis frequently says, hit first.
“We had one bad game this year against Michigan State when we got punked,” Veesaar said on the THSN. “Besides that, we have been the tougher team this year. And with the talent we have, if you’re the tougher team, you’re going to win a lot of games.”
Especially when you have a duo posting numbers that put them in historic company. When both players met or exceeded 18 points and 14 rebounds, it was the second time since 1958 a UNC duo had accomplished that feat. The only other pairing was Sean May and Marvin Williams in the 2005 NCAA Tournament.
On a day when the Tar Heels held a throwback game, featuring vintage Tar Heel and Hoya logos on the scoreboards and dot matrix-style graphics for the game clock and individual stats on the video board, the inside-first dominance was a very fitting salute to Carolina teams of the past. Both Roy Williams and Dean Smith would have appreciated this performance, and that’s what has been attracting fans to Carolina basketball for decades.
Fans like Andy and Aidyn Fisher, who could be found in section 109 on Sunday afternoon. They were perhaps the most unlikely spectators in the crowd of 18,583. The father-son duo were attending their first UNC game after falling in love with the Tar Heels from their hometown of Scranton, North Dakota. And maybe you’ve never heard of Scranton, but it sounds like a pretty great place: “There’s a huge contingent of anti-Duke fans in Scranton,” according to Andy.
“Where we are in North Dakota, ACC basketball is where it’s at,” he said. “These are the games you want to watch. The history, the schools, all of that. It’s magnetic. We’re willing to pay for the plane tickets and hotels and game tickets to get down here for something you have in your backyard every day.”
Aidyn is graduating from high school this year, so his father decided it was time for a once in a lifetime trip: they drove three hours from Scranton to Bismarck, then flew to Minneapolis (the flight was delayed), then flew to RDU (delayed again). And they loved every second of it. A friendly usher named Ken spotted them at the back of section 109 and moved them down to a pair of empty seats halfway down the lower level. From there, they lived a Tar Heel dream—they met Laura Montross (“literally the nicest lady in the world,” according to Andy), got a personal visit from national champion Marcus Ginyard, who heard about their journey and wanted to say hello, and then were shocked again when Ken volunteered to drive them back to their airport hotel.
“The people here have been amazing,” Andy said. “The friendliness of the people has been insane. It’s made us want to make this pilgrimage once a year so we can soak it all in.”
That’s exactly the way it’s supposed to be for Carolina Basketball; exactly the way it has been for much of the program’s existence. As much as college sports can occasionally be conflicting in 2025, it was rather refreshing to find a Sunday afternoon that went exactly according to script: roll out the blue carpet for the visitors. Throw the ball inside. Dunk a few times, wear down an opponent, get a win, make a few new fans.
And maybe even treat some old ones. Long after Sunday’s game was over, Seth Trimble was still taking pictures at midcourt of the Smith Center. One of the fans in a Trimble jersey was Jeff Butterfield, a longtime assistant facility foreman at Menomonee Falls High. Why had he made the journey from Wisconsin? Because Seth and the Trimble family flew him down as a way to thank him for all the times he opened the gym early in the morning and on weekends for Seth to get some shots up on a cold Wisconsin day. “I think some of those times I probably wasn’t supposed to open the gym for him,” said Butterfield (friends call him Butter). “But he was such a hard worker that I really wanted to help him.”
This weekend was the payoff.
“This whole weekend has been an unbelievable experience,” said Butterfield, who brought his son, Fabian. “Everyone is so warm and welcoming. The Dean Dome is an iconic place. The city of Chapel Hill is unbelievable.”
Sometimes college sports has problems and sometimes even Carolina Basketball has problems. But because of the passion for the program held by some people you know on sight and some you don’t, Sunday felt like a tiny little window into what it’s supposed to be.
“People here may not realize it because they see it every day,” said Andy Fisher as he tried to reconfigure his Monday morning flight back to North Dakota through some dicey weather. “But the culture of UNC basketball is phenomenal. It makes you want to be part of it as much as you possibly can.”
