quite honestly, like a dump. I wondered, is
this it? Could I see myself playing here?
“After I got there it just looked so comfortable. Like a gym, like it was supposed
to, like a place you can play ball all day.”
In the mid-1970s, Chancellor Ferebee
Taylor ’ 42 had declined to include requests
for a replacement for Carmichael in
UNC’s first capital campaign, wanting it to
be strictly academic. In the 1980s, the
entire cost of the Dean E. Smith Center
was raised privately.
Lightly recruited
Mike Jordan ’ 86
rattled the windows
for three of
Carmichael’s last
years as the men’s
team’s home. The
famous floor, after
being damaged by
water during a roof
fire, was sold off in
tiny pieces a decade
ago. The hot, noisy
arena will get a high-tech makeover.
DAN SEARS ’ 74
‘A tremendous atmosphere’
Sylvia Hatchell got a call in the middle
of the night in the winter of 1998. For
some time before, she had been “praying to
the Lord, ‘I need a new floor in Carmichael.’ Be careful what you pray for.”
There were fire trucks outside the arena
that was, at the time, the largest used exclusively by a women’s team in college basketball. The damage was minor, but the water
used on the fire ruined the original floor. It
would be sold in keepsake pieces, and
Hatchell, trying to build the 1994 national
champions into a perennial tournament
contender, would get her new one. Two
weeks later, a couple of the Tar Heel footprint logos from the corners of the floor
disappeared overnight; it was an inside job,
by someone who apparently knew the
floor was on the way out and the souvenirs
would be valuable.
Carmichael has been good to Hatchell
for more than 20 years. But the women’s
game has caught up to the men’s in more
ways than one — high school prospects
now compare the perks, and Carmichael
hasn’t kept pace.
“I haven’t brought a recruit in my office
in four years,” she said. “Others they see, like
Duke and State, are so much nicer. We go to
the locker room.” Specifically, the home
locker room, the same one the men used to
use. On the other side of the old wall in
Woollen, the visitors’ quarters are positively
medieval — basically untouched since 1937.
“Worst in the league,” Hatchell said. Any
amusement over the absence of air conditioning is lost on her; she’s mopped humidity off the playing floor in midwinter. The
players go to Kenan Stadium to lift weights.
But on game day, the Tar Heels can’t
complain much. They had a .810 winning
percentage through 2006-07. Over the
years, they have played some big games in
