All posts by Shawn Krest

If you thought Roy Williams was cranky this week, spend a few minutes with Big John Thompson.

The former Georgetown coach held court at the Basketball Hall of Fame announcement, talking about his former player, Allen Iverson, who was selected for the Hall. In typical Thompson fashion, he ranged through topics far and wide and didn’t pull any punches.

“Coach,” said one reporter, “Rollie Massamino said …”

That was as far as he got. “Rollie is full of s**t,” Thompson answered.

Another reporter began a question by mentioning that Thompson was known for coaching big men.

“Yeah,” Thompson interrupted. “Well that’s a bunch of bulls**t too. That’s why Patrick (Ewing) can’t get a job. That’s what happens to guys that are tall. When you’re over 6-10, people say you’re just a big man coach. You get that label. The perception is that the big guys are not the guys that are thinking on the basketball court. Forget about race, that’s the perception. How many big guys are in the Hall of Fame for coaching? Go count them. I told Ralph Sampson and Patrick, ‘If you get a job, do not get the label of big man coach.’ That’s why I used to kick the a** of my guards in practice. You’re going to get all the jobs anyway.”

Thompson credited former UNC coach Dean Smith for helping to get athletic directors to look past the bias against big men, as well as the bias against African Americans. Smith was neither, but he was willing to speak out on Thompson’s behalf. “He paved the way for me,” Thompson said.

Then it was back to grumpy John as he discussed Iverson.

“He wasn’t perfect,” Thompson said of the shooting guard’s stormy career, on and off the court. “But I knew a lot of perfect people who weren’t worth a God d**m on the basketball court. His shortcomings were more on display than anyone else’s, while most of us like to camouflage a lot of ours.”

“You see kids, particularly black kids, with their hats on backwards and holes in their shoes and all that s**t, trying to make believe like they’re from the ghetto,” Thompson said. “When all the time, their parents are rich as hell. It works, because people see a black kid and assume he’s poor. That’s bulls**t. Allen was the real thing. He came from abject poverty.”

Iverson’s willingness to stand alone, despite the criticism, is something that gained Thompson’s respect, perhaps because the old coach sees a lot of himself in the player.

“That’s the thing that you like about him and hate about him at the same time,” he said. “He’s not somebody who cares a lot about getting validated. He came with the braids and the tattoos. He really changed sports. Now if you want to be different, you have to put on a coat and tie.”

Thompson was asked to preview tonight’s national championship game, and he responded with good-spirited gruffness.

“I’m mad at both teams, to tell you the truth,” he said. “Everybody asks me about Villanova (in 1985) all the time, but hell, we went there three times. Carolina beat us one time in the (1982) final game and Villanova beat us in the other one. So I tell people I hope both of them lose.”

Thompson finally gave a breakdown of the Wildcats and Tar Heels, from a coaching perspective.

“Both of those guys are my friends,” he said of Nova’s Jay Wright and Carolina’s Roy Williams. “Jay, I envy the hell out of Jay. I can’t understand how a guy coaches like that and comes away looking as good as he does. He’s all perfect and neat.”

“He does a very good job with those kids,” Thompson continued on Wright. “Ideally, what you want to see in a team, as a coach, he has done. When you see those kids play, they play with one another.”

Thompson is equally impressed with Williams, for reasons that are polar opposite of his respect for Wright.

“What both of these guys have done is phenomenal in different ways,” he said. “You look at that Villanova team, and you’ve got to ask how many of those guys are pros?”

Always a coach, Thompson waits for an answer. “None,” is ventured forth.

“That’s the phenomenal thing that Jay has done,” he said. “Now, you look at the Carolina team, and you ask how many of THOSE guys are going to be pros. (A lot.) And you’ve got to say that THAT’S phenomenal.”

“Talented people want to express themselves individually,” Thompson said of Carolina. “People will look at Carolina’s team and say, ‘Well, hell, I could coach that talent.’ That’s bulls**t. Ask the pros. They’ve got great players on pro teams, but they can’t get them to play as a cohesive unit. So what Roy has done to get that kind of player to play unselfishly, to give up something, is phenomenal.”

So who wins? The good college players who play as a team or the future pros who play as a team?

“I thought at the beginning, that Carolina was going to crush them and everybody they played,” Thompson said. “You look at them and say, ‘They’re going to crush them.’ But now, Villanova is scaring everybody. They’re the guys you look at and say, ‘Why the hell are they still playing like that?’ That’s a tribute to those kids. They play tough, and they play hard.”

Thompson never actually gave a prediction for the game, but by the time that oversight sinks in, he’s off on another topic.

“Today, if a kid gets 30 points, even if his team lost, that kid is happy. You see him doing that little dance and smacking their hands. They can’t learn a play, but they can do all those handshakes…”

The first weekend in April was a big one for the city of Tomball, Texas as the entire city dropped everything for one big event.

After all, the German Fest only happens once a year.

“There’s a downtown,” UNC sophomore swing man Justin Jackson said of his hometown, “but you can snap your fingers, and you’re already through it.”

Not on German Fest weekend. The traffic was lined up 10 deep as pedestrians drifted across Farm to Market Road.

One thing is clear, despite the easy narrative, Justin Jackson is not returning to his hometown for the Final Four. Calling Tomball a part of Houston is like saying someone from Siler City, Mebane or Garner is playing in his hometown at the Dean Dome.

Tomball, who boasts its population of 10,753 on the sign at the town limits—along with a “take THAT, Flint” sign touting its “Superior Public Water System”—is much farther from Houston than the odometer indicates.

This quiet unassuming town produced a player who matches its personality, at least off the court. He’s earnest and thoughtful, speaking in a slow, deep drawl that almost sounds like a Brooklyn accent at times.

Much like his play on the court in his two years at Carolina, each of which featured a prolonged shooting slump early in the season, Jackson sometimes overthinks things in interviews, trying too hard to be perfect when answering questions.

“It’s a little city,” Jackson says of his home town, “but it’s not too big.”

“I’ve been to a Texans game,” he says of his history at NRG Stadium. “Have I been to a Texans game? I think I might’ve been to one Texans game.”

“I’ve made that trek plenty of times,” Jackson says of going to Houston. “My home-school team—which I’m sure that’ll stir up a whole lot of jokes—had to practice at a high school toward downtown Houston. So yeah. Obviously, Houston’s huge anyway, so you’ve got to drive a distance to go anywhere.”

Nothing about Tomball is huge, but there’s still plenty of driving, as cars fill every inch of grass and dirt surrounding the main road through town. Everyone has come to German Fest.

With a little patience, a parking spot could be found in the gravel next to the railroad tracks. Back in the day, Tomball was known for its railroad station. The location and landscape of the town—close to the coast, not too hilly—made it an ideal spot for a train stop.

While BNSF freight trains still run through Tomball from time to time, it appears that the railroad has faded as the backbone for the local economy over the last 100 years.

Driving the 35 miles from downtown Houston to Tomball, an outsider entering from the east, on Farm to Market Road literally approaches town on the wrong side of the tracks. Boarded up stores and restaurants litter both sides of the highway, as well as plenty of industrial warehouses with “For Lease” signs out front.

Inside Tomball town limits, however, things pick up. Signs welcoming visitors to Old Town Tomball neighbor the train tracks on both sides of the street, and the area is a thriving cluster of antique shops, and stores whose names include “vintage” or “heritage”.

There’s Ricca’s Shoes and Boots, and Charlotte’s Saddlery (which features both English and Western Tack).

The group of stores in a plaza called Relics by the Railroad include a tea room (called The Whistle Stop, of course), a group of gift stores and something called the Burlap Ranch.

It’s here, in this three-block section of town that relies on a nostalgia-based economy, that the German Fest is located. There are rides for the kids, a polka band and plenty of brats and kraut at a variety of German food booths (including one called Schnitzels and Giggles).

Ignoring the people in lederhosen, one thing becomes apparent from the people attending German Fest. There are plenty of Astros and Texans gear. Texas A&M is well represented on the hats and shirts of attendees, but there’s nothing representing the college choice of town’s most-famous son.

After a prolonged hunt, one man, at a booth selling baked goods, is wearing a Carolina t-shirt. It turns out he’s a vendor who came to Tomball’s German Fest from another part of Texas. He wore the shirt thinking it would pander to the locals.

There are no Carolina signs in local shop windows, no restaurants advertising viewing parties for UNC’s Final Four games.

“Honestly I don’t think many people know who I am, which I don’t really mind,” Jackson said earlier in the week. “Being home schooled, I think that closed me off a little bit. But who knows? Maybe people know me now.”

Leaving Old Town Tomball for Tomball proper, the boutiques give way to a more town-like group of local businesses.

The letter T must take up a majority of the Tomball yellow pages, because it seems that every locally-owned store features the town name. There’s Tomball Pet Resort and Tomball Acupuncture.  Tomball Moving and Storage, as well as Tomball Pool and Spa.

The fixation on the town name is interesting, since it’s based on a typo. Originally named Peck, the city was renamed in honor of local congressman Tom Ball in 1907. At some point, two words became one, and the name stuck.

One store has a rack of phone books out front, free for the taking. It’s the type of oddity that is common to small towns. Someone thought it was a good idea at some point, and we’ve done it that way ever since.

It’s a trusting and naïve gesture, one that likely seems perfectly normal to people that live in Tomball. Jackson, who got duped out of his game jersey in Washington D.C. prior to an ACC Tournament start, wouldn’t bat an eye.

The directory gives the answer to one question—there are 112 businesses and organizations in town that begin with the word Tomball.

Traveling west on Farm to Market Road, the local businesses are replaced by chains. Jackson said that his one hope in returning to Houston was that the team would get to eat at Whataburger, a Texas chain restaurant, at some point during the week. As of Saturday’s national semifinals postgame, the Tar Heels hadn’t made it there.

Fields of longhorn cattle signify that Tomball has passed, but a few miles down the road, a right turn leads into a housing development. People are out mowing their lawns, and joggers wave at strangers in passing cars.

Every house seems to have a flagpole, and the Lone Star flag is below Old Glory on each. Ducks wander near a pond that looks manmade.

One house stands out from the rest. It’s not because of the full-size basketball court in the back. That’s not visible from the road. No, the place stands out, because it has the only acknowledgement that someone from town is playing in the Final Four on German Fest weekend.

A blue banner hands above the front porch, and a pair of Tar Heel signs adorn the front door of the Jackson house—Jackson’s alma mater.

He won’t get to see it this week.

“It’s not going back home, it’s going to the Final Four to play basketball,” coach Roy Williams said when asked about Jackson’s homecoming before leaving Chapel Hill.

“I don’t think I’m going to make it up there,” Jackson said, plain-spoken and straightforward as always–Tomball to the core. “We’ve got Final Four stuff.”

Guns n Roses just announced the dates and venues of their reunion tour, and the list includes NRG Stadium in Houston.

It’s the first time that the full lineup of GnR will play together on tour since the early 1990s. The final leg of that tour, more than 20 years ago, included the Dean Smith Center in Chapel Hill.

When Axl, Slash and the gang take the stage at NRG on August 5, they’ll become just the second act to sing at both the Dean Dome and the home of the Houston Texans.

The first? UNC men’s soccer player Nico Melo.

Melo is part of a quartet of student athletes—one from each school playing in the Final Four—who will sing the national anthem before the national semifinals on Saturday night.

Hard as it is to believe, this will be just the second time Melo has sung in public.

“I’ve been singing by myself a lot,” Melo said. “Mostly in the shower, but never in front of audiences.”

His first public performance was April 20 of last year, when he sang at the Rammy’s.

“It’s an awards show they have for student athletes at Carolina,” he explained. With David October, a teammate on the UNC soccer team, playing keyboards, Melo sat on a stool on the Dean Dome playing ourt and belted out John Legend’s Ordinary People in a performance that earned rave reviews.

We ? David October and Nico Melo!

— UNC RAMMYS (@The_RAMMYS) April 21, 2015

October earned an invitation to join a band on the spot. Melo had to wait a year to get his reward for bringing down the house at the Rammy’s.

The NCAA has a tradition of inviting athletes from each Final Four school to sing the anthem, so this March, each school still in the running for a berth in Houston was asked to submit its candidate.

“They decided to send me,” Melo said, “because of last year’s performance at the Rammy’s.”

That was it. No contest among aspiring singers in the different Tar Heel sports programs. In fact, Melo didn’t even know he was the choice until after the Tar Heels cut down the nets in Philadelphia last Sunday.

“I had no idea,” he said. “I got calls from a couple people asking me, ‘Are you going to do it?’ I was like, ‘Do what?’ I thought they were asking if I was going to do the Rammy’s again.”

“No,” he recalled his friends saying, “the Final Four! That’s how I found out. That was the day after we made it, so … Monday?”

In other words, five days ago. Needless to say, it’s been a hectic week for the redshirt senior midfielder.

“It’s been insane,” he said. “I’ve gotten to see everything—how it’s all set up here. It’s been an awesome awesome experience.”

Melo’s parents will be watching him from home. His sister, Natalie, who played on the Columbia University women’s team, is joining him in Houston for the performance.

Melo will be performing with Syracuse men’s track athlete Chevis Armstead II, Villanova women’s basketball player Karlie Crispin and Oklahoma volleyball player Madison Ward. The group met on Thursday and got to work.

“We’ve been rehearsing for the last three days,” Melo said. “We’re ready. We’re definitely ready.”

Obviously, this will be the biggest audience anyone in the group has performed before. “There were maybe 2,000 people at the Rammy’s,” Melo said. “This has been totally multiplied, today.”

Despite that, Melo is confident that he’ll be able to handle the nerves. “I think the nerves are gone,” he said. “We’ve been practicing. We sound great. We’ll be fine.”

Plus, he’s used to performing in front of crowds. However, he’s not sure that performing as an athlete will prepare him for facing the crowd tonight.

“I’m not saying it’ll be harder. I’ll say different,” he said. “I’ve done soccer publicly at a pretty high level, in front of a lot of people, but this is singing. It’s personal to me.”

“It’s definitely going to be fun,” he added.