The Durham Herald-Sun
fdascenzo@heraldsun.com
Mar 5, 2007 : 12:54 am ET
CHAPEL HILL -- It was a bloody good Sunday for North Carolina at the Smith Center, honest it was.
With 14.5 seconds remaining in its game with Duke, the Tar Heels were in a comfort zone, on cruise control. They were going to lock up the No. 1 seed in this week's ACC Tournament in Tampa, and they could celebrate more than one happy occasion, the obvious being an 86-72 win over the Blue Devils.
And then it happened. Duke freshman sub Steve Johnson, whose playing time in the previous 30 games was all of four minutes, got behind North Carolina's considerably more famous Tyler Hansbrough, and Duke freshman Gerald Henderson entered the scene and hammered a right elbow into the nose of Hansbrough and down went the Tar Heels forward.
The glaring eyes of 21,750 people were on Hansbrough's sprawling body, and then they were glued to his nose. Blood dripped from both nostrils, and Hansbrough's stare at Henderson may as well have driven a switchblade into anyone who'd arrived wanting Duke to win.
To best review this, consider that Henderson, a 6-4 guard and close friends with UNC's freshman guard Wayne Ellington, is a good kid and he said his intent was not to do any harm. But the replays of the incident are ugly. According to an official statement from officials Les Jones, Karl Hess and Jamie Luckie, the elbow-to-nose was ruled a flagrant foul for combative and confrontational action.
"It is ruled a fight," said an official statement that was given to the media afterwards. "By rule, it is an automatic ejection. By NCAA rule, he [Henderson] must sit out the next game."
The level of intensity in a game already over except for the final score, picked up so dramatically it was as if they'd set an alarm off to immediately evacuate the place.
The Duke-North Carolina basketball rivalry is chock full of high-tension drama dating from Art Heyman's tempestuous days in the 1960s through Dean Smith's tirade at the scorer's table at Cameron Indoor Stadium in the 1970s to Matt Doherty shouting something unprintable in a family newspaper to Duke assistant Chris Collins in 2003.
These two programs may respect each other, but whether they like each other is debated 365 days a year. And just as this one seemed to be just another -- well, ho-hum UNC is better and won by 14 points -- game, there was Henderson hitting Hansbrough ... and that play became the theme of the day.
Henderson was escorted off the floor by Duke's entire staff of assistant coaches. When the game ended, Mike Krzyzewski was escorted off by three police officers and five Smith Center security guards to thunderous boos.
Inside the UNC locker room, Hansbrough had nasal packets stuck into his nostrils, drying the blood. His white jersey No. 50 had three noteworthy colors -- white, light blue and plenty of red.
"He looked at me and said, 'I'm cool,' which, if you know Tyler, is how he is because he's tough," teammate Danny Green said. "His nose is a bit stiff. I think he felt like he was hit intentionally in the face, and that's probably what went through his mind."
Henderson's arm was cocked, the obvious reason for the ruling. Truth is, both had statistics that normally would lead this storyline -- Hansbrough with game-highs of 26 points and 17 rebounds and Henderson, who came in off Duke's bench and ignited a sluggish start with a team-high 21 points.
Why Hansbrough and Henderson were on the court with 14.5 seconds of mop-up time is a coaching choice.
And this just in -- coaches determine who plays and when.
"Tyler's not bothered by bumps or bruises," UNC's Reyshawn Terry said. "We knew, as a team, we had to keep our composure and just let the coaches handle it."
Hansbrough, unavailable after the game, gets banged around under the boards as much as, if not more than, any player in the ACC. He attempted a game-high nine free throws, giving him 259 on the season and 512 in his less-than-two-year career. Hansbrough hitting the deck after this blow didn't seem to surprise some of his teammates.
"I knew he was going to get up because that's the way he is; he's so tough," Brandan Wright said. "I didn't see it, but I thought Tyler would get up quickly, which he did."
Roy Williams slightly bristled when told Krzyzewski hinted the starters shouldn't have been in the game with 14.5 seconds remaining.
"Both teams had 'em in," Williams said.
Williams had sub Michael Copeland at the scorer's table, hoping to finally get Hansbrough out of the game.
"It's not my fault that Tyler got the offensive rebound and somebody else missed the sucker," Williams said. "But that is enough said about that junk."
The temperature, especially for a Duke-UNC game, was mild until the elbow-to-nose.
It's the kind of ugly incident that so often can overshadow important sequences in a game like this. For example, Duke had closed the gap to 53-50 on a Henderson field goal with 11:50 left, but a 3-pointer by Marcus Ginyard pushed the lead to 56-50. Duke never recovered, mostly because of UNC's depth and shot blocking and an obvious desire to play well in its final home game of the season.
As Krzyzewski said, North Carolina is a better team and the Heels have proven it twice this season.
"We didn't think they were going to be able to stop us on the perimeter," Ginyard said. "That gave our guards confidence to penetrate and make bigtime plays."
How true. The Tar Heels had 18 assists, four more than in their Feb. 7 win in Durham, and turned the ball over 11 times, four fewer than the Blue Devils.
But it's not the numbers that will be remembered in this one, it's one sore and bloody nose.
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