Tom Talks

Wolfpack what are you thinking?

   The ACC finally found a way to stop Mike Copeland.

   With a second left in North Carolina's 93-76 victory against N.C. State Saturday, Copeland grabbed a pass and went to the basket for what would have been an easy dunk. But N.C. State was tired of North Carolina's easy dunks and Tyler Hansbrough's outside shooting. After making a nice little second half run, the Tar Heels dominated.

    So N.C. State's Ben McCauley hammered Copeland as Copeland went to the hoop. He stayed with the foul after the initial contact, and Copeland landed awkwardly. He jumped up ran at McCauley.

   Big Ben, what were you thinking? Copeland is far from the Tar Heel rotation as N.C. State is from the Tar Heels in the ACC standings. He's an end of the bench guy, a 6-7 senior who averages a point a game.

   Nobody wants to be dominated, but it wasn't N.C. State's afternoon. The Wolfpack had an opportunity to be tough when North Carolina's starters were on the court. They failed.

Super Bowl Monday

   I've written this before and I'll write it again because it makes too much sense not to.

   The day after the Super Bowl should be a holiday. We give ourselves to the NFL like we give ourselves to no other sport, as the television ratings attest. And then, Sunday night, it ends. And like that, we have to move on to whatever comes next.

   Why not give us one day to adjust? Why not declare Super Bowl Monday a national holiday? Why not give us 24 hours to recover from the game and from the season, to sleep in or play a little touch football or look at game highlights from September?

   Somebody will complain that the business of America is business and we should be out there producing and if we create a holiday for Super Bowl Sunday why not create a holiday for the day after the Daytona 500, NCAA men's basketball tournament and World Series.

   Let's be practical. We don't have to create holidays for the other sports. But we should at least consider it.

Deacs and Duke

   Driving back from the Wake Forest-Duke game in Winston-Salem last night, I thought of three things.

   The first was how tenaciously the Blue Devils played the second half of the second half. With 8:50 remaining, they trailed by 13. They couldn't stop the Wake Forest guards from penetrating or the big men from scoring. They turned the ball over and they looked uncharacteristically meek. The crowd fed off their team, the team off the crowd and I could see the Deacons winning by 20.

   But they didn't. You can't sustain success as long as Duke unless you go after the other guy. The Blue Devils did. They tied the score with 11 seconds remaining. When Gerald Henderson and Kyle Singler had to be the best players on the court, they were.

   The second thing I thought of was that, as well as Duke played late in the second half, the Deacons held them off. This was the No. 1 team in college basketball, a team that had won 10 straight. And the Deacons had the poise, after letting the 13-point lead slip, to come back and win.

   The third thing I thought was, as the clock ticked past midnight, satellite radio can be a beautiful thing.

Famous stars at Joel Coliseum

   That's a bad headline. I'm not accustomed to writing them. If you're a star, you're probably famous. Among the celebrities at the Wake Forest-Duke game Wedesday night were Bill Cowher, who becomes more coverted every season he's away from coaching, and Muggsy Bogues, the former Wake Forest and Charlotte Hornets star. We have never seen another player like Muggsy. We never will.

   The Deacons led by five at the half but Duke can't be too displeased. The Blue Devils shoot 28.2% from the field to Wake Forest's 47.8% and trailed by only two points until Jeff Teague hit a three-pointer before the buzzer.

   Duke made up the shooting disparity by taking 16 more field goal attempts than the home team. Duke had three fewer turnovers and eight more offensive rebounds.

   Al-Farouq Aminu is an amazing player. TV doesn't show all that he can do. At 6-9 an d 215 pounds, he glides. He glided to nine first-half points and six rebounds. He's 18. 

Ninety minutes before tip-off

   Wake Forest players already are on the court. Duke assistant coaches are standing at courtside. Mickie Krzyzewski is standing in the press room. Wake Forest students are in the bleachers. A black or gold T-shirt is on every seat. Each is extra large, each is made in El Salvador.

   People with credentials continue to rush into Joel Coliseum, none of them trying to hide their excitement.

   Even if you didn't know that the basketball team at Duke was No. 1 and the basketball team at Wake Forest was No. 6, you'd know you were at a big game. An electric hum fills the building.

   There is life outside the Super Bowl, and tonight it is here.

City of churches, angry fans and Julius Peppers

   I did a radio show out of New York. One of the hosts was in Charlotte last week and said he had never seen so many churches in one town. He asked me how a city that spends so much time in church could be so angry about Carolina's loss to Arizona.

   I asked him if he was aware of the Inquisition.

   One misconception going around is that Panther coaches are leaving because they failed to please Julius Peppers. Every coach that has left, with the exception of defensive coordinator Mike Trgovac, went to a better job or a better contract.

   I'm more convinced than ever that Peppers will never play for Carolina again. One Panther told me that after the Arizona game Peppers went to some of his teammates and told them how much he had enjoyed playing with them.

   At that moment, said the Panther, he knew Peppers was gone.

Alonzo Mourning, greatest Charlotte Hornet of them all?

   Charlotte had never seen an NBA player like Alonzo Mourning. The Charlotte Hornets drafted him in 1992. He was the second player taken. Shaquille O'Neal was first and Christian Laettner third.

   After a holdout, Mourning charged into the NBA. He shot, knocked people around, rebounded and played defense. He deferred to nobody, including teammates. Although at 6-10 he was undersized for a center, his defensive timing was impeccable and he was intense as anybody in the league.

    Mourning retired Thursday. He ended his career with the Miami Heat. He was different there. He raised a lot of money for charity. I read a story in Sports Illustrated by a writer I respect about what a great guy Alonzo was. I checked to make sure it was Mourning he was writing about.

   We did not see that Alonzo here. On a team full of great guys, Mourning was not one of them. He was surly, he was angry and the nastiness with which he played accompanied him wherever he went. There was little humanity to him.

   After a playoff loss to Chicago, Scottie Pippen of the Bulls walked into the Hornets locker room to congratulate the players.

   I can't print what Mourning told him. I had heard the words before, but never in that combination.

   The Hornets had an opportunity to be one of the league's best teams, but head coach Allan Bristow couldn't sell his stars -- Mourning, Larry Johnson and Kendall Gill -- on the concept. They were young and they were stars.

   Johnson and Muggsy Bogues and Dell Curry gave the team its style and its soul. it was as interesting a collection of personalities as I've seen. But it just didn't work.

   Finally, Mourning and owner George Shinn got in a war. Shinn wouldn't pay Mourning, who was in the final year of his contract, what he could make elsewhere and after a public battle the Hornets traded Mourning, LeRon Ellis and Pete Myers to Miami for Glen Rice, Khalid Reeves, Matt Geiger and a No. 1 draft pick.

   The Hornets had two first round picks in the next draft. They used the second of the picks on Tony Delk, the guard out of Kentucky. They used the other on Kobe Bryant. In a deal cut before the draft, the Hornets traded Bryant to Los Angeles for Vlade Divac.

   When I think of the all-time Charlotte Hornet greats, I think of Johnson and Muggsy Bogues and even Baron Davis. Had Mourning stayed, he, too, would have been one of the greats. But he was only a Hornet for three seasons.

   There is no way to think about those teams without imagining what could have been.

  

Inside the Lowe's Motor Speedway Media Tour

   The two non-racing words I heard most during the tour, and I never brought them up, were Julius Peppers.

   The pace car at the Coca-Cola 600 will be a Camry Hybrid. The cars have to pass a speed and handling test to qualify, and the Camry Hybrid did. Yet, I wonder if kids grow up dreaming about driving a Camry Hybrid the way we grew up dreaming about driving a Corvette? True, not everybody could grow up to drive a Corvette. You had to have a mustache. Do drivers of Camry Hybrids rev up the engine at street corners when they pull next to a Hyundai? I don't know. What I know is that if you're a pace car, you're a race car, no matter what anybody thinks.

   I talked to Justin Allgaier, who will drive a Dodge in the Nationwide Tour. Nice guy. Talented. But man, does he look young. When Jeff Gordon came up, I thought he looked too young to drive a car, let alone a race car, and Allgaier makes the young Jeff Gordon look old. If somebody asked me what Allgaier drives away from the track, I would have said a Schwinn.

   The NASCAR Media Tour hosted by Lowe's Motor Speedway reminded me how many classy and interesting people there are in racing. When you're standing there on a Monday afternoon minding your business, and Richard Petty walks up to say hello, you know it's going to be a good tour.

   And it was.

Richard Petty Motorsports Rules

   All right, I don't know if Richard Petty Motorsports rules. But I like RPM. And how happy would you be if the King's new team won a race?

   The car he made famous, No. 43, is red and white. It looks fast, sitting there in a hotel ballroom Monday during the NASCAR Spring Media Tour hosted by Lowe's Motor Speedway. Reed Sorensen will drive it.

   I wrote about Reed once after a long conversation in Daytona Beach. I figured we'd have a connection. But he was a worse interview than Raymond Felton of the Charlotte Bobcats. Just as baseball has the Mendoza line, I have the Felton line, If a guy is less quotable than Raymond, I talk to him only if I have to. I had to talk to Reed Monday.

   I love talking to Petty. He says he long ago promised his mother that his car would never bear the name of a company associated with alcohol. And even though the Gillett Evernham Motorsports team with which Petty's team merged has an association with Budweiser, Petty says there is no Budweiser sticker on the cars he made famous, 43 and 44.  

   I saw at least 66 stickers on the 43 car. None said Budweiser.

   "My mother would come back and haunt us all," Petty says.

   Petty says he had a list; if GEM did not agree to the contents, there would be no merger.

   One was that three employees -- Robbie Loomis, Dale Inman and Brian Moffitt -- join him.

   "I ain't coming if my people ain't coming," Petty says.

   The unveiling of the new team's logo was supposed to be dramatic, but Foster Gillett accidently knocked the cover off and there it was.

   Gillett turned almost as red as the 43 car.

   "You done good, buddy," Petty told him.

   Loomis says he isn't sure what his new title will be, but he'll help run the operation. He says Petty won't go to the drivers and insist they listen to his sage and learned advice. But he will offer suggestions. If they listen, fine, and if they don't fine.

   Why wouldn't they listen?

   Petty approached two of us before his news conference and began to talk. Soon there were 50 people around him. He is as gracious and as unpretentious as anybody that has slipped behind a steering wheel, and he always has something to say.

   We listened. And we were honored to have the opportunity.

  

  

  

So Long, Matt Carroll

   I don't claim to know Matt Carroll well. I don't know any of the Charlotte Bobcats well. But when we talked, he was always interesting. He's funny, smart and unpretentious, and he has something to say. He reminds me, in that way, of Jared Dudley, whom the Bobcats traded to Phoenix.

   Carroll is gone now, too. The Bobcats traded Carroll and Ryan Hollins to Dallas today for DeSagana Diop. Carroll was one of many at shooting guard, or wing. His skills are similar to Adam Morrison's.

   The Bobcats don't have anybody that plays Diop's position. His position is Giant Guy That Takes Up Space. Diop is 7-0 and weighs 280 pounds. When he's in the game, Emeka Okafor, a center in a forward's body, no longer will have to guard players that are taller and bigger than he is.

   Carroll hit some big shots for the Bobcats, and he hustled, and he knew the game. But he was expendable. And so far, every move the Bobcats have made since Larry Brown has become coach has worked, or will work.

    Every team needs a Giant Guy That Takes Up Space.It's a position that has been lacking in this town since Stuart Gray left the Charlotte Hornets. The Bobcats finally have one of their own.