Barry Jacobs

Contests this week and last matching teams from the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association garnered scant notice beyond routine game accounts. These were mere exhibitions, after all, tune-ups for ACC schools from Division I hosting CIAA opponents from Division II, a level where athletics commands fewer resources and a lower profile. […]

Familiar territoryUNC-Chapel Hill Those who see Republican control of the federal government stretching to an endless horizon need only recall the example of North Carolina’s Tar Heels, once synonymous with sustained excellence and a sense of inevitable success in men’s basketball. Following decades of national prominence and primacy in the ACC, UNC fell on hard […]

Believe me, I know the drill. Prejudice is corrosive, divisive, blinding and demeaning. A good person fights prejudice anytime it rears its ugly head, whether in the public realm or the depths of one’s heart. To harbor prejudice is to be lessened as a human being and should be a source of embarrassment, consternation, shame. […]

Roy Williams chose his career path in tenth grade, impressed by the way his basketball coach at Asheville’s T.C. Roberson High helped players feel good about themselves. So, despite coming from a financially strapped family supported by a divorced mother working several jobs, Williams had the audacity to turn down eight scholarship offers, including an […]

A strike in pre-emptive fashion to stave off threats more speculative than real. Operating behind a cloak of uncommon secrecy. Further concentrating wealth in the hands of a few. Extending influence in new directions over the fervent protests of outsiders and internal critics alike. Placing financial considerations ahead of long-espoused principles. Creating hard feelings and […]

Sports, particularly the men’s college variety, has long been integral to our region’s common language, its contests, rivalries and lore a welcome link with a tradition-rich past. That familiarity meant we were hardly innocents, recognizing sports’ wide reach and engaging, maddening and enduring complexities. Yet, 20 years after The Independent was born, it’s difficult to […]

She was a player and he was an assistant coach when basketball first brought them together at Saginaw Valley State University in Michigan. They became friends, then went their separate ways for almost a decade, until she noticed in USA Today that he’d been hired as head men’s basketball coach at a nearby school. Four […]