University of North Carolina Athletics

HONOLULU – Assistant coach Jeff Lebo walks down the left aisle of the team plane, holding a Tupperware container full of chocolate chip cookies.


The University of North Carolina basketball team is about 30 minutes into an 11-hour flight from RDU to Honolulu on Wednesday. Since it is a huge aircraft, there is plenty of space for the team travel group to spread out.


And here comes Lebo with his cookies.


“I made that!” he says happily.


He didn’t do these. Leslie Davis made them. But Lebo took on the task of distributing them. Since there are a lot of takers, it’s not a demanding job that gives him time to watch movies the rest of the flight.


Carolina won the first leg of that trip Friday night, defeating Hawai’i 87-69. The plot was very familiar; were the three best scorers RJ Davis (18), Elliot Cadeau (17 points in 23 minutes with a foul limit) and Seth Trimble (13 points). This is the fourth straight game in which the entire trio has reached double figures.


It wasn’t a perfect performance. The Tar Heels outrebounded 40-27 and gave up 14 second-chance points while scoring just two points. After reaching out to his team, Hubert Davis I looked through the stats sheet. “Did we overtake them in the second half?” he asked. At halftime, when the Heels were -9, rebounding had been a point of discussion.


When the Heels were told they had come from four boards down in the second half, he was briefly upset, but was comforted by the fact that his team allowed just two second-chance points in the final 20 minutes. “This is all an effort,” he said on the Tar Heel Sports Network, “and you can’t convince me otherwise.”


On a trip like this, expense is a delicate, intangible factor. It is physically impossible to play at peak performance the four games in six days that this trip requires. But the opponent is also so strong that rolling out leads to a quick defeat.


Although there were many employee families on the trip, the trip was very business-like. The players’ section of the plane – first class for the players, as it was in the Dean Smith era, with coaches directly behind them or in an exit row for the larger staff Sean May or Pat Sullivan– was almost completely dark and quiet for the entire flight. Once you’re unplugged from Snapchat and Instagram, you’ll be surprised at how much college students can sleep (and/or watch Netflix).


But for the rest of the group, the day of the trip was all about preparation. May watched the film on his VR headset. Sullivan always has a film session going on. Lebo, Brad Frederick And Marcus Paige were reviewing a number of upcoming scouting reports; Lebo woke up before 6 a.m. Friday to watch LaSalle play the University of Illinois-Chicago. The Tar Heels don’t play the Explorers for another three weeks.


There is no end to basketball in Carolina.


But it also brings you into contact with some remarkable people. One of the flight attendants on Wednesday’s flight was a two-time Olympic fencing champion from the Soviet Union. It was a nice reminder that no matter how important your game seems today, it’s entirely possible that people won’t know you the same in a few decades.


However, it still seems like a very big deal if the Tar Heels get anywhere. The first fan to walk through the doors of the Stan Sheriff Center on Friday night was wearing a Tyler Hansbrough jersey. Hawaii had declared a white-out, but a significant number of Carolina fans caused a noticeable bruise in the white-out. In the 90 minutes before the game, they stood on the sidelines, taking close-up photos and waving signs they had made for the players.


Even in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Carolina basketball is a really big deal – and Friday was a very important night for Hawaii fans who live far from Chapel Hill but still put up with the time difference and hassle of streaming to watch them follow favorite team.


After the Carolina win, they lined up in several rows behind the team bus and cheered as every player and coach left the arena. Sometimes the Tar Heels stay in the locker room and then spend extended periods of time with the friends and family who traveled to the game. With a flight to Maui that morning, this wasn’t one of those nights.


“We have a quick turnaround,” Davis reminded his team. “Let’s move on.”

The journey continues.