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Lucas: The Wait

By Adam Lucas

There was a time that even Jerry Stackhouse had to wait.

You know Stackhouse primarily as the reverse dunking, Cameron strutting, tomahawk blasting superstar of his sophomore season, of course. But there is another version—the freshman from the 1993-94 season, the player who started exactly one out of Carolina's 35 games that season and averaged approximately the same minutes per game as Dante Calabria.

Dean Smith was the head coach of that Tar Heel team, and while today he's considered untouchable, let me tell you a little secret—in those days, it had been several months since Carolina last won a national championship, and so the Tar Heel fan world was very concerned about Smith's use of timeouts, and some perplexing ACC losses, and especially how many (or how few) minutes he was giving to the freshmen.