When they dreamed about this — and oh, did they long for it — the arena was not empty.

The pep band played "Sweet Caroline" and Dickie V ran around and three-pointers fell in front of the students packed on the metal risers. Coach Roy Williams wore his plaid blazer and called their names and they hit the game-winning shot. The students carried them all across the floor like they did when Marvin Williams beat Duke in 2005. That bucket made SportsCenter's Top 10 and caused NBA scouts to pick up the phone. The moment became part of Carolina history, something people would tell their kids about for years to come.

It was awesome, baby!

That is not the reality of this moment, though, on a cold Sunday afternoon in November.

There are 21,750 seats inside the Dean E. Smith Center, what students now call the Dean Dome and named after legendary former coach Dean Smith, and today the sea of Carolina blue comes not from T-shirts and oxford cloth button-downs, but from empty chairs. Sixty-seven fans are here to watch the University of North Carolina's junior varsity basketball team defend against the Falcons from Pfeiffer University, a D II college with only about 2,000 students, a tenth of the number enrolled at Carolina. Pfeiffer's hardly a powerhouse: The school has won but a single NCAA championship — in field hockey.

In the tunnel on his way to the locker room before the game, UNC coach Hubert Davis, the former ESPN commentator who played varsity ball here from 1988-92, setting the team's career three-point percentage record before playing a dozen years in the NBA, walks toward the JV locker room with his 12-year-old son, Elijah. He asks his father about Pfeiffer's offense.

There is no chance of winning a championship — there's no championship to win — or getting much recognition at all, really.

"I don't know anything about them," Davis says. "Never seen ‘em play. I just now found out where Pfeiffer is." (The main campus is in Misenheimer, N.C., southwest of Chapel Hill, about two-thirds of the way to Charlotte.)

UNC is the only ACC school that keeps a junior varsity basketball team — a holdover from the days before the NCAA allowed freshmen to play varsity ball. Today, the NCAA doesn't even keep track of JV programs. UNC's players aren't on scholarship; its opponents aren't scouted. The team plays a dozen games a year, all at home, against anyone the university can schedule: community colleges, Division II and III programs, military schools. There is no chance of winning a championship — there's no championship to win — or getting much recognition at all, really.

But the team gets to play in The House That Jordan Built, and wear the famous white uniforms with the words NORTH CAROLINA stitched in blue letters across their chests. Each year, two or three players from the previous year's JV squad earn coveted spots as walk-ons for the varsity team and the opportunity to sit on the bench and maybe even play a few minutes when the Tar Heels are up by double digits to a non-conference opponent. If they're lucky, they put up a number or two in the scorebook.

Any student who passes a campus physical can try out for the JV team, regardless of talent. Recruiting consists of an ad in the campus newspaper and posters hung around campus.

The young men who made the team, the ones who sit in this small locker room dedicated to the JV's, and wait for Hubert Davis' pregame speech, once dreamed about playing basketball for a powerhouse like Carolina. They fantasized about standing under the six national championship and 36 ACC championship banners, and staring up at the blue-and-white jerseys bearing names like Jamison, Rosenbluth and Worthy.

Now they shift uncomfortably as Davis writes a Bible verse in blue marker on the dry erase board: Ephesians 3:20-21. Paraphrasing, he starts to talk about its significance.

"I get this little Bible app on my phone and it gives me, like, a verse every morning," he says. "This one says anything is possible through Jesus. Above and beyond all your hopes and dreams, anything is possible through Jesus."

The dozen guys sitting in their lockers, underneath the interlocking N and C, know a lot about hopes and dreams, and they know they need all the help they can get.

They break the huddle and trot down the tunnel, the same one varsity visitors use, and into the bright lights of the Dean Dome. It's chilly inside; the heat is set low to compensate for the thousands of fans who will arrive for the varsity game three hours from now. The few people here to witness tipoff are connected to the players in some way or another. Perhaps five people in the stands look like they might be students — friends or girlfriends. A couple little girls, third- or fourth-graders, sit in the very front row, across the court from the UNC bench, knees pulled up to their chests. That's roughly where the governor sits for a varsity matchup.

At the UNC bench, Davis stands where his mentor and friend, the Hall of Fame coach Roy Williams, will pace later this evening. Two of his kids sit in white folding chairs, between Davis and the team.

As the referee tosses the basketball into the air at center court, the guys on the bench holler. "Let's go white! Get it Toby!" Blue Jordan-brand high-tops squeak on the hardwood. On the main concourse, a soda vendor rolls a tub full of Cokes across the concrete floor. The noise all but drowns out the sounds of basketball.

***

On the first night of tryouts, in mid-October, three dozen students huddle around Davis at midcourt in the Smith Center. His voice is barely above a whisper. Guys in the back crane their heads, straining to hear.

"I want guys that are skilled and good enough to be here, sure," he says. "But I also want guys with intensity. Effort is a skill just like rebounding and shooting. Are you committed?"

Davis divides the prospective players into groups for 45 minutes of skill drills. As they rebound and shoot, Davis watches from midcourt, pacing the length of the state of North Carolina painted on the floor, east to west and back again. He makes notes on a piece of paper folded lengthwise.

Most of the guys look nervous. A couple chew on their thumbnails while Davis talks. The smallest is probably 5'7 and 150 pounds; the biggest is easily 6'9 and 230 pounds. They are black, white, Latino, Asian, long hair, short hair, no hair.

Some of the players worked hard for this moment; their training and preparation is obvious. They fine-tuned their jump shots over the summer, went to camps, built their muscles in the weight room. Others, it is clear, are playground stars, boys who like to shoot hoops on the asphalt outside their dorms and probably aren't the first pick.

A few guys wear compression gear that runs $80 a pop. Others wear wrinkled mesh gym shorts and ratty shirts with logos from teams and tourneys gone by.

One wears a blue Carolina Panthers T-shirt.

The groups head off for three 10-minute scrimmages, shirts vs. skins, guys calling their own fouls. Every basketball archetype is here: the loudmouth, the ball hog, the workhorse, the gunner. Davis seems to look past all this. He pays more attention to character and determination than he does to raw skill.

At the end of the final scrimmage, Davis has the group run sprints. Most guys are drenched in sweat. Some put their hands on their knees, winded, but not gasping. Others clasp their hands behind their heads as their bare rib cages heave and they fight off nausea. They huddle around the coach.

"The thing that stands out to me most is your effort," he begins. "I put a lot of weight on effort. I will take a guy who will play hard over a guy who takes plays off, but is more talented. Ten times out of ten."

After they're dismissed, guys line up to talk to Davis. Most thank him profusely for "the opportunity."

The kid in the Panthers shirt makes his case.

"You know how you talk about effort over talent? I'm probably that guy," he says. "I'm not as good, but I'll work hard."

The players linger. They want to stay here, a place most have fantasized about playing basketball in, as long as they can. A few of the guys have never even been inside the Dean Dome and might never make it back; the best they could do was watch it on television and dream.

At UNC, a school that's won two national championships in the last decade, the walk-on players develop a following of their own. Students learn their names and make up cheers for them. Bojangles' Chicken and Biscuits, a fast-food chain, runs a promotion when UNC scores more than 100 points at home: two sausage biscuits for $1. Early in the season, as Carolina beats up on an overmatched non-conference opponent, a walk-on usually scores the all-important 100th point as the student section thunders, "We want biscuits! We want biscuits!" The guys know this because they've witnessed it, because some of them have chanted, too. If they can't score the winning basket against Duke, if they can't have their jersey hoisted to the rafters, can they at least get biscuits?

Finally, Davis tells a student manager to put 3:45 on the clock. "And then they gotta go," he says, waving his arms in a shooing motion. "Otherwise they'll be here all night."

As the numbers tick down, guys shoot long jumpers and run after rebounds, using every bit of what little energy they have left.

"A minute and 30 and the lights are going out," Davis shouts.

It's not until five minutes later that the lights start turning off in waves. For a few seconds, there is just one group of lights left — illuminating the national championship banners in the rafters. Down on the floor, a ball bounces twice.

Click.

***

Toby Egbuna learned in middle school that everyone has hopes and dreams. Even if it's just for a cold Dr. Pepper.

He was on the school bus ride home from seventh grade in Clemmons, N.C., just outside Winston-Salem, with a bottle of juice leftover from lunch. Another kid on the bus was thirsty and offered to buy it for $10. Deal.

"So the next day, I intentionally bought an extra drink and on the bus ride back the same kid bought it for $5," Egbuna recalls. This went on for a week, until Egbuna realized his opening. "I could probably sell sodas to other kids, especially since sodas were specifically not sold in school cafeterias." Every day, through the rest of his time in middle school, he carried a small cooler of 10 or 12 canned drinks to class, selling them to his peers for a $1 apiece. He borrowed the seed money, enough to pay for a case of sodas to get started with, from his parents.

The family moved to North Carolina in 1998, when Egbuna was 4, from Lagos, Nigeria, after his father had taken an accounting job with the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Egbuna speaks clearly and authoritatively, like someone who wants to work for a big business consulting firm, and whose parents probably stressed the importance of carrying himself well and looking adults in the eye.

Toby Egbuna during halftime of UNC's game against Pfeiffer. "I'm not going to the NBA, it's better to get a good education and get set up for the long term career-wise."

When he got to high school, Egbuna joined the finance academy club, learned to love economics, and picked up a summer internship as a bank teller. He also joined an AAU basketball team and made the varsity squad at school as a power forward. Egbuna's 6'4, 225-pound size made him a reliable threat in the paint, and he averaged 10 points and eight rebounds a game.

During his junior year, his coaches started to mention that colleges were interested in seeing him play. Winston-Salem State University, a historically black college nearby, was especially keen on Egbuna. But he wasn't interested in taking a trip to campus, or really even talking about the possibility.

His Carolina dream started about the same time he was selling sodas on the school bus, not long after Carolina beat Illinois for the 2005 national championship. He would think about walking on to the team and becoming the hero, the big man on campus, by sinking a game-winning bucket against Duke. "Wild dream, I know," he says, almost apologetically.

In his junior year of high school, watching YouTube videos of kids his age dominating their opponents, he came to a tough realization: he wouldn't be playing college basketball. The players he was watching scored 20 or 30 points a game, made acrobatic dunks and dominated their opponents with smothering defense.

"That was so not me," he says. "I realized there was like a 99.9-percent chance that I'm not going to the NBA." He saw no point in playing at a Division II or Division III school. "If I'm not going to the NBA, it's better to get a good education and get set up for the long term career-wise."

Now, his childhood dream doesn't seem as far out of reach. Every practice, every rebound, is a chance to prove to Davis (and ultimately Williams) that he has what it takes to join the elite players.

For someone who wants it so badly, Egbuna's dorm room is strangely devoid of basketball paraphernalia. The white cinder block walls are without the stalker shrine of posters and newspaper clippings. There are five pairs of size-15 sneakers, plus another four in Nike boxes, lined up and stacked neatly, heels out, underneath the light wood twin bed that looks impossibly small for his frame. The row of shoes is the only sign he's a basketball fan, much less a guy who puts on a Carolina blue-and-white jersey in the winter. A matching desk and chest sit across from the bed and below a black-and-white poster of Muhammad Ali standing over an unconscious Sonny Liston.

Egbuna sits at the desk, sipping from a green Gatorade water bottle, researching summer internships at Nike. He wants to make sure his materials are ready, and that he doesn't miss the application deadline. His room, in the Ram Village dorm maybe 500 yards from the Dean Dome, is also close to the business school, where he spends virtually all the time he's not playing basketball.

Egbuna's high school coach had told him about the JV team, but as a UNC freshman he had an undiagnosed ACL tear and had to sit out while he rehabbed from surgery. He tried out the following year and made the team. Now, as a junior, he is approaching the defining moment, the point when his dream, at least the part about walking on if not the part about a go-ahead basket against Duke, can come true.

UNC allows players to spend only two seasons on the JV team before either joining the varsity or ending their Carolina dreams to make room for others. Egbuna is not ashamed to admit he wants one of the varsity walk-on spots next year.

"That's the hope," he says. "I don't know one person on campus that would turn down an opportunity to play varsity basketball at UNC."

The hope.

It's why he puts in extra time in the gym, beyond the team's three or four organized practices each week, and why he's so focused during games.

"I'd definitely still be playing JV," he says, "but I don't know if I'd be working as hard as I am now."

***

After the lights go out in the Dean Dome on the first night of tryouts, Hubert Davis wants to make sure everyone gets home safely.

He's talking to one of the student managers, a girl with curly hair and a small, sparkly stone set in a piercing in her right nostril. "I'm only going across the street. My car's right there," she says to Davis in a tone college students use on silly parents who just don't get it. "It's not even 9 o'clock!"

"So?" Davis retorts. "Do you have my number? Can you just text me?"

"But —" she starts to recycle her argument, and Davis cuts her off. "I don't care. I'd want someone to do that for my daughter. Will ya just text me when you get in your car?"

She relents, laughing. "Yeah."

The JV team is a training ground for the managers, too, and the first stop for students who want the privilege of wearing suits and ties while passing cups of water over the shoulders of future NBA stars. Just as the players hone their ability to run smart offensive plays, the managers learn how to operate the scoreboard.

As everyone gets ready to leave, the managers collect loose basketballs in the tunnel, corralling them on a metal cart. Davis stops to speak to a freshman who is thinking about signing up to be a manager.

"What do you think?" he asks. Her reply is so simple, so honest, Davis has to laugh.

"This is so cool."

***

Chandler Goodson was returning an interception, zipping across the fake grass, feeling the little bits of rubber from the artificial turf on UNC's intramural field spray up on the sides of his ankles, when it popped. "I caught it and tried to cut across the field and my knee just gave out."

Goodson, a lanky sophomore returning for his second season on the JV team, tore his ACL playing intramural football. It was right before Halloween, the first week of basketball practice. Now he's already thinking about next year.

"Coach was real understanding about it," he says, sounding a little embarrassed about the whole experience. "He said he played flag football when he was here."

The fact that Goodson was even playing intramurals during the basketball season underscores the different experience JV players have from varsity athletes. Goodson splits his non-academic time between basketball and Young Life, a Christian student group. He co-leads a fellowship of about 30 high school boys from Durham, planning large group meetings on Mondays and Bible studies on Thursdays. The teenagers are studying the Book of Acts, a section of the Bible Goodson says he likes because "it talks about how to be men."

Although his injury was painful and disappointing, it wasn't devastating. Basketball was a bonus; his parents are paying for him to come to Carolina. "My eggs aren't all in the basketball basket," he says.

Goodson grew up in Charlotte dreaming about a darker shade of basketball blue. He wanted to go to Duke, and longed to play at Cameron Indoor surrounded by the crazies. Royal blue looked good on him; he attended Charlotte Christian School, a regular contender in a tough league of private and religious schools that wears blue-and-white uniforms similar to Duke's home outfits.

The 6'7, 200-pound center generally avoided the awkwardness many tall high school players fight on the court. In videos of his Charlotte Christian games, Goodson is almost always one of the first guys down the court on fast breaks, and plays aggressively without being mean. He looks like he would run you over if it meant getting a loose ball, but he'd apologize while doing it.

He harbored dreams of making it to the NBA, and watched Duke forwards Ryan Kelly and Mason Plumlee to pick up tips for his own game. But Coach K never showed up at his front door; neither did Coach Williams, for that matter. Goodson did meet with the coach at Wofford College, a small DI school in South Carolina, but never went on a true recruiting trip to campus. Representatives from Sewanee and Randolph College, both DIII programs, came to Charlotte Christian instead.

About that time, his coach told him about UNC's JV program, and the possibility of walking on to the varsity team. Goodson felt so strongly about the opportunity, about the chance to fulfill his dream of playing ACC basketball, he dumped his years-long allegiance to Duke. "I had the choice of going to Randolph or Sewanee and playing for sure, or going to UNC and taking a chance."

He took a chance.

***

Although Davis starts each practice with a thought of the day, he soon turns his focus back to basketball. He next gives the players a point of improvement for offense and defense, things he'll be watching closely during the workout.

At first it's a lighthearted, even jovial, atmosphere. There's a good chance Davis will joke with kids about their shoes. "Even my daughter has better shoe game than you," he'll tease.

Then, it's time for a scrimmage.

Perhaps the biggest misconception about the JV team is that it's some kind of intramural program, the sort of team that gives equal playing time to everyone, where every player gets a "coach's award" at the end of the season.

It's not. Once the scrimmage starts, the joking stops. Davis does not coddle these players.

If the scrimmage is sloppy, if the guys don't show the type of hustle Davis expects, he lines them up along the baseline and asks a question. "Do you want to be a basketball team, or a track team?"

They know what that means.

***

Jay Lamothe had just finished a summer internship with the Charlotte Hornets when he got the news. The varsity team was too full. Between the returning stars and other scholarship players, Williams would be able to take only two walk-ons, fewer than he originally thought. He picked Justin Coleman, a guard who started all 10 junior varsity games last year, and Sasha Seymore, a 6'6 forward who played JV during the 2012-13 season.

"I wouldn't say it was disappointing," he says, sounding like a guy still trying to convince himself he's not disappointed. "But it wasn't how I hoped it would work out."

Like Egbuna, Lamothe knew he couldn't play Division I basketball, and he came to Carolina focused on his schoolwork. He grew up in Harrisburg, N.C., not far from Charlotte, and played small forward on his high school basketball team. "I was pretty good," he says. "I was decent. Nothing special." The local newspaper, in a write-up about Lamothe's team, described him as "a nice complement" to the school's star shooting guard. Playing college ball was so far removed from Lamothe's mind, he didn't even look at DII or DIII schools.

During his junior year in high school, he watched UNC dismantle Michigan State in the national title game. With 1:03 left, the Tar Heels had a 17-point lead, and Roy Williams called a time out. He pulled his starters and sent in the walk-ons, including J.B. Tanner, an alum of Lamothe's high school and whose family Lamothe knew well. As the clock hit zero, UNC star Tyler Hansbrough sprinted from the bench to midcourt and gave Tanner a huge hug, nearly knocking him off his feet.

Lamothe, watching this whole scene unfold from his living room, knew right then he wanted to be a part of this history, even if it meant just as a spectator. He applied to Carolina.

As a freshman Lamothe signed up for an intramural team, which won that year's basketball championship and Carolina blue T-shirts with the words "Intramural Champion" across the front. The next year, he played for the club team. At the beginning of his junior year, Lamothe tried out for JV, and made the team as a guard.

"Just being able to put a Carolina jersey on, to be able to go into the Dean Dome and shoot around is an honor," he says. But, still, he wants more.

Lamothe spent his downtime this past summer working out, practicing his ball handling skills and free throws — things walk-ons need to be good at doing. When Williams sticks them in the game, their primary mission is not to screw anything up. He was ready for his shot, hoping to prove to the coaching staff he had fine-tuned his game enough to deserve a seat at the far end of the bench.

In the back of his mind, he knew this year's walk-ons could be part of something legendary; if the Heels manage to live up to expectations, they could easily be ACC champions and national title contenders. He could have been on that team. He could have gotten biscuits for the students. At the very least, he could have his shot rejected in practice by UNC varsity stars like Dexter Strickland or Brice Johnson.

But now he knows that isn't going to happen. He won't even get a chance to try out, to show the coaches what he could do, what he offered. "The guys that got the spots, they deserve it," Lamothe says.

When Lamothe first found out he wouldn't be joining the varsity team, that he'd be going home for Thanksgiving instead of to the Bahamas for the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament, and watching Carolina's March Madness run on TV, he thought about saying to hell with it all. "But I just couldn't pass it up," he says about the chance to try out for JV again.

"It all goes back to the love of the game. I just couldn't pass it up."

***

Davis says that attitude — the love of the game — is why he enjoys coaching the team.

"Obviously they're not on the level of the varsity team, but our guys were very accomplished high school players," he says. "The only difference is our guys aren't thinking about the NBA. It's refreshing."

"our guys aren't thinking about the NBA. It's refreshing." UNC head coach Roy Williams with Hubert Davis in 2013. (Getty Images)

Most schools, after the NCAA decided in 1972 to allow kids to go straight to the varsity team from high school, phased out their junior varsity teams, seeing no need for the extra expense or hassle. But Dean Smith believed in the value of a JV team as a proving ground — both for young walk-on players, and for his assistant coaches. Coach Smith thought it was important, and no one much wanted to argue.

Current Carolina coach Roy Williams understands this philosophy because he lived it. He is supportive of the team and has continued UNC tradition of JV basketball. In 1968, Williams was one of 77 guys to try out for what was then known as UNC's "freshman team." Back then, even the scholarship athletes, the future stars, had to play a year of junior varsity ball. That season, a basketball magazine ranked UNC‘s freshman the No. 1 recruiting class in the country. The junior varsity roster included seven scholarship athletes. More than 7,000 fans packed the Dean Dome's predecessor, Carmichael Arena, to watch the JV matchup that season between Carolina and Duke.

Williams, a point guard, realized pretty quickly that he wouldn't ever make varsity. "It was a rude awakening for me," he says. "I thought I was pretty doggone good, and I got there and figured out I wasn't very good." But still, Williams admits he longed for the opportunity. "I think everybody had that little dream."

Later, when he joined Smith's staff, Williams took over the JV coaching duties from Bill Guthridge, a job he held for eight seasons. Williams believes junior varsity is the great equalizer, a place where anyone with a dream has the opportunity to play basketball. "They can come here. It's their university, it's their basketball program, and they get a chance to try out."

Williams always brings former JV players onto the varsity team as walk-ons, using them on the scout team to run the opponent's plays in practice. "I'm pretty demanding, even for the walk-ons," he says. "I don't want them to go in there and look unorganized and play casually." When he watches the JV team play, he looks for guys who have the skills and personalities to challenge his varsity stars.

Williams also believes his staff can learn from coaching away from the spotlight, just as he did. After he hired Davis as a varsity assistant coach, Williams also put him in charge of the JV's. Davis says the JV team reminds him of the way basketball used to be.

"These guys are in no hurry to leave this place. Kids now, today, their thoughts are on the NBA. Unfortunately some of the times, college is just a pit stop. With JV, there is no thought of the NBA."

Although there are obvious differences between the two teams, Davis says he treats the players the same. "Our job is to serve them. To make them better basketball players. To make them better people. I'm not doing my job if the only thing I'm trying to teach them is basketball."

That's especially true, he acknowledges, for the JV players who, after their time at Carolina, will be regular Tobys and Chandlers and Jays, toting their lunches to work along with the rest of us.

"I don't care about wins, I don't care about losses. I don't care about the score. I don't care about statistics. I couldn't care less about any of that. I care about the preparation and the process and how hard you compete."

He wants to train men who are relentless, who will sprint all the time, a quality that will serve them well later in life. "I love winning championships," he says. "I do. But that's not what I'm about."

"And if there was a JV championship," he asks, "what would that matter?"

***

At halftime of the Pfeiffer game, Davis sits on an olive green-upholstered bench just outside the JV locker room. He's taken off his charcoal suit jacket, folded it length-wise and laid it on the bench to his right. Andrew Ocampo, a former JV player who didn't make the varsity team for his senior year and whom Davis made his assistant coach, sits to his left. Davis' son, Elijah, is a couple feet down from Ocampo.

They sit there, in complete silence, for almost three minutes.

"Whaddya got, Andrew?"

"We're flat. We are not ready to play."

"Elijah?"

Hubert Davis talks to his team with his son Elijah in the background.

"They're not talking to one another," the middle-schooler responds accurately.

Carolina leads Pfeiffer 40-27, but that doesn't matter to Davis. He stalks into the locker room. "I'm disappointed in your effort," he begins, softly. "And I'm disappointed in your concentration." The guys look down at the navy blue carpet remnant covering the chipped paint on the concrete floor. Davis draws a play on the dry erase board. "You pass the ball here, go to the corner. One scoring cut right here. But guess what, they got that play, didn't they?"

He starts to yell. "How come they've gotten that play, but we haven't gotten it? Why? No sense of urgency. We don't tiptoe here."

Davis is mad about two things in particular — that his players weren't hustling down the floor in what he calls true Tar Heel style, and that they weren't communicating.

Those two issues led to a sloppy 20 minutes of basketball. At one point during the game, when Davis leapt out of his chair after a UNC turnover, his wife, who was watching from the baseline, turned to one of their daughters and said, "Dad's going to split his pants today."

Toward the end of the half, the offense broke down. Plays disintegrated into wild passes from the top of the key to the wings, then into the paint and back out again.

Elijah was right. The players barely talked to one another. One of the challenges JV teams face is the regular cycle of players; guys don't have much time to get comfortable. This year's JV team is about evenly split among returners and first-timers, including a couple guys who are playing their first minutes since high school. It had only been three weeks, maybe a month, since tryouts. (The guy in the Panthers shirt didn't make the team, but Davis seems ready to walk outside and find him, or anyone else willing to play harder than the guys on the floor.)

"This is a team that doesn't look focused, that doesn't look into it, that's not ready to play. That makes me very upset."

He softens.

"I don't mind mistakes if they're done with effort. Why would you do that? Why would you not play hard?" He asks those questions in a falsetto, pleading with the guys, as if he's saying, "Why would you do this to me?"

***

It worked. At least, it did at first.

After the break, the team is noticeably energetic. Their shouts — Other side! Toby, help! — bounce off the exposed concrete and plastic seats.

The offense is suddenly efficient, moving the ball swiftly, and scoring points in transition. Spenser Dalton, a veteran guard and one of the team's leaders, sinks a three from the corner. On Pfeiffer's ensuing possession, Egbuna forces a turnover on a double team with guard Max Konstanzer. Davis seems pleased. With six minutes left in the half, UNC grows its lead to 24.

Then, it starts to fall apart. Plays get sloppy. The offense doesn't score. Pfeiffer's coach never gets out of his chair as his team slowly chips away at the lead.

At one point, Davis is so frustrated, he rips his glasses off his face, sets them down on the scorer's table and rubs his eyes. It's a move Carolina fans know to expect from Williams when things aren't going well.

One of the new players shoots a wild three-pointer with a couple minutes left in the game. Luckily, there are no opposing fans to yell, "Air ball!" A Pfeiffer forward rips the ball from the air, clutching it to his black jersey, but their run peters out. UNC escapes with a 69-52 win, thanks in large part to the fact that Pfeiffer's offense was at a size and speed disadvantage for much of the game.

The Tar Heels run off the floor and down the tunnel toward the locker room to a smattering of applause. One spectator, who looks like he's someone's dad, shouts, "Heels!" His yell echoes by itself, carrying through the empty arena, up to the concourse where the Smith Center ushers, in blue vests and khakis, are gathering to prep for the varsity game. The JV always plays in Chapel Hill, always three hours before a varsity game. Anyone can walk in off the street to watch, but after the JV game the ushers check to make sure the fans who linger afterwards have tickets to the main event.

Once again, Davis sits on the bench in the tunnel, next to Ocampo and Elijah, for a minute before going into the locker room. "OK, let's go." At the entryway, Davis fumbles with the card that unlocks the door. Then, he's across the threshold and talking.

"Congratulations on you guys um ..."

His voice trails off, letting the um hang in the air for seven seconds.

"Congratulations on you guys winning the game. When I say wins and losses don't mean anything to me, this is what I'm talking about. I don't feel like a win tonight."

Davis reiterates his halftime talk, his disappointment with the team's effort. He goes to an argument that he knows will resonate with these guys. A speech that's bound to get them thinking.

"We only have 10 games left. For some guys, these are the last 10 games you're ever going to play. Ever. You're never going to be in a locker room again. You're never going to be a part of a team again. Ever."

Egbuna looks straight at Davis the whole time.

"I expect a lot from you. Maybe my expectations are unrealistic. But I am proud of you guys. I want those hopes and dreams we talked about today to come true."

An hour later, fans stream into the Dean Dome. The metal student risers are full. ESPNU commentators are on the air.

The building isn't shaking — the Tar Heels are only playing Robert Morris, and will win by almost 50 — but it's still a remarkable change in atmosphere from the beginning of the JV game.

The lights go down, House of Pain's "Jump Around" blares through the building, even the old ladies in the seats near the floor groove to the music.

A blue carpet, printed with Tar Heel footprints and bordered with the same argyle pattern that the varsity team wears on their shorts, stretches from inside the tunnel to the edge of the court. It's the university's version of a red carpet, something only the stars get to run down as the public address announcer implores the crowd to welcome "Your North Carolina Tarrrrrrr Heels!" Former JV standouts Justin Coleman and Sasha Seymore, guys who know what it's like to dribble in front of no one but parents and girlfriends, run out alongside Marcus Paige who, the week before, was named to the Associated Press preseason All-America team.

Spotlights whirl through the crowd, amping up the excitement, eventually settling on the Carolina bench just as the announcer introduces the starting lineup.

The JV team, freshly showered and dressed in sweaters and jeans, sits in the second row of folding chairs, only a few feet off the court, behind the trainers and the cooler of Gatorade, just outside the glare of the lights.