TYLER HANSBROUGH

For a North Carolina men's player to have his jersey retired, he must win at least one of six national player of the year awards: The Associated Press, the U.S. Basketball Writers Association, the National Association of Basketball Coaches, Sporting News, the Wooden Award and the Naismith Award.
Tyler Hansbrough: Warrior

We have a lot of warriors in college sports. On some nights in March, some achieve their status for clutch shots in pressure-filled moments, others for big rebounding numbers, and still others for defensive prowess.

"There's really no word to describe him,” Tyler Zeller said, still awestruck after a season of watching Hansbrough each day. “It’s amazing playing out there and knowing you’ve got the guy who is going to outwork every other person on the court. He never takes a day or a play off.”

“He's our leader,” Ty Lawson added. “Everything he does on the court, everybody should follow. He's been our best player—he scores, he's our toughness, we follow him. If he wasn't our leader on the court, I don't know what we would do."

“I guess I’d say tenacity,” Wayne Ellington suggested. “The way he just keeps going and going and going, it’s like he always plays with a chip on his shoulder. I’ve never been around a guy who goes that hard on every single play.”

Indeed, Hansbrough’s place in Carolina basketball lore is secure not just because of the wins he and his teammates amassed, the records he broke, the accolades he earned. Hansbrough is beloved by Tar Heel fans and despised by so many others because every time he stepped on the court, he played as though his life depended on it. Never the most athletic, or the flashiest, he earned everything he received from the game of college basketball because he battled relentlessly.

It’s in his blood and his genes, an instinct nurtured in him since childhood. He took inspiration from the different battles of his elder brother Greg, who survived a childhood fight with cancer and then prevailed through diminished mobility on his body’s left side to compete as an athlete himself.

If you want to see a fighter, Hansbrough regularly reminded people, look at his brother who had the baseball-sized tumor cut out of his brain and went on to run marathons. Hansbrough’s now-iconic No. 50 is a tribute to his brother, who wore the number first at Missouri’s Poplar Bluff High School. When Carolina honors its greatest battler by raising Tyler’s jersey to the rafters next year, Greg will go up there as well.

Wherever Hansbrough’s drive originates, we’ll be struggling for years to adequately describe a work ethic so intense that Hansbrough’s teammates and trainers called him Psycho T.

By the time all was said and done, even Mike Krzyzewski acknowledged the specialness of what Hansbrough had accomplished, not just against his teams but against the entire college basketball world.

“He's one of the best that has played, not just here, but in the ACC,” Krzyzewski said. “When you think of Tyler, you're going to think of a warrior. You would never say that there was a possession that he did not play…. It puts him in a really elite class in the history of this conference. So he deserves all that he gets. He's earned it.”

“I’ve never coached anybody who’s had to face as much on the court as he’s had to face,” Roy Williams recalled as Hansbrough’s senior season drew to a close. “To do the things he’s done with two and three guys hanging off him, and as physical as he’s played…. I find it hard to believe.”

“Somebody asked me if he’s the hardest worker I’ve ever been around,” Williams reflected. “No, Michael Jordan worked as hard. Kirk Hinrich on the court worked as hard but Tyler is the most focused. Michael was the most driven to win. Tyler is the most focused to do everything he can to have his body in the best shape it can be and make himself the best player he can possibly be…. He’s unique in his discipline.”

“Absolutely,” Bobby Frasor says, asked if reality lives up to the myth when it comes to Hansbrough’s steely concentration and will. It started from the first week of freshman practice. “We were running sprints, and everyone was going as hard as we could,” Frasor remembered. “We all start falling out. Danny Green fell first, then Marcus Ginyard and me. Tyler’s still going. And then he just starts yelling and is still going. He wouldn’t quit.”

It’s the very definition of a legend: something or someone so improbable that you’re excused for wondering what’s fact and what’s fiction. While another athlete might surpass Hansbrough’s records one day, the legend will remain, because night-in and night-out, Hansbrough gave us reason to believe that the impossible isn’t.

You say he can’t get that ridiculous leaning push shot of his or the ungainly half-hook to drop against ACC-caliber teams? Wrong.
Say he can’t possibly become the first four-time All-American in college basketball history? Wrong again.

Say he can’t live in the paint and survive the physical abuse to top a three-point gunner’s record as the all-time scorer in the ACC?

Wrong again.

Tyler Hansbrough: Human

Shifting his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other, for once the legend looked uneasy on the floor where he’d so often dominated. You could just see it in his eyes—he knew he wasn’t going to win this one. With head slightly bowed, he sucked in a shallow breath, swallowed hard, looked into the stands. And then the tears flowed.

Voice trembling, Hansbrough’s normally deep baritone could hardly manage the words. But with his gaze locked a few feet away at the second row of seats, he finally gave in. “Thank you,” he breathed, as his brothers, father, and mother stood to receive the words that ever-so-briefly made Psycho T vanish. In his place stood the student, the son, the sibling, the friend. And as his words were swallowed in the grateful cheers of thousands, with a final wave, he lowered the microphone and gave up the stage.

It took almost four years and 118 wins. But on March 8, 2009, standing near center court at the Smith Center, Tyler Hansbrough finally proved he was human.
Tyler Hansbrough: Winner

The media swarmed as usual. Hansbrough and his teammates had just dispatched North Carolina State in the kind of late-February contest that routinely gives fans heartburn on the way to conference titles and top seeds in the NCAA tournament. Though Carolina had prevailed, the 89-80 final score reflected the challenge—a trap game against a lesser but still proud opponent hell-bent on slowing the Tar Heels’ seemingly inevitable march to an ACC crown.

But Hansbrough had dominated again, refusing to be denied, pouring in 20 of his 27 points in the second half. On the way he’d scooted past the legendary “Pistol” Pete Maravich for second on the NCAA all-time list for career free throws made. (It would be two more games before he passed Wake Forest’s Dickie Hemric to become first on the list, grabbing hold of a record that had stood for nearly six decades.) Hansbrough had scored inside, outside, over, around, and yes, through. It was pure All-American, the stuff that leads your fans to call you a legend.

Having satisfied the reporters with the second or third round of quotes about the significance of showing his best against an in-state foe, Hansbrough looked relieved, ready to hit the ice bath, grab a protein shake, and head for some well-deserved rest.

From his first game against an upset-minded Gardner-Webb team to his last against Michigan State, earning the National Championship he had made his grail. In between, he and his classmates won 124 games, more than any other Tar Heel class in history.

Hansbrough wasn’t alone in winning, of course. But with a shifting supporting cast that at various times featured older upperclassmen, younger protégés, injured teammates, and one of the best backcourts in America, Hansbrough was the anchor. With his senior classmates, he won more games than any other class in UNC basketball history. During Dean Smith’s heyday, his teams were legendary for their 20-win seasons. But under Roy Williams, Hansbrough’s class set a new plateau, part of a group that was the first to notch three consecutive 30-win seasons. Along the way, Hansbrough helped lead Carolina to three straight ACC regular-season titles and back-to-back conference tournament titles in 2007 and 2008.

Among the defeated, few were more humbled than Carolina’s in-state ACC rivals. Hansbrough went 4-1 against Wake Forest, 8-1 against State, and, for the ultimate badge of honor, 6-2 against Duke. College basketball’s greatest rivalry has brought out the best in Tar Heel greats for generations, but few have embraced its passion and owned the opponent like Hansbrough, whose six wins included four at Cameron Indoor Stadium. His remarkable run against the Blue Devils started with taking down J.J. Redick on his senior night in 2006, and it finished in 2009 with a home win that left Hansbrough just shy of Redick’s ACC career scoring mark.

Two weeks after Hansbrough’s final win against Duke, he finally topped Redick’s scoring record.

But it wasn’t just the teams against which Hansbrough won. It was the way he won. Though he showed emotion only rarely on the court, in victory there were those glorious times he just couldn’t contain himself. Remember the full throated victory roar after he willed Carolina to that double-overtime thriller against Clemson, stealing the ball and then diving headlong to secure it, ensuring the Tar Heels’ improbable home undefeated streak against the Tigers would endure? Or when he was so pumped he ran down the wrong tunnel after knocking off Virginia Tech for the second straight year in the ACC tournament, waving his arms in victory like a school kid?

“I was just so glad to be playing another day, I didn’t care,” he said afterward with a grin.

Hansbrough earned respect by regularly refusing to let others make a big deal of his accomplishments. He always credited his teammates and coaches first, and his graceful acceptance of the honors that came his way were all genuinely humble. “He doesn’t realize how good he is, and that is a good characteristic to have,” said Roy Williams. “If we win and he scores eight, he’s going to be the happiest person in the gym. That’s the way he is. He’s interested in his team winning.”

Fortunately, his head coach isn’t afraid to sing his praises. What Williams sees—and what fans will remember for generations—is a team-first player of the utmost character, the kind of winner who will be remembered not only for the NCAA title or the individual accolades but for the way he played the game.

“He’s a unique young man. That is the best word that I can use to describe him,” Williams said. “I've said before, and I'll say many times, I've been awfully lucky. He is the most focused individual I have ever seen. The most driven to be the best player he can be, to try to get the most out of his potential, to listen to what his coaches say, and to try to work on those things. He's just been an unbelievable joy to be with.”

How perfect, then, for player and coach to earn the storybook ending they’d both strived to achieve. As the closing moments ticked away in Hansbrough’s final and most memorable victory, he thrust both hands into the air, then enveloped Williams in an embrace that might have crushed the air from a less robust recipient. Together, they’d done it. And in that final, rapturous moment, there could be no mistake.

Tyler Hansbrough is a winner for the ages.

Tyler Hansbrough: Champion

Tyler Hansbrough was adamant that he didn’t need a national title to legitimize his career, but seemingly everyone outside of the UNC program thought he did. And so as he’d done for four years, the sometimes awkward, always indomitable middle child from Poplar Bluff, Mo. delivered in the only way he knows how—by winning.

There are plenty of people that confront a challenge head-on, but very few that wrestle it to the ground for a quick three-count pin. Hansbrough rose to the occasion various times throughout his career. That’s what champions do—they raise the level of their game and they find a way to win.

And so when it was time for Hansbrough to do what he had to do for this program to cut down the nets in Detroit, he accomplished that mission by stepping out of the spotlight ever so slightly and letting Lawson beep-beep his way to the national title.

“Everybody put their individual goals to the side, and got something accomplished for the team, and that’s what it’s all about,” he said after scoring 18 points and grabbing seven rebounds in the championship game.

Nearly four years later, those long hours in the gym, those late nights shooting free throws and the vicious physicality that followed him around during his career were met with a loud buzzer with 1:03 remaining in a national championship game that North Carolina would win 89-72. Hansbrough walked off the court in a Tar Heel uniform for the very last time—in victory as a champion.

“The sheer joy that I saw on his face as he came walking towards me to hug me is just indescribable,” Williams would say the morning after.

When he strolled into UNC’s Ford Field locker room with a freshly-cut net hanging around his neck, pure elation shone through his eyes.

Hansbrough may not have needed a national championship to validate his career, but he’s definitely not going to give it back. After a career of thanking his teammates while accepting individual awards, he finally got the opportunity to share his most-prized possession of all with his fellow Tar Heels.

"Who can say they're a national champion?” he asked. “I can."