January 8, 2009
DURHAM -- The annual quest to answer what has become an annual question continued Wednesday night. How good is Duke? Through 14 games and now a 79-67 win over Davidson, the answer is beginning to come into focus. Duke is pretty goo...
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January 7, 2009
CHARLOTTE -- Rematch. The rain fell hard on the practice field, and clouds hung heavily overhead as the Panthers went through a full-pads workout Tuesday morning. The first home playoff game in five years was five days away, and no one was feeling under t...
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January 5, 2009
CHAPEL HILL -- North Carolina ran into a wall Sunday, and Boston College ran through one. On the first day of the conference season, UNC fell hard against BC, losing 85-78 to fall into an ignominious tie for last in the ACC. A game that looked...
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January 4, 2009
At about 8 o'clock Saturday night, J. Fred Johnson Jr. was about where you'd expect him to be. He was on a sideline of a basketball game in an oddly lit gymnasium having a conniption fit. His basketball team was doing nowhere near what he expected it to b...
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December 28, 2008
CHARLOTTE -- West Virginia waited for the fog to clear to steal the Meineke Bowl from North Carolina, and the Tar Heels were left pondering a season that somehow got away Saturday. A bowl game for the taking and a year that could've been so much more mean...
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December 21, 2008
WALLBURG - The road's a little wider now, and the little cafe's no longer on the corner at the top of the hill, but not much else has changed. The creeks still empty into bass ponds, and the seasons are still determined by the crops. The corn grows tall...
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December 19, 2008
CHAPEL HILL -- A record Phil Ford wore at times like a crown of thorns, Tyler Hansbrough broke with a flourish Thursday night.
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December 18, 2008
CHARLOTTE -- Jon Beason got a text message Tuesday afternoon that changed his life. It came from Steve Smith. DeAngelo Williams got a package in the mail Wednesday afternoon that changed his day. It came from LenDale White. This might be the best week of...
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December 15, 2008
CHARLOTTE -- After the Monday night game last week, the Carolina Panthers gave ailing owner Jerry Richardson a game ball. Sunday, they gave him the game itself. A week after missing only his second home game in franchise history, Richardson watched from t...
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December 14, 2008
WINSTON-SALEM -- Maybe in time, we'll know how good he was. Because when he was at his best, Ricky Lewis might've been the best high school football player we ever saw. Lewis limped onto the field Saturday night and carried Dudley to a 34-18 win over Kan...
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December 13, 2008
The sun began to set on a special season Friday afternoon as football players bounded down a hill and onto a familiar field for the last time. Dudley will play for a state title again today, and that meant the players would be together in the mud one last...
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December 11, 2008
CHARLOTTE -- The beverage of choice Wednesday for the Carolina Panthers was still water. Cool, clear water. Two days after their dismantling of the Tampa Bay Bucs on Monday night, the Panthers (10-3) began preparations for their last home game of the regu...
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December 9, 2008
CHARLOTTE -- The glittering lights of pro football shone down on the Queen City, and the Carolina Panthers came down hard on the Tampa Bay Bucs to win 38-23 Monday night. The trucks rolled in, and the lines of traffic from every direction emptied into sta...
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December 8, 2008
There's something in the air again in Charlotte. Football season starts tonight. All the practice games of summer and everything played up until now has led to this. When the sport came to the Carolinas all those years ago, this was what the NFL promised.
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December 7, 2008
AIR BELLOWS GAP - The fog hangs to the ground as the sun comes up over a ridge 20 miles in the distance. Smokes curls up from rooftop chimneys visible just above the mist, and church steeples dot the landscape below. Not a sound is heard above the wind th...
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December 6, 2008
Petty Enterprises, the company that sprang from the red soil and backroads of Randolph County to dominate stock-car racing, is close to a merger with another team, a move that could close the doors for good on the racing family out of Randleman. The stunn...
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November 28, 2008
GREENSBORO -- Our high schools are our clearest reflection of ourselves, perfect pictures of academic communities loosely tied together over time by school colors and mascots and memories.
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November 23, 2008
CHAPEL HILL -- Hark the sound of irate voices. The last sounds out of Kenan Stadium, on the day the ACC collapsed on itself, were the plaintive howls of wolves and sheep alike. N.C. State defeated North Carolina 41-10 Saturday, keeping State's strange bow...
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November 20, 2008
CHARLOTTE - An uneasiness settled in over NFL camps this weekend, not after the results from Sunday's games started coming in, and not after the crucial midseason standings became clearer, but just after Donovan McNabb opened his mouth and uttered the unu...
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November 19, 2008
CHAPEL HILL — The banners hang from the rafters likes pelts, the spoils of victories dating back to the 1920s, a timeline of success that suggests there was never a down time for the Tar Heels.
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November 17, 2008
CHARLOTTE -- There was a chill in the air Sunday, and it wasn't just that the Panthers had fallen behind early, and it wasn't just that the temperature had fallen into the 40s and it wasn't just that the team on the other side of the field was winless. Bu...
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November 16, 2008
Another season will come full circle again today on a perfectly shaped racing oval in Florida some 259 miles, as the vulture flies, from where it began nine months ago. But nothing in or around Homestead reminds you of Daytona Beach, and nothing about rac...
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November 14, 2008
Rick Strunk was in his office Thursday trying to put together a news release for the soccer playoffs, and the phone kept ringing. It's that time of year. The associate executive director of the N.C. High School Athletics Association has been taking calls...
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November 13, 2008
CHARLOTTE -- Wednesday was just another day for Jake Delhomme. It was just another day of ridicule from his teammates, questioning from the writers and television reporters and overanalyzing from talk-show hosts and their screaming callers.
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November 12, 2008
GREENSBORO -- Basketball season doesn't dawn like other sports seasons. There's no opening day or even an opening weekend. Basketball creeps up on us like a thief in the night. You wake up one day and Kyle Hines is gone, and Arizona Reid's on...
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