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GREENSBORO — Basketball is big business in North Carolina, and this is the capital.

The machinery of the industry chugged to life Wednesday when a horn sounded inside the Greensboro Coliseum and suddenly the moving parts were in motion. The balloons started going up in the hallways leading into the building, the giant tents outside rose from the parking lots and the dignitaries of Tournament Town clinked glasses and nodded at one another as the entire operation came to life.

It happens every March, and if it seems to get bigger every year that's probably because it does. This year, we add the high schools to the mix. Next year, the men's ACC tournament returns.

The 2009 ACC women's tournament will tip off at 11 a.m. today, the 10th year the tournament has been played here. ACC Commissioner John Swofford stood before the assembled movers and shakers and rang in another year.

"This is truly our home," he said.

In two weeks, the NCAA tournament will start right here with the first and second rounds probably bringing the state's biggest basketball programs into the same building for what could be a wonderfully uneasy weekend with nothing on the line except everything.

The atmosphere in the coliseum this week will have more of a party feel as the women's programs collide on a brand-new floor inside the spanking-clean arena that seems to regenerate itself every March. In the final hours of preparation Wednesday as work crews continued to put up the framework and cleaning crews polished the place to a shine, two basketball coaches stood on the edge of the glistening new hardwood and hugged.

Mike Petersen, the Wake Forest coach who has dragged his team to 18 wins this season in the face of injuries and issues that forced him to constantly remake the Deacons on the run, seemed relaxed as he put his team through a final workout before today's 3 p.m. game.

"We've just been through so much," he said, lamenting how close his program is to taking off in a brutal league that allows no time for relaxing. "It feels good to be here."

And, of course, he's been through nothing compared to Wake's opponent today, N.C. State.

Moments after his team finished its practice, Petersen spotted Stephanie Glance. The two coaches ambled toward each other and hugged, each smiling near the end of the court, near the end of a long season. Glance, the interim head coach at State since the death of Kay Yow in January, grinned and kept one eye on her team going through the early motions of what might be its last practice of the season.

The fleeting moment was a reminder of what this is all about, what all the work is for and what the coordination of the event really means. It's about coming together as a league, with one eye on basketball. It's about the preparation taken for granted by so many people, more than anyone can imagine.

It's about coming together as a city, the hundreds of volunteers and organizers, the hotels and restaurant owners and city employees who provide the infrastructure of an event that only seems like it's been here forever.

Ten years is a fleeting moment in basketball history. There's no guarantee that the tournaments will always come to Tournament Town. The building that was completed in 1959 is still the best basketball arena in the country, and North Carolina continues to be the heart of college basketball.

Greensboro is its capital, not from any decree or tradition but from the hard work of a lot of people, most of whom were smiling and hugging Wednesday in the festive moments before another year of basketball games begins in what has become a coliseum complex of courts and arenas and auditoriums and dressing rooms and meeting halls and galleries and offices.

By the end of a long day, everything looked to be in place. Every square inch shined as the sun set on winter and gave way to the one season that brings us together every year.

Basketball season begins today in Greensboro, an annual rite of passage that comes with blue skies and the warm glow of a league and a community and a game coming together again. The festive atmosphere of the final minutes of preparation carried into the evening as heavy lifting gave way to finishing touches, and everyone gave the place one last look before the games begin.

Then at about 5:30 Wednesday, a whistle broke the calm and people began taking their seats and the smiles turned to looks of concern as a basketball went into the air and the high school teams started playing in the Special Events Center and across the way at UNCG's Fleming Gym, and just like that all the pomp and circumstance ended and the machine started to grind and everything turned to the business at hand.

Basketball is big business in this state, and this is where it all begins.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com