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GREENSBORO — On Wednesday afternoon, Garner Thomas saw his first college basketball player in person. Not on television, but in real life. Up close.

Almost close enough to touch. Definitely close enough to dream.

So did lots of other fans at the Greensboro Coliseum.

Some of the younger ones dreamed of playing for Duke, or Texas, or North Carolina, or one of the other teams playing here this week.

Thomas clearly fell in the Tar Heel camp.

The No. 50, size small, Carolina blue jersey that the 5-year-old wore left no doubt which player the Candor resident had come to see.

“Tyler,” he announced, watching three rows from the court.

For those who don’t follow basketball, that’s Tyler Hansbrough, UNC’s all-everything senior big man.

“He just started watching games this year,” Crystal Thomas, said of her son. “It just clicked.”

She and her sister-in-law, Leslie Thomas, surprised Garner Wednesday morning by telling him that he would skip kindergarten for the day and make the 50-minute drive to Greensboro to watch the teams practice for the first- and second-round games of the NCAA basketball tournament.

“She said it was OK,” Crystal Thomas said about her son’s teacher. “She’s a Carolina fan.”

Thomas also liked the fact that the trip would be a good deal. The practices were free and open to the public.

The family debated getting game tickets, which would have cost $193 per person for all six games or $61 for a two-game session.

“That would have been a lot of money,” Crystal Thomas said. “And we didn’t know how he would do.”

Garner didn’t seem to mind that he’d have to watch the tournament on television. His experience Wednesday left him awestruck.

Part of the time, he clamped his hands over his ears, trying to block out the screams of 6,500 fans. Part of the time, he snapped pictures of Hansbrough with his digital camera. And part of the time, he marveled at the players’ skills on the court.

He missed out on getting Hansbrough’s autograph, though.

A few seats away, Mitchell McGee got lucky. The 11-year-old snagged a signature from A.J. Abrams, the star guard from Texas.

Mitchell’s father, Mike, who grew up in Texas, drove his son over from Advance to watch the Longhorns’ practice.

The father and son sat with a handful of other Texas fans, most of whom wore burnt orange, the team color.

“It wasn’t hard to find them,” Mike McGee said of the others. “We stuck out like a sore thumb in all this blue.”

Part of the blue contingent included Jamie Brannock, a 25-year-old Duke fan from Burlington. He brought along his wife, Jennifer, and their 18-month-old son, Jordan, and their 9-week-old son, Jackson.

Like Garner Thomas, Brannock had never seen a college basketball player in person.

“You can’t get a ticket to Cameron,” Brannock said, referring to Duke’s home court. “I get a chance to see them for free.”

Brannock’s oldest son, who sported a Cameron Crazies T-shirt, won’t remember that he spent the afternoon cheering. And the younger son, Jackson, slept through the whole thing.

But others got a chance to stoke their dreams Wednesday. That included Garner Thomas. He already wants to do what Tyler Hansbrough does.

“I want to go to Carolina,” he told his mother earlier this season. “I want to play basketball.”

So, if the NCAA tournament comes back to Greensboro in 2022, remember that name.

Contact Donald W. Patterson at 373-7027 or don.patterson@news-record.com