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GREENSBORO - The national dialogue between the president and the coaches continued into Friday, which was the day coaches decided it was time to move on to more pressing concerns. If there ever was an indication of how big basketball is in North Carolina, this was it.

Rick Barnes of Texas has watched it from various angles through the years, from his younger days in Hickory to his coaching days at Clemson and now with Texas. And if not for twists of fate here and there, Barnes might still be here. Unlike many coaches across the country who have, shall we say, mixed emotions about Tobacco Road basketball, Barnes has always looked at it with wonder.

His goal was to coach in the ACC, and probably one of the North Carolina schools, though he's never quite said that.

"Obviously, where I grew up, that was my goal, to coach in the ACC," he said Friday on the eve of the second-round game between Texas and Duke.

Barnes was a Catawba County kid, a 1973 graduate of Hickory High School and a Red Tornado to this day. He would go to Lenoir-Rhyne College, where he played on the exact same court where his high school team played.

It's hardly the fertile crescent of basketball, but you could put together a pretty good team of players who sprang from the hills around highways 150 and 321, players such as David Thompson and James Worthy and Chris Washburn and Tony Byers and Sleepy Floyd and Ranzino Smith. Barnes grew up watching and hearing about Raeford Wells and Jerry Wells and avoided the local mills and dared to dream of coaching basketball.

After Barnes finished college, with few prospects for a PE teacher coming out of L-R, a friend invited him to Greensboro to watch the 1977 ACC tournament. It was that spark, he said, that convinced him to make his dream come true.

How his career path took him to Texas and not to Durham or Raleigh or Winston-Salem is a long story, but he's destined to slip in and out of the state's basketball lore until he retires.

That's the appeal of basketball in North Carolina, something that becomes larger than life to some, requiring life-long allegiances and grudges that never go away. He'll be a part of it again tonight when Texas plays Duke and Mike Krzyzewski, the man who interviewed Barnes for a job back in the early '80s.

They were in a restaurant in Durham, and the new Duke coach said something to the effect that Barnes might be pulled in too many directions coaching in his home state. Barnes was all of about 27 and told Krzyzewski that there was no way anyone in Durham would know him.

"All at once -- I kid you not -- someone from Hickory walked by," he said Friday, recounting the long-ago interview.

"Rick Barnes, what are you doing here?" the man said.

Barnes didn't get the job.

He would coach at George Mason and Providence before landing the ACC job that brought him back into North Carolina lore. His famous argument with Dean Smith is still one of the great moments in basketball history here, and he knows it will come into play again tonight when Texas faces Krzyzewski and Duke.

Barnes knows some fans will remember it, probably boo him for that transgression, then root against Duke anyway.

"They don't pull for each other," he said of the Big Four schools.

More than one has called for his services through the years, and he's felt the tug to return to his home state. He said this week he was happy at Clemson and is happy at Texas. Duke didn't hire him, and N.C. State couldn't during its desperate search three years ago. All in all, Barnes decided to stay in Texas and watch the Tobacco Road circus from afar.

He arrived here this week just as the president started talking to the coaches, just as the nation's sports fans concentrated on the big toe of the Carolina point guard, just as Duke rolled in off another ACC tournament championship. They were all thrown together in Greensboro, the coliseum he visited all those years ago and decided to become a college coach, the site of his run-in with Dean, the place he learned to distrust then embrace as he fought the paranoia of all ACC coaches not on Tobacco Road.

"I always thought the tournament here was the best I'd ever been a part of," Barnes said Friday. "The Atlantic Coast Conference tournament and Greensboro, the way this town embraced it. Sometimes it's best to leave well enough alone. I always believed the ACC tournament should be here."

Sometimes opposing coaches come to such realizations slowly, even grudgingly. Sometimes they never come around at all. Rick Barnes is from here, and in this state, that means something. Eventually, he learned that it meant something to him, too. He didn't have to come home again for good. He could just drop in, brush up against it and still make basketball history in North Carolina.

A stunning win tonight would become part of the running story line in this state, a story that demands good guys and bad guys and guys from Hickory to tell the never-ending tale that no one from outside North Carolina understands anyway.

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