President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, were sitting courtside for tipoff of the Carrier Classic on the flight deck of the Carl Vinson, which six months earlier buried Osama bin Laden at sea. After all, President Barack Obama sat at midcourt as the teams played the first college hoops game on an active flat top.
The Veterans Day game was conceived by Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis as a salute to the military. Most of the 8,111 fans were active-duty military.
"It's a loss but at the end of the day it's a win because of what we did," Draymond Green said after pulling down a career-high 18 rebounds for the Spartans.
For this night, though, the focus was on the first college hoops game on an active carrier. The court was set up between the carrier’s island and the forward catapults.
The Tar Heels and Spartans players had U.S.A. on the back of their jerseys rather than their names. At dusk, the game was paused for the lowering of the American flag.
And say this about the men and women of the military: they know their basketball players.
A handful of former North Carolina stars were walking to their seats when a sailor stopped one of them and said, “Tyler Hansbrough?!”
It was indeed. And there was Vince Carter and Bobby Frasor, getting mobbed for autographs by sailors and Marines waiting for the game.
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