The common thread through this journey, aside from The Goddess Sylvia Hatchell and some of the other mainstays on the coaching staff, has been Jamie Cherry, the only player thus far whose entire Carolina career we've watched unfold from the bleachers. These four years have been so incredibly special, and a lot of that has to do with the joy of watching #10 perform miracles.
Did we need a huge shot in a critical moment, something to swing the momentum of a half or beat a buzzer? Watch Jamie coming up the court. Maybe she runs a dribble hand off and gets the ball back in the corner after a few passes tilt the defense. Maybe she barrels into the lane, an undersized dynamo cutting through the teeth of much bigger defenders, twisting and darting impossibly to the rim for the And-1. Or maybe she just stops at the top of the key and drains a casually vicious three right in some poor defender's mug. She was absolutely fearless, always. No moment was too big. Jamie Cherry, more often than not, was going to get the bucket we needed. Then she'd streak back down the court on defense, making the "three" sign with both hands. In those moments (and there were many; so, so many), she was a compact ball of exuberance, defiance, and joy. She'd be screaming. She'd be laughing.
We also watched her grow into a superb floor general. Her freshman year, she was backing up the brilliant Latifah Coleman (now the team's video coordinator), and would sometimes push the envelope with some ill-advised passes and poor decisions. When Sylvia handed her the keys to the offense before her sophomore season, Jamie took them with aplomb. Witnessing her court vision evolve in real time and in person was a pure delight. She started seeing everything at half-speed, using her speed and athleticism the way Tar Heel point guards have since time immemorial. Suddenly, she was whipping entry passes in transition that connected where they had been picked off before. In the half court, she was probing defenses for a sliver of daylight and then swinging to an open shooter or slotting a pass into the post with killer accuracy. And always moving, cutting, working to adjust and calibrate the offense and find the little things off-ball to maximize every possession's efficacy.Defensively, she was always a little better than you'd think if you hadn't watched nearly every minute of her career. She picked plenty of pockets with her gunslinger-quick hands and jumped passing lanes with brilliant anticipation. When a switch occurred on a pcik'n'roll and she wound up guarding an opposing player with a foot of height and 50 pounds on her, she just bodied up and got in their grill. Good luck getting Jamie Cherry to give an inch to anyone, ever.
This above all: Jamie never stopped running. I mean that almost literally, y'all. Her tenure at Carolina coincided with an absolutely brutal, multi-season rash of injuries crippling the team's depth. Compounding the issue were a handful of transfers precipitated by the guillotine of NCAA sanctions (the blade of which never actually fell) stemming from the academic scandal. The Heels' bench was paper thin, with virtually no one else capable of being a successful primary ball handler. So Jamie played and played and ran and ran. Through twisted ankles and torqued knees and aches and sprains and a busted nose that required a Rip-Hamilton-esque face mask for a stretch, she simply did not quit. She hit the deck for every loose ball, she pinballed off waves of bigger defenders in the paint, she slid into position to contest and drew charges. She took a preposterous amount of abuse and just kept on playing her ass off. Take out her freshman season as a bench player, and she averaged a staggering 36.4 minutes a game over the remainder of her career. No rest, no breaks, all motor and fury and passion all the time always. Jamie Cherry is a Terminator. If you dropped an ACME safe on her like she was Wile E. Coyote or ran over her with a semi truck, she'd just shrug it off and call for the ball. Then she'd dribble up court, set the offense, and more likely than not, make the perfect pass or hit the shot.
Jamie's Senior Night ended in a loss to Syracuse. It wasn't what anyone wanted, and certainly not the Carmichael farewell she deserved, but basketball is like that sometimes. As she left that court for the last time, we watched her hunched over, head down, sobbing as sophomore Olivia Smith wrapped her in a hug. But then, the last instant before they hit the tunnel, Jaime's head lifted, and she raised a fist into the air. It was both a goodbye and a statement off accomplishment. Everything she'd worked for, all the sweat and grind and drills and sprints and shots and passes. Not just at Carolina, but her whole life. A million bounces of a ball, a million jumpers, a million hours of training and film sessions. Jamie gave so much of her young life to hoops, and we were fortunate enough to watch her incredible run at UNC. She's not done with anything, obviously. That last Senior Night moment, hand raised and head high, was just as much a beginning as an ending. Basketball is probably behind her, at least as a player. (Though who knows, maybe she'll wind up coaching or scouting somewhere down the line.) In the swath of history and the wider world, Jamie Cherry's life is just beginning. Whatever awaits her, she will doubtless meet it with the same ferocity and brilliance and joy she brought to every game.
