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| Photo by Agatha Lund |
Swishes fizzle-cracked like bottle rockets; a brick off back iron sounded like someone had whacked a sheet of aluminum siding with a crow bar. And into that eerie stillness stepped Courtney Banghart's first full, true recruiting class in Chapel Hill.
Alyssa Ustby has noted a few times since that she actually dragged down the overall ranking of that freshman class. As absurd as it seems now, at the time Banghart was taking something of a gamble on the Minnesotan. There are no words in any language to properly articulate the magnitude of the payoff.
The silence gave way to a tremor which begat a low rumble which swelled to a crescendo which ended in a roar. Only one player stayed to experience the full decibels of the finale.
Look at Lyss' stats from that first game, a tidy 90-61 demolition of Radford in Carmichael: 13 points, six rebounds, three assists, two steals, and a block in 26:07. Only two numbers are wildly out of alignment with her career at UNC: The six (she would average north of eight boards from her Sophomore year onward and 9.5 in each of her final two seasons), and the 26:07, which is practically lollygagging by Ustby Standards. She clocked well above 30 minutes a game for her career, including a grueling 33.9 her senior season. This COVID-granted fifth year she finally caught a break thanks to some improved bench depth, and was allowed to luxuriate at a comparatively chill 29.9.
The only other anomaly of that game: she came off the bench, which would never happen again after December 14th of that year. Everything else in that first box score is a startlingly accurate forecast of the next five seasons. Alyssa Ustby didn't become the most reliable and essential player in the revival and restoration of Tar Heel Women's Basketball, she WAS THAT GIRL, right from jump. A truly remarkable combination of Swiss-Army-Knife versatility and Swiss-Watch precision and dependability.
Offensively, she was a wing whose purview eventually stretched from a three to a small-ball five, and even a nominal 2-guard in a pinch. Her arsenal of low- and mid-post moves and footwork was astounding by the end. Sliding from sheer bully power to sly angles and step-throughs. Shots from every conceivable vector, like a veteran pitcher changing arm slots and release points on a whim. That nifty bag would eventually clear 1,000 career points. (She also, tentatively, hoisted the occasional trey, and while this was never her sweet spot, she did seem to hit them precisely when Carolina needed it most some games.)
Her prowess on the other end of the floor was equally special. Strong, smart, and capable of playing far bigger than her size, yet simultaneously nimble with cat-quick hands and great lateral movement. Top it all with near-omniscient court awareness that allowed her to anchor and morph the defense into the suffocating swarm CB has always hung her coaching hat on. The disruption, the denial of position or driving lane, the steal, or the block loomed wherever she was on the floor.
And of course, the rebounding. There is nothing that has defined Alyssa Ustby's tenure in Tar Heel Blue like her work on the boards. And it goes far beyond just the dizzying numbers. How is a captaincy conferred, leadership earned, and a standard set without having to say a word? A diligence and persistence bordering on monomania, is how. You outwork everyone else on the floor, every time, always, in pursuit of errant shots. You feverishly clean the glass over, under, and around bigger bodies through sheer cussedness and a disregard for your own back, knees, and general personal safety. That's how records which have stood since 1980 finally fall. (Cassette tapes did not overtake vinyl as the top-selling medium for commercially purchased music until 1985; that's how ancient and unreachable 1,251 rebounds was before our girl set foot in Carmichael.)
What did Carolina need? Lyss would provide it, expand upon it, and make it a weapon, every time, no questions asked. When was it needed, and how much of it? No worries, she was good for it all without fail. The defense, the points, the boards were a near certainty, and indefatigably delivered to boot. 37 minutes, 38, 40, more in extenuating circumstances of OT? You can find plenty of those games scattered throughout her career game logs.
These polymath qualities of Ustby's hoop game comport exactly with everything else we know about her. This is, after all, a high school three-sport athlete who also won a PPK competition at the Carolina Spring Game. Someone who spends her down time developing additional outlandish skills like juggling while riding a ripstick. Y'all this woman plays jazz piano. You could not come up with a more perfect analog to her on-court persona than the instrument in any good quintet which can both play the lead *and* demonstrate supreme artistry in comping, in the voicings and colorings that support the other players.
Five years on from that first Radford game, Lyss can look back on a Tar Heel career replete with memorable games, moments and accomplishments. A bevy of wins over State and Dook (including a few rather significant upsets). Vengeance over Louisville, who have habitually been a thorn in Carolina's side since Ustby was in, oh, say, grade school. Some truly breathtaking takedowns of perpetually Top-5 Notre Dame. Two Sweet 16 trips, including what will forever feel like the first major turning point of the Banghart era: that epic 2022 battle with eventual Natty winners South Carolina in which the Heels gave no ground and went nearly to the wire against the best squad in the land. And of course, this year's
Win or lose, Ustby's reliable constancy across so many games makes calling individual memories to mind somewhat difficult, but two come to mind with perfect, crystalline clarity:
January 4th, 2024: a stately little 75-51 romp over 'Cuse. Carmichael was rowdy that night, a testament to the tent-revival transformation Ustby's class had already wrought. Sometime around the middle of the second quarter, the esteemed dean of UNC Women's Hoops scribes RL Bynum pointed out on Twitter that Lyss had a real shot at a triple-double, along with the somewhat shocking revelation that it would be the first in program history. The rebounds came first (of course), and then the assists. Word of what we might be about witness shot through the stands like chain lightning. When Lyss got to nine points in the third quarter, the whole crowd went to Defcon Two, celebration-ally speaking. Then Ustby stepped to the stripe a little later in the quarter. Rarely has the crowd-clap-hands-up sounded louder or been accompanied by more sincere prayers. The shot dropped. 10 points. Trip-Dub. Defcon One, and a fusillade of wild cheers and applause. The most endearing part of the whole moment was the look of genuine confusion on Alyssa Ustby's face when Banghart pulled her so she could get her flowers, followed by giddy, dawning comprehension that she was the reason for the delirium that made freebie had unleashed when she found out what she'd just done.
That one was for her, a pause where we got to shower her with so much love that was both in recognition of the specific feat she accomplished, but also a sort of tidal wave of back-loaded affection for a player who rarely had the spot light but was nearly always the fulcrum around which Carolina would pivot on a given night.
The second was much more recent, and probably will be the first image most Heels fans conjure up when we think of her: Standing on the scorer's table after dispatching West Virginia and earning the second Sweet 16 trip in four years. The whole weekend had already been special; Carolina's first time hosting postseason games in Carmichael in ages and a packed-out barn that showed how large a fire the team had lit under the fan base and the community. She'd secured the rebounding record the game before, against Oregon State. The atmosphere felt then remarkably similar to the Triple Double Game, a win comfortably in the bag and a whole crowd counting down to Alyssa Ustby doing something miraculous. The scorer's table moment topped it, somehow. The team had been making a victory lap around the perimeter of the court, soaking up the cheers and adulation they'd rightfully earned and basking in their accomplishments. When she hit that table, screaming with her arms up, y'all, the roof came off the joint. This was what she stayed for. The belief in a vision of Carmichael looking like that, sounding like that. The bookend roar to the silence she started in.
And it had to just absolutely, thunderously sing for Alyssa Ustby. After having been denied her Senior Day by the rarest of all things, an injury that actually kept her heretofore Terminator-esque self off the floor, she was in Carmichael one last time for this moment. Five years of grind and sweat ringing in the rafters not just for her but for what she helped build.
A while back, Courtney Banghart and Carolina took a chance on a kid from Minnesota and asked her to be part of laying down a new-era foundation. Thank you, Alyssa Ustby, for staying for that roar, which was also the sound of the foundation settling. The future of Tar Heel Basketball is bright and solid and assured in large part because you spent five incredible years in Chapel Hill. Any rock, after all, can be a cornerstone. When it's a precious mineral that's been cut and polished over time, you call it a gem.
