University Of North Carolina

North Carolina coaches and players get lively while discussing freshman forward Marvin Williams, challenging each other for top-cheerleader status. Few freshmen have made a bigger difference at Chapel Hill, and players say they're better off for having been his teammate. This season might have been their only chance. Williams, who considered turning pro after high school, could be among the top three players selected in June's NBA draft, according to talent evaluators.

The fans' mandate has been clear since Coach Roy Williams returned home to North Carolina: Bring back the glory. He's working quickly. North Carolina on Sunday took another significant step, returning to the Sweet 16 with a 92-65 victory over Iowa State in the second round of the Syracuse Regional at the Charlotte Coliseum.

North Carolina was missing its leader, but a goal still was obtainable when Sean May took charge. The All-American junior center provided an even bigger inside presence while standout junior swingman Rashad McCants sat out the last four games of the regular season because of an intestinal disorder.

It seems like the good old days for North Carolina, or at least much better than recent times. The second-ranked Tar Heels are again atop the Atlantic Coast Conference, among the nation's elite and united under Coach Roy Williams, who in less than two years has helped to heal the "Carolina Family" after the brief and stormy reign of former coach Matt Doherty. North Carolina is positioned to win its first outright ACC title since Hall of Fame coach Dean Smith still worked at the Dean E.

Playwrights and pop singers -- from Luis Valdez ("Zoot Suit") to the Cherry Poppin' Daddies ("Zoot Suit Riot") -- have elevated the 1942 slaying known as the Sleepy Lagoon murder and the so-called Zoot Suit Riot of 1943 to mythic status in the popular culture.

It'll be pop and circumstance at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte's graduation ceremony next month, with Clay Aiken among the graduating class. The "American Idol" runner-up will pick up his diploma Dec. 20, his publicist said. And for only the second time in the school's seven-year history, graduation guests must have tickets to attend. Each ticket will be printed with a bar code and scanned at the door to prevent the use of counterfeits.

Roy Williams sat in his office in the Dean E. Smith Center and remembered how he had anxiously scanned a third-floor hallway at the Los Angeles Athletic Club in April, searching for a pay phone. The way Williams tells it, if he had found it -- it is tucked away in the business center next to the bar -- he would still be the coach at Kansas.

Liberalism is "living on borrowed time -- taking for granted the spiritual and cultural resources that liberals depend on but do nothing to replenish," writes historian David L. Chappell, revivifying an old argument in his stunning reinterpretation of the American civil rights movement as a profoundly illiberal undertaking.