Revision as of 23:09, 30 March 2011

Blue Steel

Blue Steel
Blue Steel
	2010–11 North Carolina Tar Heels men's basketball team
	File:Pg2 g bsteel sy 200.jpg
University	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
First season	2010 2010-2011 Season; 28-7 (.800)
Head coach	Roy Williams (8th season)
Conference	Atlantic Coast Conference; D1 Division
Arena	Dean Smith Center ; (capacity: 21,750)
Nickname	Tar Heels
Colors	Carolina Blue and White;
Uniforms
Home	Away ;

Blue Steel is a recently coined term used to describe the North Carolina Tar Heels Men’s Basketball Team walk-ons. Blue Steel is composed of 6 players on the 2010-2011 team who, despite the fact that they are non-scholarship athletes, have a position on the team and play a key role in its development. They are lead by Basketball Hall of Fame coach, Roy Williams, who is third all time in the NCAA for winning percentage.

History

Coinage of Name

The term Blue Steel was created by walk-on member Stewart Cooper, a Junior out of Forsyth Country Day School, and has spread like wildfire. It is a term that is now widely known and used by members of the student body, faculty, Tar Heel fans and more recently by sports reporters throughout the country.

On the name Blue Steel:

BOLICK: Williams called us a combination of "J.V." or "Parentheses." On the actual practice plans, all the walk-ons' names were on the practice sheets in parentheses next to the player they'd substitute in for. So he'd say, "Parentheses, get in there." We said, "We can't go with being called the parentheses."

COOPER: We didn't want to tell Williams to start calling us [Blue Steel]. We told one of the assistant coaches.

BOLICK: The assistant coaches started calling us Blue Steel at the beginning of the week. By the end of the week, Coach Williams had caught on as well.

COOPER: It was pretty funny the first time he said it. He said he liked it. He's never really gone back.

JOHNSTON: It definitely started off in practice, not as sort of a schtick-type thing, which is what it turned into. When he first said it in a game, we looked at each other like, "Nice."[1]

Walk-ons

Roster and Statistics

Daniel Bolick

Van Hatchell

David Dupont

Patrick Crouch

D.J. Johnston

Stewart Cooper

Significance to Others

Twitter

Blue Steel has approximately 6,000 Twitter fans. Some examples of Blue Steel tweets are:

• "You're welcome Tar Heel fans. If we didn't get dunked on every day in practice, you wouldn't be able to see it in the game. #feelthesteel"

• "bucket, drawn charge, airball and one of the biggest blocks ever in the nc state game...the world saw all aspects of Steel's game. #respect"

• "We're gonna have a far better view than the "crazies" and we didn't waste all of January sleeping in a tent. #feelthesteel"

Videos

Sports Reporters

T-shirts

Charity Date Auction

List of Sources

[[2]] Blue Steel: North Carolina's cult stars

@@ Line 51: / Line 51: @@
 ===On the name Blue Steel:===
-BOLICK: [Williams] called us a combination of "J.V." or "Parentheses." On the actual practice plans, all the walk-ons' names were on the practice sheets in parentheses next to the player they'd substitute in for. So he'd say, "Parentheses, get in there." We said, "We can't go with being called the parentheses."
+BOLICK: Williams called us a combination of "J.V." or "Parentheses." On the actual practice plans, all the walk-ons' names were on the practice sheets in parentheses next to the player they'd substitute in for. So he'd say, "Parentheses, get in there." We said, "We can't go with being called the parentheses."
-COOPER: We didn't want to tell [Williams] to start calling us [Blue Steel]. We told one of the assistant coaches.
+COOPER: We didn't want to tell Williams to start calling us [Blue Steel]. We told one of the assistant coaches.
 BOLICK: The assistant coaches started calling us Blue Steel at the beginning of the week. By the end of the week, Coach Williams had caught on as well.
@@ Line 60: / Line 60: @@
 JOHNSTON: It definitely started off in practice, not as sort of a schtick-type thing, which is what it turned into. When he first said it in a game, we looked at each other like, "Nice."[http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=wilson/110318_blue_steel&sportCat=ncb]
 ===Walk-ons===