Nov. 16, 2009
by Helen Buchanan, UNC Athletic Communications
CHAPEL HILL - Deon Thompson started the season feeling pretty good about leading a defending national champion squad full of new faces and multitudes of talent. More than anything, he welcomed the pressures that come with being the sole senior from his entering class still at UNC.
"This team is probably the best thing to happen to me," Thompson says, "It's making me more accountable every day and being a leader I have to show up every day, in practice and in games, for our team to be good."
So when Thompson was called for a technical foul in the first half of Sunday night's game against Valparaiso, needless to say he was disappointed in himself.
"It definitely made me mad, I don't want to be a negative towards my team" the senior from Torrance, Calif., says, "That was a bad play on my part, and for me being a senior, I've got to be smarter than that."
So what is Thompson's answer to mistakes that hurt the team in game time? Accountability. He wants to make sure that the rest of the team knows what it means to be a team player, a Carolina player.
"Every time you put this jersey on, you have to play hard. We have a Carolina Way here, it's a high standard," Thompson says, "I want to pass that on to [the freshmen and the team] so that when I leave, they'll think, `Oh, Deon wouldn't have done that or Deon would have done that.'"
And Thompson made up for it. He went 4-4 from the line, scored 20 points, and tallied three assists and eight rebounds in his 30 minutes, the most any Tar Heel did for the night. He wants that streak of accountability to continue this season, especially in New York where the Tar Heels will face off against Ohio State on Thursday night in Madison Square Garden.
"We definitely have to show up, there are some big-time teams that we'll be playing against," he says, "I'll definitely have to lead by example at that point."
