He just brought such an intimidation to the court. He could go in a crowd and get a rebound. With him in a trap, you weren’t getting around him. You have this all-conference defensive end now on the basketball court and we could trap everything. He changed the dynamic (with) how he played. He can really, really help us.’ And he was a contributor his first year playing college basketball as a sophomore on a Final Four team. So sophomore year, Ed Cota and myself told coach (Bill Guthridge), ‘Hey, man, we need this kid. They were really small, tight, and Pep just wasn’t about that. But at the time, the JV was wearing the uniforms that coach Phil Ford played in. I think they were trying to make him play JV. He averaged 7.1 points and 4.0 rebounds and started three games in 2000-01, before concentrating on football his final year in Chapel Hill.Ĭapel: He was my suitemate in the dorm. As a reserve forward, he averaged 4.5 points and 3.5 rebounds for a Tar Heels team that advanced to the Final Four. You just hadn’t seen anybody that size, with probably zero body fat on him, that could do the stuff athletically he could do.Īfter redshirting as a freshman at UNC in 1998, Peppers played both sports the following year. He was a guy that could run and jump at that size. ![]() He was bigger, faster and he was super athletic. And then that’s when I saw this guy that was 6-6, probably at the time around 260 and he was everything I had heard he was. They had Brendan Haywood, Kris Lang, Craig Dawson, Antwan Scott, Ervin Murray - guys that went to Wake. The team we played, they were called the Carolina Warriors. He went to Carolina, played football as well. And I played for Boo Williams out of Virginia. We were playing in an AAU tournament in Orlando. Played football, super athlete, played basketball as well - and could jump out of the gym. But in playing in AAU, I kept hearing about this kid from North Carolina, who was bigger than everybody. Ninth grade we moved from North Carolina to Virginia, my dad got the job at Old Dominion. Pitt assistant basketball coach Jason Capel, who played with Peppers at UNC, said Peppers stood out on a basketball court, even when surrounded by some of the country’s best players.Ĭapel: I had heard of him by the time I got to eighth grade. Given his name and his size, it was a given that Peppers would play basketball. 18, 1980, in Wilson, N.C., named for his father’s two favorite basketball players - Julius Erving and Walt Frazier. But over the course of nearly two decades in the NFL - not to mention his years at UNC, Southern Nash High School in eastern North Carolina and on the AAU basketball circuit - Peppers created hundreds of moments for teammates, opponents, coaches and fans. It was both the best and worst script that could have been written, depending on your point of view. Peppers then ran away from the pile, put his left index finger to his facemask and shushed the crowd of 73,464, half of which seemed to be cheering him while the rest booed him. The 6-7 Peppers easily shed tackle Geoff Schwartz’s cut block, jumped to bat Clausen’s pass high into the air, then laid out from his knees to snag the ball before it hit the ground. But Peppers’ interception of a pass by the Panthers’ overmatched rookie quarterback in Peppers’ 2010 homecoming game encapsulated everything I’d heard about him. Of course, I remember watching Peppers attack rims and quarterbacks as a two-sport stud at North Carolina.īut he had left for Chicago just before I joined the Panthers beat in 2010, and the stories of his athletic feats and derring-do had an apocryphal ring to them. ![]() I’ve always been fascinated by the start of Peppers’ career, in part because I wasn’t in Charlotte to cover it.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |