Chapel Hill's Tobacco Rogues

Basketball as conducted in the state of North Carolina provides sufficient excuse for Yankees with four-year visas to play each other while the competing bands offer separate but equally enthusiastic versions of Dixie—so that the fans can go berserk in turn. It is a satisfactory arrangement for all, and it reached a climax exactly a decade ago when the University of North Carolina won the national championship behind a player with the fine old southern-planter name of Lenny Rosenbluth. The custom is now exemplified again at UNC by a couple of 6'3" All-America tobacco rogues who have come to Chapel Hill from the more sophisticated world of Georgetown, in the District of Columbia, and the more rugged one of Catasauqua, Pa.

Those two players, who have led the Tarheels to a 16-2 overall record, 8-0 in the Atlantic Coast Conference and a ranking as No. 4 in the nation, are Bob Lewis and Larry Miller, or, as they are known, surreptitiously now, in the underground, the L&M boys. Lewis and Miller used to be openly advertised as such, but "usually reliable sources" report that other tobacco companies in the state—who have been known to give a dollar and a quarter to the university—felt this an unfair plug. University officials deny this, but where there's smoking, there's probably been some firing, and references to L&M have disappeared as suddenly as some of your favorite Red Chinese.

Lewis and Miller wear Nos. 22 and 44 respectively and dress in uniforms of baby blue, just like Elgin Baylor and Jerry West of the Lakers, who are always celebrated as the "best one-two punch in basketball." North Carolina's uniforms beat those of the pros, however, for they must be the only ones around that even have big numbers on the socks—very helpful if you are trained in reading the spots on the balls rolling around on a pool table. The outline of a little foot, toes and all, appears on the pants to show that these are the Tar Heels.

Lewis' uniform does not fit as snugly as those of his teammates. He is best described by his father, John Lewis, an electrical engineer, as "poor old skinny Bob." He eats well enough, but "the nervous energy just sort of runs out of me," he says, and his weight seldom goes above 175. His cheeks are hollowed, and his eyes are surrounded by great dark circles; since the eyes are precisely the color of the Carolina-blue ring that he wears, they shine like two mountain lakes in a dark forest. He even stammers a little, just enough to make him more appealing in his deceptively anxious way. Actually, his nervous energy comes out mostly as confidence.

Miller, if it is possible, is even more sure of himself, but then his faith is founded on more substantial ground. For if Lewis is the soft pack, Miller is a hard, flip-top box. He has cut his weight to about 200—which serves to make his muscles more revealingly awesome. When he came to Chapel Hill, he favored a motorcycle-rider hairdo—close on top, long sides brushed back (and he had clothes to match)—but now as a junior he wears a proper brushover collegiate cut. Miller is a lefty who parts his hair on the right; Lewis is right-handed and parts his hair on the left. They are also mama's boys, since Mrs. Virginia Lewis played semipro basketball and Mrs. Magdaline Miller played semipro soft-ball.

Last season, their first together, Lewis averaged 27 points a game, Miller 21, and together they helped make UNC the best-shooting team in the nation, but the team record was only 16-11. This year, as three good sophomores moved on to the starting team, Lewis and Miller changed their styles. With two real-live native Tar Heels coming in up front—6'10½" Rusty Clark and 6'8" Bill Bunting—Miller has not been required to concentrate so much on rebounding. Instead, working more from a corner, he has been able to exhibit an outside shooting touch that had not been on display since he was considered the best senior high school player in the country three years ago. His average has gone up to 23 points a game.

Lewis, shifted to the backcourt to team with still another sophomore, 6'3½" Dick Grubar, has undergone something close to a complete metamorphosis. He is not only playing a fine, conscientious defense for the first time but is taking only a dozen shots a game—six less than last year. He has, in fact, become so smitten with playmaking and the general joys of selflessness that by last week he was just about killing the team with his kindness. Dean Smith, the erudite young Tar Heel coach who majored in math at Kansas and reads theology for diversion, expected Lewis' average to drop when he moved to guard but, Smith says, "I haven't been stupid enough to try to turn Lewis completely into a playmaker." The statement hardly flatters Lewis' powers of intellect, since he seems to shoot these days only as an exercise in self-torture. In the Wake Forest game last week—which the Tar Heels were lucky to win in overtime—Lewis made his new average (17) mostly by drawing charging fouls. He took only nine shots. A few days earlier at Virginia he went up to shoot, spotted Miller underneath at such a late instant that when he switched and passed, the pass rimmed the basket.

After the Wake Forest game, which embarrassed Lewis and Miller, the two held a little conference and concluded what everybody else already knew—that if selfishness is one way to lose games, rampant altruism is surely another. So against Georgia Tech in Atlanta on Saturday, Lewis promptly showed he was ready for a change by throwing up an impossible, cockeyed shot the first time he laid hands on the ball—just to show he could do it. Altogether, he took a more appropriate number of shots (13) than he had been taking, but the Yellow Jackets—who have won nine of their last 10—shot 58% and clung to the remnants of an earlier 14-point lead to win 82-80. Lewis and Miller were the only nonsophomores to play for Carolina, since two of the three top reserves, seniors Dick Gauntlett and Mark Mirken, had to stay home to take law exams. (In the last five years, 17 of the 27 Tar Heel lettermen have gone on to graduate school.) Lewis and Miller led the sophomores on the comeback against Tech but could never get the Tar Heels in front.

"I think Bob and I finally understand," Miller says, "that for the team to really go, we have to be right together. This is a good team, but we can carry a good team and make it a great one." Miller speaks that way, directly and positively. The word he keeps using, which is certainly appropriate for him, is "dominate."

"Too often," he says, "I relax and get carried by the tempo of the game, rather than dominating the tempo myself. I know I'm the kind of player who has the power to break a game open. I'm explosive, and I can dominate things."