Category Archives: The skinny

Middle Creek, Green Hope volleyball take first and second in final statewide top 25

Middle Creek, even without its best player, came out on top of the N.C. High School Athletic Association 4A volleyball championship — more than enough reason to take home the No. 1 spot in the final HighSchoolOT statewide top 25 rankings. Green Hope, the 4A East runner-up to Middle Creek, was second, followed by fellow 4A East team Chapel Hill in third. Kings Mountain, the 3A champ, was fourth followed by Cardinal Gibbons in fifth. Please click here for more.

In Raleigh, Theismann discusses life after football’s most famous injury

The College Football Hall of Famer and Super Bowl-winning quarterback was giving a lecture entitled “The Challenge of Change” at the Cardinal community in North Hills. He is no stranger to the topic. The biggest change, of course, was the career-ending injury he suffered on “Monday Night Football” when he suffered a gruesome compound fracture of his leg while being sacked by Lawrence Taylor. Please click here for more.

CapitalSportsNC.com wins national writing award in support of a friend

Clifton Barnes of Cary has won a national writing award for an online post promoting high school classmate Buck Williams for inclusion in the basketball hall of fame.

Writing for his CapitalSportsNC.com website, Barnes won an Award of Excellence from the DC area-based Communications Concepts through its 2022 Awards for Publication Excellence competition.

Barnes, a UNC-Chapel Hill journalism and political science grad, was one of only two people across the nation to win Awards of Excellence in the Best Single Blog Post writing category. Dr. Stephanie Graff of Brown University was the other winner.

Admittedly, Barnes was irked when he realized that his old friend Charles “Buck” Williams had been eligible for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame since 2004 but hadn’t even been nominated until 2020, when his nomination failed to get enough votes for entry.

Williams, who led the Rocky Mount Gryphons to the state 4-A basketball title in high school in 1978, went on to be an all-conference player twice at Maryland, an NBA all-star three times, an all-NBA defensive team selection four times and served a term as president of the NBA Players Association.

Barnes’ opinion article was a “powerful” piece of persuasion, the judges said, adding that the article makes a good case that since Williams “wasn’t a brash, trash-talking, jerk of a player, he was overlooked and underappreciated.”

John L. Doleva, the president and CEO of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, received a copy of the article. He enjoyed it so much – calling it well written and a joy to read – that he included it in Williams’ nomination file.

Unfortunately, Williams still failed to garner enough votes earlier this year for election into the hall of fame. Barnes said he will update the article each year, and promote a letter-writing campaign if he has to, until Williams is admitted into the elite group.

Judges said while the article forcefully lays out the case for Williams, it was done in a heartwarming way. They said the article had convinced them, adding “Good luck Buck!”

In the article, Barnes told the story of a high school analytics group in New York that proved statistically that Williams deserves to be in the hall of fame. Then Barnes took a more personal account of Williams as a person and why that should also play into his inclusion into the hall of fame.

Williams was so touched by the efforts of teenagers who never saw him play that he got behind their effort and even wants to start a similar analytics club at Rocky Mount High School, perhaps in honor of his high school coach Reggie Henderson who passed away in May of this year.

Before his death, Henderson and his wife Beverly sent a note to Barnes after he posted the article saying they agreed that Williams should be in the hall of fame and that it was a “beautiful article filled with wonderful thoughts and facts about a most special person.”

Barnes has now won a writing award in the APEX national competition 12 years in a row, including six awards for his website CapitalSportsNC.com. That site features articles from all the top media outlets and sports teams in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area along with his own original sports commentary.

Barnes served as director of communications for the N.C. Bar Association for 15 years and, before that, was a newspaper writer and editor.

Today he is a freelance writer, editor and Web developer who owns several websites, including one that chronicles each UNC basketball game. He is also a commercial real estate correspondent for the Triangle Business Journal.

Barnes is also known for spear-heading movements to get a highway marker for legendary comedic bandleader Kay Kyser in Rocky Mount and a yearly Hometown Spirit Award in Cary.

Along with his wife Andrea, he raises their 16-year-old son Will Griffin. Barnes is the son of W.C. (deceased) and Lorraine Barnes of Atlantic Beach.

The winning article can be accessed at http://capitalsportsnc.com/?p=1574844.

Rocky Mount’s Buck Williams should be in the Hall of Fame

By Clifton Barnes

(NOTE: Barnes is a Rocky Mount Senior High classmate and former junior high football/basketball teammate of Buck Williams.)

Brash. Trash talker. Controversial. Showy. A jerk. Ah, no.

Competitive. Hard worker. Consistent. Team player. A winner. Yeah, that’s more like it.

That’s Rocky Mount native Buck Williams.

You could also say he’s overlooked, underappreciated, forgotten even.

Known through much of his childhood as Charles, the Buck that came to be led the Rocky Mount Gryphons to the 1978 4A state basketball title. He took his game to the University of Maryland, where he helped lead the Terrapins to a 64-28 record over three years. He was ACC rookie of the year in 1979 and earned all-conference honors in 1980 and 1981.

He was the third player picked in the 1981 NBA draft, going to the New Jersey Nets where he was selected to the NBA All-Star team three times. He was traded to the Portland Trailblazers, where he made the NBA All-Defensive first or second team four times and helped lead the Blazers to two NBA finals. He finished his 17-year career with the New York Knicks in 1998. His number 52 was retired by the Nets.

Williams, who served a term as president of the NBA Players Association, has been eligible for consideration for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame since 2004 but was never nominated until 2020.

Why not? Some might say probably because he wasn’t all those things listed in the first paragraph. In addition to not being flashy, he also never won an NBA title, through no fault of his own. He’s also never been a self-promoter.

But there has been a concerted effort this time to finally get Buck Williams into the Hall of Fame, helped along by a high school analytics club in New York.

A group of students, 14-18 years old, at Fordham Prep in the Bronx took on the task of comparing Williams’ stats to other players already in the Hall of Fame. None of the students were born when Williams retired and none of them knew who he was until watching a video titled, “Portland Trail Blazers: Return to Rip City.”

The Sports Analytics Club Program CEO Robert Clayton, a sports attorney in Washington, D.C. who had known Williams for years, suggested the Fordham group take a look at Williams’ numbers.

“We went into this blindly,” Dr. Raymond Gonzalez, coordinator for the Fordham club, told me. “When the students uncovered the truth, we were blown away. Our stats show an unsung hero that should be in the Hall.”

He said the club compared Williams’ stats to those of seven players already in the Hall of Fame – Walt Bellamy, Vlade Divac, Bob Lanier, Ralph Sampson, Jack Sikma, Nate Thurmond and Chris Webber. “When you lined them up side by side, in almost every category he was No. 1,” Gonzalez said, pointing particularly to his lead in field goal percentage and rebounding.

Williams, at a relatively short 6-foot-8 and a playing weight of only 225 pounds, ranks third all time in offensive rebounds and 16th in total rebounds. As for scoring, when playing in the ACC at Maryland, Williams learned an effective jump hook in order to score over his taller, bigger opponents like Virginia’s Ralph Sampson and Duke’s Mike Gminski. It served him well in the NBA where he averaged a double-double in scoring (12.8 points) and rebounding (10) for his entire career, a rare feat.

The Fordham Prep club compared a relatively obscure statistic that really shows Williams’ worth to his team – win shares and defensive win shares. In short it uses combined player, team and league-wide stats, including points allowed, to show how much players contribute to wins. The results showed that Williams ranks 50th all time.

The unassuming Williams said that he never thought about the Hall of Fame when he was playing and didn’t really think he could be inducted until he heard how he compared with others already in the Hall of Fame.

“These kids that put together this project convinced me that I should be in the Hall of Fame based on the numbers,” Williams said. “It kinda got my juices going. It would be a crowning moment.”

Buck and Mimi Williams.
Buck and Mimi Williams.
He told me he has a good life as a realtor in Potomac, Md. with his cherished wife of 37 years, Mimi, so he’ll be fine if he doesn’t get in. But he really wants it for his former teammates, his friends and his family, which includes two grown sons.

Dr. Gonzalez said he and his students feel as if Williams has become part of their family. They are looking forward to meeting Williams in person one day as they have heard he is “an exceptional human being.”

The folks in his hometown of Rocky Mount know what a genuinely good person he is. And many believe that should also be taken into account when deciding whether or not he should be in the basketball Hall of Fame.

On social media, several people shared comments and anecdotes with me about Buck Williams. Most of the memories revolved around Buck as a person. Among the descriptions were “gentle giant,” “a good sport,” “humble,” “polite,” “well-mannered,” “respectful,” “friendly,” and “kind.”

His basketball prowess is certainly remembered and appreciated too, especially among those who remember how hard he worked to get better and better.

Buck was skinny, a bit lanky and perhaps even a little clumsy as an eighth grader. While he would have been the tallest player on the team, he didn’t play that year. Within a year or so, Buck’s hard work (and the fact that he physically matured and grew into his body, so to speak) turned him into a good ball player. He got stronger and better each year throughout high school, not only becoming the best player on the team but perhaps the best player in the state.

By his senior year, the usually quiet, never cocky Buck Williams had become more confident in himself. Two of Rocky Mount’s best players, Reggie Barrett and Jeffrey Battle, who ended up going to Memphis State on a scholarship, got in foul trouble in the first half of the state championship game in 1978. Rocky Mount coach Reggie Henderson, after the game, said, “Buck came up to me at the halftime break and told me not to worry. He said we had come too far to lose and he would see to it that we didn’t lose.”

Buck scored 28 points – hitting 10 of 13 shots along with eight free throws – and hauled down nine rebounds, earning tournament MVP honors, and leading his team to the state title, 91-83, over Greensboro Grimsley.

Buck likes to point out that he was a country boy that came from humble beginnings. Williams, who is the youngest of six children, learned his work ethic from his parents, Moses and Betty Louise, who grew up sharecropping on farms. Moses even built the house that the family lived in for more than 20 years.

Having someone of Williams’ caliber in the Hall of Fame can do nothing but help the image of the NBA and the Hall itself. It would have a much-needed positive effect on the psyche of Rocky Mount as well. In addition, Buck wants to help start a Sports Analytics Club at Rocky Mount High School as a result of this process.

To bolster his case for induction into the Hall of Fame, there is a bit of a letter-writing campaign among Rocky Mount natives, classmates, teammates and citizens. Anyone can join in. If you’d like to see Buck Williams in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, please send a respectful note to John Doleva, President & CEO, Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, 1000 Hall of Fame Ave, Springfield, MA 01105.

Ask Doleva to share it with the 24 voters, who are unknown to the public. Ten finalists will be named on Feb. 18 so please don’t hold back. Buck Williams never did.

Eddy Alvarez selected as Team USA flag bearer for the Olympic Games 

Alvarez is the first athlete from the sport of baseball to carry the U.S. flag in the Opening Ceremony

TOKYO – U.S. Olympic Baseball Team infielder Eddy Alvarez was selected as Team USA’s flag-bearer for the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020, the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee announced today. The Opening Ceremony will be held on Friday, July 23 at Olympic Stadium in Tokyo.

Four-time Olympic Champion basketball player Sue Bird was also named a Team USA flag bearer for the Opening Ceremony. Alvarez and Bird were chosen by a vote of fellow Team USA athletes and are the first duo to share the honor of leading the delegation into the Opening Ceremony, which serves as the official start to the Games. Of the 613 athletes who were named to the 2020 U.S. Olympic Team, more than 230 are set to walk in Friday’s Opening Ceremony.

In March 2020 – and prior to the decision to postpone the Tokyo Games due to the COVID pandemic – the International Olympic Committee amended its policy to allow national teams to appoint two flag bearers – one female and one male – in a nod to promote gender parity. The IOC also required that at least one male and one female athlete be included in each of the 206 national delegations that will compete in Tokyo.

Alvarez brings Olympic experience to Tokyo having competed in the Olympic Winter Games Sochi 2014 and won a silver medal as part of the 5,000-meter four-man short track speedskating team. Alvarez currently plays professionally in the Miami Marlins Minor League system and, in addition to being the first Winter Olympic Games medalist to play in Major League Baseball, is the first athlete from the sport of baseball to carry the U.S. flag in the Opening Ceremony.

“It is an honor and a privilege to be named as one of the flag bearers by my fellow Team USA athletes for the Opening Ceremony,” said Alvarez. “Being a first-generation Cuban-American, my story represents the American Dream. My family has sacrificed so much for me to have the opportunity to wave this flag proudly. I am grateful for my time with U.S. Speedskating and USA Baseball, as well as for all of my teammates, and I am humbled to lead Team USA into the Tokyo Olympic Games.”

Determined by the language of the host country and according to IOC protocol and executive board decision, Greece will march first, followed by the Refugee Olympic Team second. As upcoming host countries, the United States and France will be two of the final three countries to walk, with host country Japan closing out the Opening Ceremony.

NBC Olympics will provide unprecedented full-day coverage of the Opening Ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics this Friday, July 23. The day will culminate on NBC in what is always one of the most popular nights of the Olympics with the primetime presentation of the Ceremony at 7:30 p.m. ET/4:30 p.m. PT. The day begins on NBC with the network’s first-ever live morning broadcast of an Opening Ceremony at 6:55 a.m. ET/3:55 a.m. PT, followed by a special edition of TODAY with reaction and athlete interviews, and then NBC’s first-ever Olympic Daytime show on the opening Friday of the Games.

Following the year-long postponement of the Games due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Opening Ceremony will take place Friday, July 23, with competition beginning today and concluding Sunday, Aug. 8.

Team USA fans can follow the 2020 U.S. Olympic Team at TeamUSA.org and across Team USA’s social channels on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. The U.S. Olympic Team microsite will offer Team USA results from the Olympic Games, as well as athlete biographies, sport previews, a history book, competition schedules, and facts and figures about the U.S. delegation.

Alvarez, Kivlehan homer for U.S. Olympic team in win

CARY, N.C. – The U.S. Olympic Team kicked off a three-game series against the Collegiate National Team on Sunday night, tuning up for their trip to the Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 with an 8-3 win in a rain-shortened seven-inning game at the USA Baseball National Training Complex in Cary, North Carolina.

Playing against the country’s top collegiate players, the Olympic Team scored eight runs in the game’s first two innings and got five strong innings from starter Scott Kazmir (AAA San Francisco Giants) to secure the series-opening win.

The Olympic Team got started early, with the first three batters reaching base. Jack Lopez (AAA Boston Red Sox) led off the inning with a walk, before Eddy Alvarez (AAA Miami Marlins) and Todd Frazier followed with back-to-back singles. Collegiate National Team starter Gabriel Hughes (Gonzaga) nearly escaped a bases-loaded jam, but Eric Filia’s (AAA Seattle Mariners) two-run single started a two-out rally for the Olympic Team. With a pair of runners on, Patrick Kivlehan (AAA San Diego Padres) cranked a three-run homerun to left field to put the Olympic Team up by five runs in the opening frame.

Kazmir, who struck out the side in the top of the first, continued to dominate in the second inning. The left-hander struck out the first two batters of the second – his fourth and fifth of nine punchouts in the game – in a perfect inning to keep the Olympians up by five.

The Olympic Team offense stayed hot in the second inning, extending its lead to six on a Lopez sacrifice fly. Then, one batter later, Alvarez hit a two-run homer to center field, driving in Nick Allen (AA Oakland A’s) to make it 8-0.

After the early offensive outburst, the Olympic Team was held at bay by the Collegiate National Team bullpen. Paul Skenes (Air Force) tossed two scoreless frames in relief, scattering three hits before the Collegiate National Team finally cracked the scoreboard in the fourth on a two-run homer by Jordan Berry (LSU). Berry drove in Brock Jones (Stanford) – who led off the inning with a single – to put the Collegiate National Team within six.

The college squad then trimmed its deficit by one more in the top of the seventh against Edwin Jackson. Hayden Dunhurst (Ole Miss) started the inning with a leadoff bunt single before Kyle Teel (Virginia) and Drew Gilbert (Tennessee) hit back-to-back singles to make it 8-3. Anthony Gose (AAA Cleveland) replaced Jackson though and was able to escape further trouble with a strikeout and groundout to secure the win.

The Olympic Team had nine hits in the win. Kivlehan had a pair of hits, leading the team with three RBIs. Alvarez went 3-for-4 in the win, adding two singles and a stolen base to his homer and Allen reached base in all three of his plate appearances, singling once and walking twice. Kazmir secured the win with his strong five innings of work, finishing the night with nine strikeouts while allowing just three hits and a pair of runs.

Aaron Nixon (Texas) and Jack Washburn both turned in a scoreless inning out of the bullpen for the Collegiate National Team. Gilbert led the team with two hits, while Berry’s two RBIs were a team-best.

The three-game series will continue with game two on Monday night at the Durham Bulls Athletic Park in Durham, North Carolina, with first pitch set for 6:35 p.m. ET. The contest will be streamed live on USABaseball.com, as well as Facebook and YouTube Live.

Word circulates on social media that NC football great Danny Talbott has died

Danny Talbott, perhaps the best high school football player in Rocky Mount history, died early Sunday morning according to multiple social media accounts.

Talbott, 75, has been suffering from cancer for several years. In 2018, Nash General Hospital dedicated a cancer center in his name.

Talbott had been treated for multiple myeloma, a cancer of a type of white blood cell called a plasma cell. He had a stem cell transplant in 2011 at the UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center that showed great promise.

Danny Talbott
Danny Talbott.
Talbott led the Rocky Mount Blackbirds to state titles in baseball, basketball and football during his senior year in 1963. He followed that success up in college at the University of North Carolina where he was named the ACC Player of the Year in football in 1966 and led the baseball team to the College World Series the same year.

He was drafted 17th overall by the San Francisco 49ers the following year before being picked up by the Washington Redskins where he backed up Sonny Jurgensen during Vince Lombardi’s only year coaching the team.

While professional football ultimately didn’t work out for him, he also played in the Baltimore Orioles organization under coach Cal Ripken Sr.

In 2003, he was inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame. His No. 10 jersey hangs in honor at Kenan Stadium in Chapel Hill.

He continued as an athlete, winning several senior tennis tournaments where he played both left and right handed.

Rocky Mount native Steve Moore, who lives in Holly Springs now, said that everyone has a positive story about Danny Talbott. “He was a class act and a great guy,” Moore wrote on Facebook. “Men and women like Danny come along once in a lifetime.”

Moore coached Danny’s son in Little League baseball and Talbott never interfered “although he knew more about the game than all of us put together.”

Rocky Mount football games in the days of Talbott were big events that drew large enthusiastic crowds.

In an interview five years ago, Talbott said, “If I die, then I go to heaven. If I beat this, then I get to stick around and give my friends a hard time. It’s a win-win.”

One of those friends was UNC baseball coach Mike Fox, who, despite coaching at Rocky Mount’s Wesleyan College, didn’t really know Talbott until he came back to Carolina to coach the Tar Heels baseball team. Despite struggling with cancer, Fox said that Talbott was there for him during his ups and downs.

“He’s one of the best athletes – if not the best – that has ever come through this university,” Coach Fox once said. “He’s a big-time Tar Heel, and he’s a really big supporter of the program and of me personally, which I appreciate. But more important, I’ve gotten to know him on a personal level, and he’s a wonderful person.”

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