President Barack Obama loved the gifts that the North Carolina Tar Heels gave him yesterday, but he had one request for the 2009 men's college basketball champions.
"If somebody could please present me a jump shot, I need one of those,"
Obama quipped in a celebration ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House.
Obama, a fervent basketball fan who grew up playing the game in Hawaii, told his visitors they had done pretty well since he scrimmaged with them on a North Carolina campaign stop in April 2008.
"I'm not sure whose luck rubbed off on who -- there was some good vibe there -- because they're now the national champions and I'm now the president,"
Obama said to laughter outside the White House.
Obama thanked the Tar Heels, who waltzed through the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament this year, "for salvaging my bracket and vindicating me."
The president had filled out his March Madness brackets on live TV, picking North Carolina to win. At the ceremony yesterday, coach Roy Williams held up a blue-and-white Carolina jersey with "Obama"
and the number 1 on it.
"That's what I'm talking about!"
Obama crowed.
Five seniors who graduated Sunday gave the president a large framed photograph of the then-candidate in sweatpants posing with the team 13 months ago after the widely covered scrimmage in Chapel Hill, N.C.
"Tyler Hansbrough chose not to block my shot,"
Obama said to more laughter. "Of course, I was so intimidated by him being near me that I missed the shot."
The president met privately with the team in the White House before the ceremony.
Point guard Ty Lawson, who will forgo his senior year and enter the NBA draft, said afterward that Obama had complimented his play during the championship run.
"We didn't talk too much because I know he's a busy man,"
Lawson said. "I must have been doing something right that he was paying attention to my game."
