http://aboverim.blogspot.com/2009/12/ejected-fan-i-had-tickets-wasnt-drunk.html
Presbyterian fan Brian King said he is not mad at North Carolina coach Roy Williams after being tossed out of Saturday's game at the Smith Center. But he is upset about how he was portrayed.
"I didn't say anything vulgar, I was not intoxicated ... I was cheering for Presbyterian," King, who is from Concord, said. " I was excited to see my little team play a big team. ... When it happened, it was so quiet in the arena; at that point, everyone was talking about their golf scores and portfolios, and I was still cheering. Coach Williams didn't like it, that's all. I don't blame him, but he did over-react."
King was sitting about 20 rows behind Carolina's bench with about six minutes to go when he yelled for Tar Heels forward Deon Thompson to miss a free throw. Williams turned around the looked up at King, and soon three officers were on their way into the stands, and asked King to leave.
"I asked why?" King said in a phone interview. "And I was told, 'Because this is Roy's house, and when Roy says you need to go, you go.' I thought it was sort of amusing."
However, he added: "Never did anyone ask me for my ticket, because ... I had at least two in my pocket, from people who didn't show up."
Steve Kirschner, UNC's associate athletics director for communications, said Williams did not ask for King to be tossed out.
"Coach Williams asked security to go find out if the guy was supposed to be sitting there, because where the guy was sitting is very close -- it's right across, the aisle, I think -- from where Coach Williams' seats are," Kirschner said. " ... When he has seats that he gives himself, personally, or from the basketball office, he wants to make sure those are Carolina people sitting in those seats. So when he turned around and he's looking up there and people are pointing the guy out, he thought those were seats he had given out. So he asked the security guy behind the bench.
"He did not tell the security guy to go get the guy and throw him out."
Randy Young, spokesman for UNC's department of public safety, said that King initially ignored police officers when they approached him.
"Then he began a conversation with them, and he was still not cooperative," Young said. "When he finally made his way across the aisles, they tried to engage him in conversation. He was still relatively uncooperative. At that point it was in the officers' opinion that he had been drinking. At which point they made the decision that it would be better for himself and others that he was escorted from the building. He was not arrested, no charges were pressed, no trespass orders were issued. That was it. He was simply escorted from the building."
King, who was attendting the game with a half-dozen of his former elementary school friends (who were UNC fans) reiterated that he was not drunk. He said again that he was not angry with Williams, but about how the situation was "spun" afterwards: "I've coached little league basketball, and I understand emotions get hot, I really have no problem with happened there. But they tried to portray me as an intoxicated person and that wasn't true."
