University of North Carolina Ashville Athletics
Mike Gore's "40-for-40": Kimmel Arena Opening
11.14.2025 | General, Men's Basketball, Women's Basketball
It's hard to believe that 14 years have passed since Kimmel Arena opened. On November 13, 2011, Kimmel Arena hosted its first-ever basketball game when the top-ranked North Carolina Tar Heels came to town.
It was a total team effort to get UNC to come to town. The Heels don't exactly play too many road games against teams from the Big South Conference. But UNC Asheville had an inside source.
UNC Asheville was led at the time by Chancellor Anne Ponder. Chancellor Ponder was a huge athletic fan and always wanted to help the Bulldogs in any way she could. She is an Asheville native and went to nearby T.C. Roberson HS, where she lettered in basketball. Also playing basketball at Roberson during that time was future Tar Heel coach Roy Williams.
Chancellor Ponder, along with Athletics Director Janet Cone, went to see Coach Williams after the Bulldogs played the Tar Heels in Chapel Hill.
Chancellor Ponder asked him if he would bring his Tar Heel team to open Kimmel Arena. He agreed to do that and made a generous donation to the building. The basketball offices in Kimmel Arena are named after former Bulldog basketball coach Jerry Green. Coach Green and Coach Williams were close friends. When Roy Williams was hired for his first head coaching job at Kansas in the summer of 1988, his first phone call was to Jerry Green. Jerry had been Asheville's head coach for the last seven years and had done a great job leading the program from NAIA to Division I. Williams hired Green to be his assistant coach for the Jayhawks.
The Tar Heels were willing to come to open Kimmel, but then a potential monkey wrench got thrown in when UNC was invited to play Michigan State on an aircraft carrier to open the season for Veterans Day in San Diego on November 11th.
However, Coach Williams told Asheville officials not to worry, that they would still come to Asheville after the game in San Diego and play the game less than two days later.
And they would be facing a feisty Bulldog team that was coming off an impressive 2010-11 season that had Asheville winning the Big South Tournament and capturing the first-ever First Four NCAA Tournament Game in Dayton, Ohio, when the Bulldogs outlasted Arkansas-Little Rock.
Asheville was an almost unanimous pick to repeat as Big South Conference champions as the Bulldogs returned most of their team from a year before, including talented senior guards JP Primm and Matt Dickey. Dickey was named Big South Tournament MVP and was the 2011-12 Preseason Player of the Year. The Dogs had played in Chapel Hill a year earlier and gave the Heels a good game before falling, 90-79.
But the Tar Heels were really, really, really good. They were picked to win the national championship thanks to a starting five that featured four eventual NBA draft picks in guard Kendall Marshall and forwards Harrison Barnes, John Henson, and Tyler Zeller. UNC had blown out Michigan State on Friday before coming to Asheville early Saturday morning.
The game was going to be special. A sellout crowd was on hand, and a nationally televised audience on ESPN was set to watch the first-ever game at Kimmel Arena. Grammy-award-winning artist Bruce Hornsby performed the national anthem on a piano. His son, Keith Hornsby, was a freshman on that Bulldog team.
The game was a good one that saw Asheville take an early 14-9 lead and lead 21-20 halfway through the first half. But UNC's size was simply too much for the Bulldogs and many other opponents throughout the year. They would lead 48-39 at the half.
In the second half, the Heels began to pull away, and it looked like it would be an extremely easy win for UNC with lots of its reserve players playing in the final minutes. But the Bulldogs roared back behind Jaron Lane and Primm. JP would score a team-high 23 points and he hit back-to-back three-pointers to help cut a 20-point lead to eight which forced Williams to call a timeout to stop the momentum and quiet the sellout crowd.
The Tar Heels would eventually finally pull away and win 91-75 but while it was a loss on the scoreboard, the game was a win for UNC Asheville in every other way.
"I never thought I get booed in my hometown like I was today," joked Williams afterwards. "That's ok though. Those fans were cheering for Asheville and created a big-time atmosphere. Today was big-time and I hope those fans keep coming out and supporting this Asheville team. Eddie's [Biedenbach] got a good ball club that's going to win a lot of games.
"We played very well today and needed to or else we wouldn't have won," added Williams.
"Those guards can really shoot the ball," said Zeller afterwards. "You think you're guarding them closely but then they get off the shot so quick."
Zeller led all scorers with 27 points and eight rebounds. Henson added 20 points and 12 rebounds. Kendall Marshall showed why many thought he was the best point guard in the county with 15 assists and just one turnover.
Perhaps Chancellor Ponder put it best a few days later.
"Hosting Chapel Hill in our new arena is a day where UNC Asheville got better," she said. "It's a day we will never forget and something to build on for the future."
UNC Asheville would go on to have a sensational opening season at Kimmel. They would only lose once more that year. The Bulldogs won the Big South regular-season title and that gave them the right to host the Big South Tournament. Asheville would leave no doubt who the best team in the league was that year as it steamrolled three opponents to claim the championship in front of another sell-out crowd as the Bulldogs downed VMI to win their second straight title.
