Free Book Friday: ACC Basketball

UPDATE (12:12pm Monday, 3/5): Aaaand we have a winner! Our super intern Charlene has drawn Kristin’s name from our bowl of commenters. Congratulations, Kristin! We’ll be in touch by email. To the rest of you, thanks for playing, and I know many of you will find sweet consolation in the fact that UNC stomped Duke over the weekend. Cheers!

Welcome to Free Book Friday! It’s our favorite kind of Friday, and it only comes once a month. This month we’re feeling the fever of ACC rivalries—UNC and Duke will have their second matchup of the season tomorrow night, and the Tar Heels are hot for revenge after their loss to Duke the first time around.

So what better way to celebrate the March Free Book Friday than with a giveaway of J. Samuel Walker’s ACC Basketball: The Story of the Rivalries, Traditions, and Scandals of the First Two Decades of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Since the inception of the Atlantic Coast Conference, intense rivalries, legendary coaches, gifted players, and fervent fans have come to define the league’s basketball history. Walker traces the traditions and the dramatic changes that occurred both on and off the court during the conference’s rise to a preeminent position in college basketball between 1953 and 1972.

We featured an interview with Walker here in December, so go check that out if you haven’t seen it. And here’s what some folks are saying about the book:

“A lively account of the ACC’s rise as a basketball powerhouse.”
—The Wall Street Journal

“These are the stories that laid the foundation for the most dominant conference in the sport. Any reader curious about how it got that way will find the book well worth their time.”
—SLAM Magazine

“For anyone who has ever felt the warmth and rhythms of an ACC gym on a winter night this is a book well worth reading.”
—John Feinstein, sportswriter and author of Last Dance: Behind the Scenes at the Final Four

So how can you get your hands on a free copy of ACC Basketball? Leave a comment on this post telling us what ACC basketball team you root for. And hey, just because we’re UNC Press doesn’t mean you have to say you love the Tar Heels in order to win. (We’re mature that way.) We’ll throw everyone’s names into the hat and draw randomly, we promise. Yes, even a Duke fan can win this thing.

I expect to see a higher rate of CAPS and !!!s in this round of comments than is usual for us. Go for it. Just be civil to each other. We’ll close comments at noon on Monday and announce the winner in an update to this post.

If you don’t turn out to be the lucky winner, you can get the book at your favorite bookstore or order from us online. If you’d like to stay in the loop and hear about other books from UNC Press about sports and sports history—or any other topic of your choosing—sign up for our monthly email alerts. (Our email subscribers get discounts!)

The fine print: UNC Press and Longleaf Services staff are not eligible. Available to U.S. residents only.