Psycho T: The fire within Tyler Hansbrough (SN Archive — 2006)

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This article, "The fire within" by Mike DeCourcy, originally appeared in the November 24, 2006 issue of The Sporting News.

There is no magical instrument of transformation, no phone booth or potion or whatever it is that periodically turns Peter Parker into Spider-Man. This is real life, people. Psycho T is not some made-up character used to sell comic books and overrated movies. It's just a nickname, but it fits that wild No. 50 for North Carolina way better than a name such as Tyler Hansbrough.

Psycho T emerges whenever Hansbrough is engaged in some kind of activity connected to the game: playing, running, lifting or even when he's eating one of those bigger-than-a-Denny's-Grand Slam breakfasts that helped him grow from a skinny teenager to 6-9, 245-pound college sophomore. This is the opposite of his nonball personality. In those few moments when he isn't working to make himself a better player, he mostly is quiet and shy, described bravely by teammate Bobby Frasor as “a big goofball.”

There is no clear backstory to the character of Psycho T. He cannot explain why he plays basketball harder than anyone ever has. His father can't. The best anyone can do is that he always has been this way, even when he was a 2-year-old imitating moves of players he had seen on television.

Now, basketball people young and old, teammates and opponents watch him and marvel. “Every possession, he goes hard. He doesn't take a possession off,” says Wake Forest center Kyle Visser. “You'd say sometimes, 'Dang, when's it going to stop?'“

Hansbrough has been a McDonald's All American, a two-time state champion at Missouri's Poplar Bluff High and a Sporting News first-team All-American.

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Hansbrough could live on that awhile. He could grab his fishing tackle, head for a stocked pond and ponder all he has accomplished. He doesn't stop, though. He does not slow down. He binds himself to his performance diet as strictly as college life and his barely controlled addiction to cheese fries will allow. He storms through training. He prepares to lead the Tar Heels, still young but now loaded with supreme talent, in pursuit of the program's fifth national championship. Have no doubt he will lead by example, not by oratory.

And now, another moment in the adventures of Psycho T:

Early in the 2005 Missouri state championship game against St. Louis Vashon, the nation's top-ranked team, Hansbrough defeats three defenders with a power dunk. “One of his elbows hits a guy on the nose, another guy on the ground gets the ball in his face “says Gene Hansbrough, his father. “Tyler just rises to these challenges.”

Carolina coach Roy Williams remembers the first time he watched Hansbrough play. He remembers it was at the Nike All-American Camp, in the summer of 2003. He remembers on which of the three courts set up inside the National Institute for Fitness and Sport this camp game occurred. And Williams remembers the moment Hansbrough grabbed him by the throat and introduced him to Psycho T.

On one possession, Hansbrough took on multiple defenders in pursuit of an offensive rebound. He jumped once, twice, three times trying to control it. Finally, the ball fell to the court. “He's already had three jumps, been banging with three guys — and he picks it up and goes up and tries to dunk it,” Williams says. “Very few times does a missed dunk impress me as much as that one did. He did get fouled. Maybe if he hadn't been get fouled, he'd have made it.”

From that point, Hansbrough was a target for Carolina. As a freshman, he filled the position vacated by 2005 Final Four most outstanding player Sean May and, in some ways, was more productive. Hansbrough averaged 18.9 points despite not having a wealth of gifted, experienced teammates to draw away defenders.

That changes this season. North Carolina's continued recruiting bonanza brought in three top 10 prospects. With most of the players who produced last season's surprising 23-8 record returning, the Tar Heels are among the foremost challengers to Florida's NCAA championship defense. This might help Hansbrough address one of the few criticisms — he needs to do a better job passing out of double-teams — presented by an NBA scout.

What that same scout loves about Hansbrough is he knows how to get fouled. He averaged 6.0 points on free throws alone. He is not a low-block magician with dazzling post skills that force the defense off-balance. His gift is being able to burst toward the goal with his initial move so suddenly and forcefully that defenders have two choices: foul him or stand aside.

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And now, another moment in the adventures of Psycho T:

When he's home in Missouri, away from the demands of his sport, Hansbrough loves to fish. But his lust for competition catches up with him. There's an albino catfish in a friend's pond, and after Hansbrough hooks the fish with a hot dog for bait, he believes his line is about to snap. Hansbrough jumps in the water, scoops up the fish with his shirt and tosses it on the bank. “I didn't want it to get away” he says. “No one ever caught it before.”

It is fitting Hansbrough's alter ego was identified during an afternoon of training before his freshman season. Toward the end of a debilitating session that had other Tar Heels “just dying,” in the words of North Carolina strength and conditioning coach Jonas Sahratian, Hansbrough cut loose with a primal scream that helped push him through to the end of an exercise.

“I said, 'You're psycho ... Psycho T.' And it's stuck with him,” Sahratian says. “I think he likes it.”

Oh, he does. Even Hansbrough's father thinks it's swell. Hansbrough is a big kid whose idea of a hysterical joke is to sit across from a friend at a restaurant and pretend he's seeing someone interesting across the room. Then he goads his companion into turning and looking. “And when he does, Tyler goes nuts,” Frasor says. “He thinks it's the funniest thing ever.”

Psycho T gives Hansbrough an aura of menace. You might mess with a fellow named Tyler, but you'd be plenty careful around Psycho.

When Hansbrough was a 6-7,160-pound sophomore-to-be at Poplar Bluff, he believed he matched the other players on the AAU circuit, except in muscle. So he began eating and lifting himself into a monster. He hooked up with HammerBodies, a personal training outfit in St. Louis, and soon was carrying a huge cooler to school — his lunchbox.

“Every two hours, he'd eat something,” Gene Hansbrough says. “After just two weeks of the diet, he said, 'Dad, I can tell the difference.' Before long, we had a 6-9, 245-pound kid who could really shove people around.”

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And now, another moment in the adventures of Psycho T:

As regular participants at the summer camp run by Three Rivers Community College coach Gene Bess, Hansbrough and his younger brother, Ben, make a habit of meeting in the Finals of the one-on-one tournament. After a few years of this, Bess calls their father and says he will cancel the final and buy two trophies. Why? “Because I don't want to break up that fight,” Bess tells Gene Hansbrough.

Ben Hansbrough is a freshman point guard for Mississippi State. The brothers spend a lot of time hanging out at home, but there are moments when not much gets said. “That's just kind of how we both are,” Ben says. He claims to be not much of a talker, but Ben might be Chris Rock compared with Tyler.

Handling postgame interviews became problematic in Tyler's transition to college ball. Yeah, he's quiet, but that's not the issue. It's talking so soon after the final buzzer. Hansbrough prefers to go through his postgame routine without interruption: icing his body, stretching. That allows him to hang Psycho T back in the locker until it's time to put him on again.

Hansbrough remembers the scene in the Tar Heels' dressing room after their second-round NCAA Tournament loss to George Mason. He looked at his teammates' faces, saw the disbelief.

“It's devastating,” Hansbrough says. “You hear about these teams coming out and beating big-name schools, but you don't really know what it's like until it happens to you. It's something you never want to have happen again. It's something that drives you in the weight room, to work a little harder on the court when you get tired and don't want to play. It makes you push yourself.”

That's a frightening thought, isn't it? Tyler Hansbrough more motivated? He didn't even think about heading to the NBA draft after his freshman season. Williams did some early legwork and found out Hansbrough probably would be a mid-first-round pick, but Hansbrough merely asked North Carolina to put out a release declaring he would stay.

Hansbrough didn't watch a minute of the tournament after the Tar Heels were eliminated. On championship Monday, he sat in his room listening to music. He turned on the television for a moment, saw Florida was winning big and clicked it back off for good. It really didn't matter. All he could think was he was seven months removed from letting Psycho T loose in front of a crowd again.

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