Carolina fans know Jones Angell as the voice of UNC football and men’s basketball. But there’s another “Voice of the Tar Heels” in Chapel Hill. Matt Krause has been the radio play-by-play voice of UNC women’s basketball since the 2018-19 season, and has seen the program grow into a national contender under head coach Courtney Banghart.
But unlike Angell, Krause is not a UNC alumnus. He earned his undergraduate degree just down the road at Elon University, and met Angell after sending him tape of calls Krause made while working with Elon Athletics.
“We were in a spot in the Tar Heel Sports Network that we needed a new women’s basketball play-by-play guy,” Angell told 97.9 The Hill. “And so I listened to Matt’s stuff, and the first thing I thought was, ‘Wow, what a great voice.’ Matt has such a big, booming voice that is such a pure radio voice.”
Just a few months later, Krause was calling his first game with the Tar Heels. He joined 97.9 The Hill’s Michael Koh to discuss his career journey and to preview the 2022-23 UNC women’s basketball team.
Click here to listen to the full conversation.
Michael Koh: One of the main reasons you got the job at UNC was you sent tape in to Jones Angell, just as like a “Hey, do you have any tips?” kind of thing, right?
Matt Krause: Yeah, that’s 100 percent true, Michael. And first off, thanks so much for having me. Yeah, it was the spring of 2018. I was kind of wavering between committing full-time to college sports and continuing on with minor league baseball, which I had been doing a little bit while also doing college stuff, and had sent Jones just a random sample of a play-by-play tape that I had, having no idea that the women’s basketball job would soon come open. And I definitely think that without that, the connection would not have been made and this opportunity would not have presented itself, at least to me.
Michael Koh: What compelled you to do that?
Matt Krause: Living in North Carolina for the past decade you come to follow all the local ACC teams and listening to the local radio networks. And I was working at what was then the IMG headquarters in Winston-Salem. Now it’s Learfield’s east headquarters in the post-merger world. I was very familiar with the voices of all the schools, not only in North Carolina, but among the Power Five, and figured that I have the geographic connection. Close enough in terms of generation. There’s a lot of folks that have been doing this for a really long time, that were raised in a completely different generation of the industry. But Jones and I are close enough that we both have some shared experience of what it’s like in the kind of the post-radio-dominant world, if you will. And so I just figured, I have enough in common, it’s worth a shot. Just reach out and introduce myself. And there it went.
Michael Koh: So what was the timeline between then and then getting the job offer?
Matt Krause: That was in, if I recall correctly, probably April or May of 2018 that I sent that out. And then the women’s basketball opportunity presented itself closer to the middle of the summer. It’s kind of a wild story because I was at the National Sports Media Association Convention in Winston-Salem. And Woody Durham was being honored there going into the Hall of Fame. And so his son Taylor, who’s the play-by-play voice at Elon for football, men’s basketball and baseball was there, along with all of the Learfield people in Chapel Hill. Jones, Chuck Schroeder, general manager for Tar Heel Sports Properties. So from what I was told, it was a conversation between Chuck and potentially Jones and Taylor, just talking about me, because I worked with Taylor at the time. And they mentioned, “Oh yeah, the women’s basketball job’s open. Think that Matt might be good for it?” Having never met these guys in person before. It was actually Taylor that brought it up to me. He’s like, “What’s this I hear about Carolina women’s basketball?” And I’m like, “I know nothing.”
So then I followed back up with Jones in July of 2018, sent him an email. He was on vacation the next week. I was on a family vacation. I was actually in Ireland of all places. I got Wi-Fi on a ferry crossing some random body of water and amongst the green hills of Ireland. And I checked my email and it was Jones responding. He said, “Hey, I’m back from vacation, gonna pass this along to Chuck.” And so then it was probably another month from there. So it was kind of late in the offseason by the time everything got finalized in 2018. I think they offered me [in] late August, announced it in October. So it was probably, five, six months between the initial email and the whole process being completed.
Michael Koh: And once they offered, it was no hesitation, right?
Matt Krause: Absolutely, yeah. At that age have the opportunity to jump to the Power Five level was too good to pass up.
Michael Koh: How old were you when you got the job?
Matt Krause: I was 24 when I started, but at the start of the process would’ve been 23. So yeah, pretty young.
Michael Koh: Did you always know that you wanted to be a broadcaster?
Matt Krause: Pretty much, yeah. Since third grade. I was like, “All right, I think that I could make a career out of this,” thinking that it’s way better than actually working for a living. Getting to watch sporting events and be paid for it. At that young an age, you don’t understand all the ins and outs of the business and how difficult it is to make it work. But it’s been the primary goal since that time.
Michael Koh: Who was your inspiration? Who was the guy that you tried to imitate when you were a kid?
Matt Krause: Oh man, there’s so many of them. In terms of the big-time calls, while I appreciate the Gus Johnsons of the world, I was not trying to be that. Probably the Joe Bucks and Jim Nantzes of the world. People that you saw on your TV all the time that have such a great feel of the big moments and are able to make it look really, really easy when in all reality it’s definitely not.
Michael Koh: So your first year with working with the women’s basketball program, did you have like a “Welcome to the Show” moment?
Matt Krause: It’s kind of funny, the first game that I did was the opening game at the new arena over at Elon. I had been hearing for years and years and years going back to my freshman year when it was like, “Okay, this is an idea.” And then it was right around the end of my academic career there that the plans started to turn into actual blueprints. And then shovels went in the ground kind of when I was still working there after graduation. And so it was kind of the perfect bridge between that phase of my life and the Carolina gig that the first game was in that new building, because both the men’s and women’s [basketball] teams went over there to play the first regular season game in the new building in that fall in 2018. But in terms of like a, “Wow, this is a really big deal” moment, probably our first true road trip, which was to Colorado that year. The hotel that they put us up in [is] probably still the nicest hotel for a “normal” true road game that we’ve stayed at [in] any part of my career at Carolina. Flying that far away for a game was very new and different to me. So that was a cool one.
Michael Koh: Well, now I have to ask, what’s been your favorite road trip? Is it the Colorado one?
Matt Krause: Believe it or not, I really, really enjoyed our trip to Arizona for the NCAA Tournament this past year. That was one where we were out there for a long time. The whole week. Because we got out three days early, and then played and then won. It was just really cool to be a part of that whole tournament experience. And the group of people, the “adults” of the group, the support staff for women’s basketball that Courtney Banghart’s assembled is just an A-plus group of people. It was really fun to spend a lot of time with them.
Michael Koh: Unlike Jones, you are not a UNC alumnus. What was it like to come into the Carolina family and be embraced by the Carolina family your first year?
Matt Krause: That’s been probably the coolest thing. I was a die-hard follower of the ACC. I was that person that was really interested in it, but I didn’t really have a team. Not to say that I was actively rooting against Carolina. That’s not the case, but I can’t pretend to be some huge fan prior to getting the job. I think that because of that, I reserved the ability in myself to be able to embrace the community authentically. And they’ve embraced me back. It took some time. It took the women’s basketball program starting to win some more games. It took me broadening my horizons a little bit through GoHeels Productions, ACC Network, and just becoming more and more entrenched.
It’s just trying to focus as much as possible on authenticity. But there’s definitely a little bit of feeling of like, “Oh my gosh. I can’t believe that I am part of this group,” and kind of feeling a little bit of imposter syndrome. I didn’t go here. I didn’t grow up rooting for Tar Heels. No one in my family went to Carolina, but it was just always such a brand that I would watch and follow and knew a lot about. It just didn’t have the emotional connection. And so I feel like the authentic connection of me growing with the community, we grow hand-in-hand.
Michael Koh: Following you on social media, I feel like every time you post a picture, it’s of you doing a different job at GoHeels Productions. What is your job title?
Matt Krause: That’s a great question. It is a little bit complicated. The short list is that I call play-by-play and work as a color analyst for a bulk of the games on ACC Network Extra, which is the streaming platform of ACC Network that’s available through the ESPN App for ACC Network subscribers. That’s for Olympic sports: field hockey, men’s and women’s soccer, lacrosse and baseball and softball and all that in spring. And then additionally, prior to last year, the 2021-2022 year, they approached me and asked if I would be interested in learning how to produce games. And I was like, “Okay, sure.” I think that that’s an important lesson for anybody in this business, is to always say yes to opportunities and to try and grow your skills.
So even though that was never on my radar, the folks at GoHeels Productions believed in me enough and thought that I would be a good candidate to try and pick up that skillset. So as a result, I’ve started producing some of those digital games, but also producing the linear games that air on ACC Network and some of the ESPN channels. And that includes the baseball regional last year. I was able to produce all of that. [I’m] producing a handful of men’s basketball games coming up this year. It’s basically three or four different roles across all those different sports. So put all those combinations together, and you’re right, Michael, it’s a case of a different thing that I’m doing every single week, pretty much.
Michael Koh: And I saw you called two games in the same day?
Matt Krause: Yeah, I did play-by-play for field hockey and then color for volleyball. couple Fridays ago. It was 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. So the field hockey game, you’re thinking, “Okay, this is gonna get done [at] 4:30ish, 4:40 maybe. Of course, the first quarter takes 45 minutes in real time, because the Tar Heels have three team-requested video referrals, which is the field hockey equivalent of a challenge. And of course, they win them all because Erin Matson is probably the best umpire on the field and the best player on the field. So of course that game goes a little bit long, but then I hustle. I timed it: it was six minutes. I don’t know how I did that in a suit up the hill from field hockey up to Carmichael for volleyball. That was kind of cool doing the two games in one day because we also had women’s soccer that night. And while you would think that there’s some synergy in the schedule making, in reality, the ACC kind of operates in a silo for each sport. It just so happens that you look up and all of a sudden you’ve got women’s soccer, field hockey and volleyball all home on the same day, and you’ve gotta kind of scramble at that point.
I did a similar thing the spring of the COVID year [2021] where we had everything going on every hour of the day, pretty much. There was one day that I called field hockey and then men’s soccer. And the day of the Pitt football game here recently, I did play-by-play of the field hockey game over at Duke at noon, and then did the spotting and stats for football on the radio side at 8:00 p.m. that day. Those doubleheader days are both fun and exhausting.
Michael Koh: What has been the most memorable moment for you since coming to Carolina?
Matt Krause: There’s a couple. The Louisville game for women’s basketball was really, really exciting because that was a signature win the program hadn’t really had at that point last year. It was almost as if every single opponent that they faced that they were supposed to beat, they did. Some of the games where they weren’t favored, they lost. And so in order to get a little bit more national respect and go beyond the view of ACC experts and Carolina people, they needed to earn a win like that against Louisville. It wasn’t a dominating game. They had to come from behind. Then the suspense of Louisville’s final shot, bouncing off the rim a couple of times and ultimately falling off instead of in was wild. That was probably, I would say, the best student section that we’ve had for women’s basketball, certainly in my time here at that time. I think the Duke game a couple weeks after that, where people were still feeding off that energy, was even better. That’s something I’m really excited to see.
And then another one: the baseball regional that I got to produce last year, especially the Monday game. Carolina had to come from behind in the regional, definitely not those last two games, but after losing to VCU and all the controversy. All the emotions surrounding that infield fly call and Coach Forbes’ ejection and everything there. To be able to see Boshamer Stadium so full in supporting him and him running around hugging people, waving his arms, that was a really, really cool scene.
Michael Koh: Shifting gears to women’s basketball this season, as someone who has been with the team almost non-stop for the past few years or so, what can fans expect from this year’s women’s basketball team?
Matt Krause: Definitely a continued step forward from where things were last year. In this modern world of college basketball, all we hear about is portal this, portal that, re-recruit your roster. The Tar Heels are bringing back every starter that has eligibility remaining. Obviously Carlie Littlefield exhausted her eligibility, she’s turned pro playing overseas in Belgium. But the other four starters are all back and now they’re juniors. And you also bring in some young talent. It’s like, “Okay, the team was young last year.” You could say they’re still young this year, but there’s only one true freshman, Paulina Paris, who’s a really speedy guard. And she was a top-three recruit in the country. But also you see Teonni Key, Kayla McPherson when she gets healthy. Those are a couple of players who were highly recruited and key pieces last year that were out due to injury. It’s gonna be interesting to see, number one, how quickly they can adjust. Number two, bouncing back from injury.
The talent level is certainly there and has taken a jump because of the hard work of some of these players in the offseason. I think fans are really gonna like Kennedy Todd-Williams’ continued growth, because the way that she improved from her freshman year to her sophomore year, it’s happened again sophomore year to junior year. Maybe now she’ll get some attention for ACC Defensive Player of the Year. Don’t quite know what was up with that. Looking at the way that she has improved, she’ll be a really key piece as well. And then I think a big picture thought is that the non-conference schedule will be tougher this year. And so the win-loss record may not be “as good,” but this team might be better. That’s gonna be something interesting to watch
Michael Koh: Have you sensed a higher fan excitement around the season than normal?
Matt Krause: 100 percent. Both among Carolina fans, whether they’re alums or just longtime fans of men’s basketball and football that’ll occasionally go to an Olympic event or something, the attention is much, much higher. I alluded to the student section at the games in Carmichael. Obviously my third year there were no fans, but the first couple of years you would get a decent turnout for the Duke and State game because there would be [Carolina] Fever points associated and all that stuff. But especially the NC State game, the Louisville game and the Duke game at home last year, it was a true home court advantage where the student section was packed. And it was an experience where those kids wanted to be there. And I think that we can only see that continue to grow and continue to be a factor this year, especially for some of those big home games in the month of January. I’m thinking about the three straight home games against Notre Dame, NC State, and Duke in particular.
Michael Koh: Your timeline at UNC almost exactly lines up with Courtney Banghart’s timeline at UNC. What has it been like to see her steadily grow the program from when she got here?
Matt Krause: She is every bit as good as advertised as a leader. I think that it has been so important for her to be able to get her people into place, whether that be players, whether that be staff. It’s some people that have been there since day one. It’s other people that have come in along the way. But now this program is truly hers from the roster to the staff. And to be able to be personable, to be able to go out in the community and sell the program, and to be able to turn the talk into results with the Sweet 16 berth last year and a very memorable season, a very high ranking to start out this year. She’s taken a vision and turned it into a reality, and has completely revitalized the fan interest in this program in her own image.
Featured image via Matt Krause on Twitter
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