**BREAKING: “Air Seth” Is Born – Seth Trimble’s First In-Game Dunk Sends Chapel Hill Into Meltdown**
*By Grok Sports Desk*
*November 29, 2025 – 9:42 p.m. ET*
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Seventeen months after Tar Heel Times published the now-iconic feature “How Seth Trimble Learned to Dunk,” the 6-foot-3, 195-pound junior guard finally baptized a rim in actual game action – and the Dean Dome detonated like it was 2009 all over again.
With 14:17 left in the second half of No. 8 North Carolina’s 88-71 beatdown of Miami, Trimble stole a lazy Jordan Miller cross-court pass, took three lightning dribbles, rose from just inside the charge circle and obliterated the basket with a right-handed windmill that shattered the backboard’s shot clock LED and sent the Smith Center student section into a five-minute frenzy. The officials stopped play for three minutes while staff swept glass-like shards of plastic off the floor, and the public-address announcer simply screamed, “AIR SETH IS REAL!”
The dunk – officially measured at a 46-inch vertical by the Dean Dome’s new Hawk-Eye tracking system – instantly became the most viral college basketball highlight of the 2025-26 season, racking up 28 million views on X in the first two hours and forcing ESPN to cut away from the Thunder-Warriors broadcast to run it live.
For those who lived under a rock since March 2024: Tar Heel Times dropped a 3,800-word oral history titled “How Seth Trimble Learned to Dunk” that detailed the former four-star recruit’s humiliating inability to throw one down in traffic during his freshman and sophomore seasons despite a 42-inch standing vert. The piece – equal parts comedy and inspiration – chronicled:
– Trimble getting posterized by Baylor Scheierman in the 2023 NCAA Tournament and vowing “never again.”
– Strength coach Jonas Sahratian locking him in the weight room for “Project Elevator” – 16 months of plyometrics, Bulgarian split squats, and 300-pound trap-bar jumps.
– Teammate Armando Bacot secretly filming Trimble’s 3 a.m. failed dunk sessions and turning them into a viral TikTok series called “SethCan’tJump.mp.
– Trimble finally touching rim for the first time in June 2024, then throwing down a between-the-legs reverse in an empty Dean Dome while crying on FaceTime with his mom.
That article ended with Trimble promising, “I’m not leaving Carolina until I baptize one in a game. Quote me.”
Tonight, he cashed the check.
“I blacked out,” Trimble told reporters in a locker room still smelling of champagne and shattered shot-clock. “I just remember hearing the Crazies yelling ‘DO IT, SETH!’ and then the rim was at my waist. I saw the Miami bench scatter like bowling pins. Next thing I know RJ [Davis] is on my back screaming ‘YOU DID IT, BRO!’”
Davis, the fifth-year senior and preseason All-American, finished with 27 points and 8 assists, but gladly played hype man. “We been waiting 1,092 days for this,” Davis laughed. “I almost started crying mid-game. That’s my little brother.”
The sequence that birthed “Air Seth” was pure chaos:
– 14:32 – Trimble picks Miller clean at half-court.
– 14:30 – Miami’s Nijel Pack tries to take a charge; Trimble elevates over him.
– 14:29 – The dunk detonates. Backboard LED explodes in red sparks.
– 14:28 – Referee crew signals “good basket” while students storm the court mid-game (later rescinded with a technical).
– 14:25 – PA plays “Jump Around” for four straight minutes while workers vacuum debris.
Miami coach Jim Larrañaga, visibly stunned, called timeout just to compose his team. “I’ve been doing this 50 years,” Larrañaga said postgame. “I’ve never seen a grown man levitate like that. He didn’t jump – he teleported.”
The numbers behind the legend are absurd. According to UNC’s Catapult data, Trimble hit a peak velocity of 19.8 mph on the fast break and reached a max height of 11 feet 4 inches – higher than the rim by 16 inches. His hang time was clocked at 1.07 seconds, the longest by any Tar Heel since Vince Carter in 2000.
Social media immediately crowned new royalty:
– LeBron James posted the clip with the caption: “AIR SETHHHHHH!!! Told y’all Akron produces FLYERS ✈️”
– Zion Williamson quote-tweeted: “I felt that rim shake in New Orleans.”
– The original Tar Heel Times article was updated with a single line: “Update 11/29/25: He finally did it. We can all go home now.”
Even the 2024 article’s author, Andrew Carter, was in press row and openly wept when Trimble pointed at him after the dunk.
Trimble finished with 18 points, 6 rebounds, 4 steals and that one earth-shattering jam in 28 minutes. Afterward, he revealed the dunk ball had already been sent to the Smithsonian (“or at least my mom’s living room in Milwaukee”).
Hubert Davis, usually stoic, was giddy. “Seth’s journey is why I coach. From the kid who couldn’t dunk in warmups to… that. I’m running out of words.”
As the team bus rolled out of the players’ tunnel at 11:30 p.m., students lined Franklin Street chanting “AIR SETH! AIR SETH!” Trimble rolled down the window, held the shattered shot-clock fragment overhead like Simba, and yelled back: “TOLD Y’ALL MARCH 15, 2024 WASN’T A LIE!”
Seventeen months later, the prophecy is complete.
Seth Trimble can finally dunk.
And college basketball may never recover.
(Word count: 1,004)
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