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The early period for basketball signees came and went in November 1998. No letters of intent were mailed or faxed to any college coaches by Zarzour, though rumors abounded that he had secretly committed to the UNC Tar Heels. Others had him giving a quiet verbal to Kentucky, who also invited him to be a basketball-baseball "combo" athlete.
But none of that was true, and Zarzour appeared to have closed the door on his basketball career when Bunn lost in the state championship game to Burlington Cummings at the Dean Dome in Chapel Hill on a cold Saturday afternoon in early March 1999. Zarzour was a beast in the paint despite his team's loss, scoring 25 points, grabbing 17 rebounds, rejecting five shots and dunking a couple times over Cummings' best player in the fourth quarter.
"Sure you don't want to play in the ACC?" one reporter asked Zarzour in the post-game press conference. "You look at home here in Blue Heaven."
"Yeah, it was fun to play here and to represent our school by getting this far in the playoffs," Zarzour said. "But I'll feel even more at home on Monday.
"That's when baseball season starts..."
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