Iraq, day 19, and one Marine's great underwear siege continues. Cpl. Robert L. Rens hasn't changed his North Carolina-blue shorts since Selection Sunday, March 16, and he's getting lonelier by the day.

"The Carolina-blue colors definitely have a brown Iraq sand hue to 'em, and so does the white part," Rens said Wednesday from Camp Taqaddum in Al Anbar province, about 50 miles west of Baghdad, where he's with the 1st Marine Logistics Group -- and where the forecast through Monday calls for highs up to 91 degrees.

"I spray 'em with Febreze every other day," Rens noted, "so they don't smell great, but they're covered up basically with the Febreze smell. But my roommate tells me he can't wait till April 7 to come, because he wants those things washed pretty bad."

On Selection Sunday, the day the 65-team field for the NCAA men's basketball tournament was revealed, Rens vowed not to take off his Carolina shorts, which he's wearing under his uniform, until the Tar Heels lost a game or won the national championship.

Rens, a 23-year-old from Canton, Ga., said he became a UNC fan when he got infatuated with Michael Jordan as a boy in the 1980s. Jordan, by the way, superstitiously wore his Carolina shorts under his Chicago Bulls shorts after he got to the NBA.

Rens and other Marines will watch the Tar Heels' semifinal game about 4 a.m. Sunday their time -- seven hours ahead of the Eastern Daylight Time tipoff -- in a hangar-size bunker.

Meanwhile, as long as UNC keeps going, Rens might have inadvertently hit upon an entirely new way to fight insurgents.

"They wouldn't come within 100 yards of me," he said.