When freshman Tyler Hansbrough starts his first game at center tonight for North Carolina, thousands of Tar Heels fans watching in the Smith Center and listening on the radio will be wondering the same thing:

Can this rawboned, baby-faced big man measure up to the challenge of being in, perhaps, the most unusual situation in the program's history?

But 756 miles west, in a small, close-knit community near the southeastern bootheel of Missouri, those downloading UNC's live Webcast already know the answer.

"Every situation he's ever had, where I thought, 'It's going to be difficult' ... he's always come out ahead," said Tyler's dad, Dr. Gene Hansbrough, whose three-bedroom house on Autumn Road will be the site of many Tyler-watching parties this season.

UNC needs him to continue that trend.

The 6-foot-9, 245-pound middle Hansbrough brother has joined a program that lost its top seven players -- 91 percent of its scoring and 88 percent of its rebounding -- after winning the NCAA championship in April. And with only one other teammate on the roster taller than 6-8, UNC may need the McDonald's All-American to be the first freshman in school history to lead the team in both scoring and rebounding in order to have a reasonable chance of returning to the NCAA Tournament.

Hansbrough was not available to comment about the weight of expectations facing him because UNC freshmen are not allowed to talk to the media until after playing in their first regular-season game.

But ask folks who live in and around "The Bluff" -- a town of 17,000 that bleeds maroon after watching Hansbrough lead the Poplar Bluff Mules to their first two state basketball championships in history -- they'll tell you he already has experienced being the center of something special.

"You have to understand -- basketball went from nothing to everything at this school," said Debbie Callahan, who taught Hansbrough math in high school.

"This town has thrived because of Tyler."

Starting early

Not everyone in a community large enough to support a junior college, a new 4,500-seat convention center and at least a half-dozen fast food chains knows Andrew Tyler Hansbrough personally. It just seems like it.

The sporting goods store's assistant manager has a brother who covers the Hansbrough boys for the local newspaper. The receptionist at the Holiday Inn has a boss who attends every high school game. A waiter at Colton's Steakhouse & Grill may not know what Hansbrough's favorite meal is (a 12-ounce sirloin, sweet potato, french salad), but his wife does.

"He's 'Little Tyler' to a lot of people around here," said Richard Browne, who operates a Web site dedicated to Hansbrough -- www.tyler50.com. "Not that he's all that little anymore."

That small-town camaraderie is one of the reasons Hansbrough's parents, who now are divorced, moved from Columbia, Mo., to Poplar Bluff when Tyler was 3.

In a place where teens cruise a half-mile stretch of U.S. 67 on Friday nights and the Wal-Mart is the closest thing to a mall for 80 miles, one of the first orders of business was to pour concrete for a basketball court.

Eventually Gene, an orthopedic surgeon, installed two hoops -- one for shooting, one for dunking.

"One of my favorite memories is of my dad, my two brothers and I playing 21 out there every Sunday,'' said Greg Hansbrough, Tyler's older brother by two years.

Another favorite: playing basketball in the basement.

Even before Tyler attended kindergarten, he used to watch college games on television, sprint downstairs, then copy spin moves, jump shots and dunks, a la Michael Jordan. His parents padded the walls behind the plastic rims so he and his two brothers wouldn't hurt themselves or one another.

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