Roses to the East Chapel Hill High School chess team, which won the state team championship last weekend, and to junior David High, who was the state's individual high school chess champion.

The Wildcats took top honors, and High captured the top individual prize, the K-12 Open championship, at the 37th North Carolina State Scholastic Chess Championships in Charlotte.

He won all five of his matches to take the title, which earned him a $1,500 college scholarship, a fine Staunton chess set and entry into the national high school tournament to be held in Indianapolis in August.

Check and mate.

Roses to Julian's clothing store downtown, which came up with some fine threads when a local musician was in a pinch.

J. Freeman, a jazz musician who lives at the Inter-Faith Council for Social Service's Community House shelter for homeless men, has a gig lined up at Mansion 462 tonight. He didn't have appropriate stagewear, though.

Julian's to the rescue. The shop is donating a rental tuxedo to Freeman for the show, so he'll look as sharp as he sounds.

Roses -- sorry, can't help it -- to the UNC men's basketball team, which gutted out a 79-71 win over Duke on Sunday to give seniors Tyler Hansbrough, Danny Green, Bobby Frasor and Mike Copeland a fitting send-off in their final game at the Smith Center.

The victory gave Carolina a regular season sweep of the Blue Devils -- they could meet again next Sunday in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournament championship -- and locked up the top spot in the ACC. For a team that started the ACC season 0-2, that's a nice recovery.

To say that the seniors have put their stamp on this team and on Carolina history would be to put it lightly. Hansbrough, of course, is Hansbrough. Nobody plays with more ferocity. Did you see the look in his eyes during the early minutes of Sunday's game? Yikes.

It's hard to imagine the Dean Dome without him, and without Green, Frasor and Copeland.

Of course, they're not quite ready to ride off into the sunset, or into the NBA, just yet. Carolina still has an item or two to check off its to-do list.

Roses to Joseph Haj, whose work as the producing artistic director for UNC's PlayMakers Repertory Company has not gone unnoticed.

American Theatre magazine recently named Haj one of 25 theater artists who will have a significant impact on the American theater scene over the next quarter-century.

Haj, who received a master's degree in fine arts from Carolina in 1988, returned to campus to lead PlayMakers in July 2006. That's less than three years ago, but he has already made a mark on the company. He directed inventive hit productions of "Pericles" and "Amadeus," as well as the recent repertory production of "Well."

PlayMakers has long been known as one of the premiere professional theater companies in the region, known for its excellence in taking on challenging works. Haj has only solidified that reputation.

We were glad to hear him give credit to his PlayMakers colleagues, and to the intelligent and attentive audiences the company's productions draw. "We've learned from them that making plays that are relevant and speak to the lives of those in our community is, and will be in the next 25 years, the fundamental goal of any successful theater," Haj said.

Bravo.

Please send suggestions for Roses & Raspberries to Dave Hart, associate editor, at dhart@nando.com.