Lucas: Two Guys

By Adam Lucas

Within ten minutes of Carolina's stunning 79-75 home loss to Wofford, Joel Berry II had already pointedly addressed his teammates.

By less than a half hour later, Roy Williams had canceled his recruiting trip for Thursday.

These two events are likely to tell you much more about the 2017-18 Tar Heels than anything that happened on the court against the Terriers.

Wofford was better on Wednesday night. That's the startling thing. This wasn't a game when the opponent caught fire from the three-point line and managed to outscore the Tar Heels. The Terriers, a three-point reliant squad, hit just 7-of-22 from the arc.

But they outscored Carolina in the paint—again, Wofford College got more points near the rim than the University of North Carolina in a basketball game played at the Dean Smith Center—by a healthy 28-22 margin.

The whole thing was a little surreal. Over 16,000 people came to Chapel Hill for a Wednesday night 9 p.m. nonconference game mostly to salute their team for a great win at Tennessee on Sunday. What they got instead was a battle.

But the 30 minutes after the game also provided a reminder of why there's still reason to believe in the 2018 Tar Heels. They have some questions on post defense and they have recently committed too many careless turnovers and they don't have the classic Tar Heel big man.

Here's what they do have, though: they have Roy Williams and they have Joel Berry. And as we sit here in the wee hours of December 21, I still believe in that combination about as much as any duo in the Williams era (which, by the way, is the most successful decade and a half in Carolina basketball history, loss to Wofford notwithstanding).

The way they handled the loss was a perfect window into their character.

Williams was practically chewing on the wooden podium during his postgame press conference. Within 60 seconds of starting his remarks, he very nearly spit out the word "disgusting" and followed it up by almost pounding on the table as he said, "That team outworked us."

That, as we know, is one of the biggest sins in the Roy Williams canon. Miss some free throws and lose, it happens. Other team has a hot shooting night, it's basketball.

Get outworked? Someone get the trash cans in position near the court for the next practice. Only NCAA rules saved the Tar Heels from a 6 a.m. workout on Thursday.

Once he left his press conference, Williams canceled his long-planned recruiting trip Thursday, which would have had him meeting the Tar Heels in New Orleans. Instead, he'll stay in Chapel Hill with his team. On a night like this, he just can't bear the thought of not being with his team. Which is exactly the mindset you want in the leader of the program.

One of the most popular misconceptions about Williams is that when he gets mad, he just throws a few "dadgums" around and the team magically gets better. That's not accurate. He will yell in Thursday's practice. But he will also communicate, and he will also teach. The first--anyone can do. The latter two--very few do as well as Roy Williams. And very few understand how to mix all three, in just the right amounts that that particular group needs, over the course of six months to mold a team. When other teams lose, they wish they had another shooter or a veteran big man or a lottery pick. And somewhere along the way, they wish they had a Hall of Famer running practice the next day. Carolina already has that.

The original calendar, with Williams out of town, called for a run and shoot workout on Thursday. That's the schedule Berry knew when he addressed his teammates in the locker room immediately after the game.

"We have a run and shoot tomorrow," Berry said. "Regardless of whether it's a run and shoot, I want you to come out here and give it your all. I want to see sweat and I want to see everyone getting after it. That's what we have to have."

Berry went on to give one of the best post-loss recitations in the Williams era.

"I've been here four years and I give it my all each and every day," Berry said. "I could care less about the accolades I have and what I've been through since I've been here. There's more to it than that. I play for the name on the front of the jersey. It means something to me. When we lose a game, it hurts me a lot. When we lose a game like that or play like that, I feel like it's all my fault. I feel like I let Coach down because I'm the extension of the coach. I told the guys they have to buy in. Each and every practice we go through we can't go through the motions and think we're going to beat teams because we're North Carolina. That's what happens when you have young teams. They have to understand you have to buy into the system."

I don't know about you, but that's the guy I want running my team on the court and in the locker room. That's the guy I want the young players to look up to. "It means something to me," he said. That's absolutely all any of us can ask.

It's easy to imagine Berry and Williams, both still awake and staring at the ceiling even as the clock ticks through the early hours of Thursday morning. They know their Carolina team now has a few flaws to address. They know the Tar Heels suffered one of the all-time UNC stunners five days before Christmas. They know they will have to challenge some members of the roster.

That's what they know. And here's what we know: the Tar Heels have those two guys, one a Hall of Famer and one a Most Outstanding Player. It's late December, and maybe I'm a little more confused and somewhat shocked and perhaps slightly disheartened by the events of Wednesday night.

But nothing that happened against Wofford changes my belief in those two guys. And for right now, with a full conference slate yet to go, it's enough to know that they're about to go to work.

Players Mentioned

Joel Berry II

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