University of North Carolina Athletics
Doherty Discusses Saturday's Wake Forest Game
January 5, 2001 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 5, 2001
UNC men's basketball coach Matt Doherty met with the media Friday morning at the Smith Center as the 13th-ranked Tar Heels prepare to host No. 4 Wake Forest Saturday evening in Chapel Hill. Here's some of what he had to say:
"We're excited to be playing Wake Forest tomorrow on ESPN and I hope it's a good game. After watching the tape of the Kansas game -- and knowing how good Kansas is -- they are really, really good.
"It's interesting what a difference a year makes. They're a team that went to the NIT last year, and now they're the fourth team in the country. I just think their experience, their maturity and their physical maturity are all big assets for them."
Question: How much different are they from when you played them last year with Notre Dame?
Doherty: "I think it's a confidence thing, an experience thing. Everyone's a year older and more experienced. They have more chemistry. That's probably the biggest difference.
"Coach (Roy) Williams called me this morning and said the thing that really jumped out at him was their speed and quickness. I don't think in the past Wake Forest has had that kind of speed and quickness. So you might have always thought about Wake Forest as a half-court team in the past with Tim Duncan and Rusty LaRue and players like that. Well now, they're jets. Josh Howard, (Robert) O'Kelley, Ervin Murray, Broderick Hicks -- they come at you in waves. They are a very, very deep team. When you think you have an open shot, they close out to you very quickly. On the other end, they're really good at getting into the paint with the dribble penetration or a pass into (Darius) Songaila.
On Wake Forest's physical play:
Doherty: "With the supposed rules changes, you'd like to think it works to our advantage. It depends on how the game is called. I think they are a good physical team. I think they use their hips. If you watch closely, they don't really have a shot blocker on the team, but every time you turn quickly in the post, guys like (Raphael) Vidaurreta, Songaila and (Josh) Shoemaker are riding you with their hips. Whether or not that's a foul, that's for the referees to determine. We have to be able to mentally tough enough not to look to anybody to bail us. We can't let physical play be a distraction. We've got to meet physical play head on. If we do that, I think we'll be in good shape. If we get distracted by physical play, then we've already lost the ball game."
Are you going to address with your team that this is a different Wake Forest team than maybe they have faced in the past, particularly the older players?
Doherty: "I think that definitely has to be addressed. But they experienced it last year. I watched the ACC Tournament game from last year on tape last night and they experienced it. In the game at Wake, they experienced it. So they know. If they don't, there's something wrong. They realize that those guys are pretty quick. I've probably seen five tapes of Wake Forest from last year and this year and I think Craig Dawson might have missed one shot. He's unbelievable."
On Wake Forest's depth:
Doherty: "For Dawson to come off the bench and Antwan Scott to come off the bench -- that says a lot. To me, Antwan Scott last year was one of their best forwards and he didn't play many minutes against us at Notre Dame. They are a very deep team."
On Carolina's offensive strategy:
Doherty: "I think we have to go inside to Brendan. We'll see how they play Brendan. As unselfish as Brendan has been, we got some good looks against Georgia Tech because the ball went inside to him. I think we have to get the ball into the paint either with the pass or dribble, and we're probably more successful now with the pass. When you have big targets like Brendan and Kris, we need to take advantage of that and feed off of that."
On Josh Howard's defense:
Doherty: "He's 6-6 and he has long arms and is really quick. And he can jump. He's not physically strong -- in that he's not 215 pounds -- but he's one of those wirey strong guys. He's very quick and has a long wingspan. So that makes him, along with desire, a good defender.
General Thoughts:
Doherty: "Every game now is a marquee game. UCLA is gone, so now Wake Forest is the marquee game. On Sunday, Maryland becomes the marquee game. That's what this league is all about. We have 16 of them in the ACC. I hope we're better than we were at UCLA. I think we are. That was evidenced with the way we ran our press offense against Georgia Tech. We struggled with our press offense at UCLA, but against Georgia Tech I think Ronald had just two turnovers. I think we are a better team, but we need to continue to get better."
