Roy Williams' Press Conference Quotes

Nov. 21, 2003

Any nerves coming off for you for the next couple of days?

No, if it had been my first game ever, I would be so nervous now that I wouldn't be sleeping. Right now, I am nervous just because I am worried about my team. There is no question that I will have a different kind of cold chill when I walk out that tunnel. For fifteen years, I said at Lawrence Kansas and Allen Fieldhouse, that if I ever walked through that tunnel and didn't have cold chills before a game, I'd quit the next day. I have always had those. There is no question that it will be a little different this time. First game back in Chapel Hill for a guy that grew up in North Carolina, dreaming about North Carolina, wondering if I was good enough to play here and pretty soon figured out that I wasn't good enough to play here. Then there is everything that is going on around it and the difficulty of the decision. I think that it will be a little bit unusual, I am sure that I will have a few more butterflies. But, I don't know that I have ever been nervous in any game I have ever coached. Whether it was high school, coaching the JV team in front of twenty-one people, coaching the Jayhawks in front of forty or sixty thousand, whatever it was, in New Orleans, and I don't think that I will be nervous this time because you are too busy. But, I think walking out the tunnel will be a little different.

What have you liked so far about what you have seen and what are some of the things that you really need to work on?
I like that the kids are accepting, trying to do what we ask them to do. That is the biggest positive by far. We have struggled somewhat of taking it from a drill scenario to an actual five on five during a game. We got a little bit better during the exhibition games, but I am still concerned about that. It is really a pretty simple game, we have got to stop turning the ball over so that we can get some shots, and hope the quality of our shots are better than the quality of the other team's and I hope we get more of them. Other than that it is not trying to be nuclear scientists or anything like that, but we have got to make sure that we get good quality shots. That is the biggest thing.

What did you know about Rashad McCants before you came here, and what have you learned?
I knew that he was extremely gifted, and I still feel that way. There's been a lot of attention, fans, media, everybody, about his emotionalism, enthusiasm when things are going good and pouting when things are going poorly. We have addressed those, we have talked about those, and he is trying extremely hard to do what we want him to do. He is trying to understand that highs and lows are not good for you. During one of the exhibition games he caught a lob pass and made a pretty significant dunk, and I had told him that I had heard all this stuff about beating his chest, screaming, ranting and raving, and giving the X, and told him that I don't like those kind of things, number one, especially if you are putting down someone else, and number two, if you are going to do those, then do the same things when you screw up because you are trying to draw individual attention to yourself. So when you turn it over, I expect him to beat on his chest and do the same thing. In the exhibition game he had a pretty big time dunk and he came down and just ran back down the court. So, I said we are making some strides. I have always felt that way. Walter Payton, who I loved as a football player, I liked what he did when he got in the end zone, it was no big dance or anything, he was quoted one time as saying that he didn't want people to think that it was that big of a deal because he had been there before and he expected to be back again. Fortunately for me we played in Chicago one year against DePaul and their assistant athletic director comes in our locker room after the game and said Coach, Walter Payton wants to see you outside and I said yeah right and he said no he really is. So, I walked out and he really was. I talked to him and he said that he just loved the way we played, the way I coached and he enjoyed watching our team, and I said I have to ask you a question, for years I have given you credit for this, he said well there is some truth to it and the other part is Coach have you ever seen how big those defensive players are, why would you want to make them mad. I have used at least half of that story with the team anyway.

What is your philosophy on three-point shooting?
If you look back...personal change is going to change some. We have never been a team that shot millions of them. Last year at Kansas, Kirk Heinrich was the best three-point shooter and he took far more than anybody else. The year before that we had Kirk and Jeff Boshe and they took far more than anybody else. I don't believe in shooting a lot of them unless the guys can really, really shoot. I think that the reason that I don't like them is because you have to have balance and the other thing is that you don't get fouled too often shooting them. I like to get the ball inside because sometimes you get fouled and at the end of the game you have a chance of playing against somebody other than the other team's best five players. So, balance is important, but I have always been a coach that really did try to challenge from the inside out. Jackie Manuel, just use him as an example now and Jackie may surprise me and shoot eleven of them on Saturday, but I don't think so. He didn't have a great percentage last year and I have talked about how he can do things to really help our team. If you go back and look at the stats from the exhibition games, he didn't shoot a single one. I am probably more proud of the way that he has adapted to what we have tried to get him to do than anybody on the team; he has done a better job of it than anybody on the team. We will shoot some threes, but I really do believe that if you can't make high fifties to sixty percent of your threes in practice, you should never shoot one during the game. In practice there is no pressure, nobody is guarding you and I am even including the shooting drills where there really is nobody guarding you, and if you can't make close to sixty percent of them in practice, I don't think that you should ever shoot one of them in a game.

Can you expand on what makes Jackie Manuel's contribution so important?
I think that everybody thinks that they can do things that they are maybe not really that good at. I think that one of the first things that everybody needs to do is understand their strengths as well as their weaknesses. I can hit the golf ball pretty well at times, but if you put me in the bunker, I might as well hit it left- handed. It is bad news in there. I have hit two in my entire life out of a bunker that have gone in, and I can beat guys blind-folded and make them. So, I know that is my weakness, so I try to stay out of the suckers. If I have to hit the ball a little bit short to stay short of them, then that is what I will do. Jackie, in my opinion in looking at the stats, has not been a great, great shooter. His form is a little funky, and so I talked to him in the off-season and told him that we needed him to do one of two things; either get to be a heck of a lot better shooter or don't shoot as many. Somebody has told me before that I am brutally honest, but I think that if you are honest it makes no difference. There's probably a better way to say something that people can handle. He has had some wide-open threes and almost every single time in practice that he has had a wide-open three and is ready to pull the trigger, he has passed it up and made something else happen that was better. Whether it was his penetration or just passing it and somebody else got a better shot and he ended up getting the offensive rebound. The fact is that if he shoots and Raymond goes to rebound, we are not going to be quite as well off as if Raymond shoots and Jackie goes to rebound. Then he has a great feel on the defensive end of the floor. He sees a lot of the things, he can help out some teammates and sometimes he tries to help out too much. But, he's got a really good feel for it on the defensive end of the floor. In the last game he had four or five offensive rebounds and Jawad and Rashad had zero between them. When you add them up it is still zero. They've got to get that message. They have got to get there.

Is winning and reconnecting the Carolina family of equal importance to you?
I think that probably so. I think that winning is going to help. To me it is extremely important to get everybody back together again, pulling forward and pulling in the same direction. But, I do think that winning cures a lot of ills.

Justin and Reyshawn are playing more, largely due to David's absence, but is it good for them to have to be in there?
If it makes them better in the long run, then that is good for us. In the offseason and off the court, you should be concerned with what is best for the individual. What you have to be concerned about during the season is what is best for the team. So, our team would be better if David were playing. At the same time, if Jawad, Reyshawn and Byron are getting more minutes and turn that into a positive and make themselves a better player, then that will help us in the long term. The problem is can you survive, can you win while you are doing those kinds of things. Last year at Kansas we lost Wayne Simeon and Jeff Graves had to be a player. It worked out great because he got better and better but we won during that time. If a kid gets better and better but you are losing all of those games, it doesn't help you. He's got great confidence but your team is just bad. So, it really doesn't do any good.

What is it going to be like for you when you pick up the paper and see a Kansas box score?
"It's difficult because I loved that place and that is never going to change. I love those kids and everybody on that team I recruited and even the walk-ons I recruited, so you have those special feelings. There is no question that, other than their parents, no body will pull for Kansas more than I will and I am not so sure that the parents will pull more, they may pull equally as much. As I have said before, I want to know the score before I go to bed but for 15 years I wanted to know what the North Carolina score was. Part of that was because my son Scott was playing, part of that was because of coach Smith, coach Guthridge and Matt [Doherty]. But this is even bigger because there are a bunch of kids there that I consider part family and that's never going to change."

Talk a little more Byron Sanders, Reyshawn Terry, and Justin Bohlander and whether you think they can provide the type of contribution that this team needs
"Well, we'll see. It's what is going to happen in the first part of the season, I think, that will tell. Justin Bohlander has been a pleasant surprise. I think it is something that we need one of those pleasant surprises, we need him to keep focused and not lose confidence. A lot freshman come, and even if they've had real good practice sessions, that they go out and start a game and all of the sudden they get hit with a different animal and that has been more difficult for them. Same thing with Reyshawn. Byron has been through it before, but, it's tougher because we don't have a lot of great competition during our practice so the quality of the opponent could be a shock for Justin and Reyshawn, both. I think that is the reason you see with those teams who do have nine or 10 players that the competition for those minutes and the competition for those spots is something that is really important and it makes them a better player. We are going to practice about a 100 times this year and I guess 39 games is the most games I have ever played. So, you are going to get a lot better in those 100 practices than in those 39 games."

What have you learned through your years of experience that will make a difference for you this year that you didn't know when you went to Kansas that first year?
"Well, I think everybody is a better coach every year you do it. You are more experienced and you have seen more things. I read in the paper this morning an article about Duke and Mike [Krzyzewski] said he would have like to have been as experienced in his first final four as he is now and he thinks that would have helped. You are talking about one of the greats in the game. I do believe that every year the more experience, the more knowledge and the more circumstances you are exposed to, that you do understand how to handle it better. The one thing about my first year at Kansas, those kids from day one didn't hesitate to give me chance. They didn't hesitate at all to just do what I ask them to do. They didn't feel great about themselves, they had just been part of a National championship team and Danny Manning had left. It was Danny and the miracles kind of thing. So they chose to believe in what my staff was saying to them, accepted it, and went out and played their tails off. When I say that, I am not saying that these guys didn't do that, they didn't do it to the level that the kids at Kansas did. I like confidence and so I don't mind that. We have got to understand that right now we have not beaten anybody and I think that this team is believing it, and not to that extent, because I was stunned how the Kansas kids did that year. Not that I'm anybody now but I had never coach a game that anybody knew anything about. Now, at least, I can at least say, hey dummy I got some rings how many do you have? So they have to listen to me a little bit."

What has been your impression of Dick Baddour, and would you like to see his contract renewed?
"Dick has been fantastic. I think that if Dick Baddour had not handled it the way he did handle it during the change, I never would have been here. I don't know that Dick was ever an athlete, but he showed great savvy as far as I was concerned during that point, because if they had pressured me, there was no way that I would have come. He makes me feel very comfortable, I trust him. I think that he is very competent. I think that he loves the University Athletic Department. I think that he is loyal to the coaches. I think that he wants what is best for North Carolina. He has made some decisions that have been very difficult, he has made some decisions that people have not agreed with and they have let him no, sometimes not in the best manner, but sometimes discreetly too. I feel very comfortable with him and it is not in my position to say anything to anybody except the fact that I do feel very comfortable with him. That was extremely important in Kansas. I had one athletic director the first 13 years and my life was very good. I had another situation after that and life wasn't very good. I hope that I never have to go through anything like that again."

What's your philosophy on your schedule and do you have Arizona on the schedule next year?
"I will agree that the schedule is unusual. I mean, playing in Myrtle Beach, that's unusual. Six-thousand seats in an arena gives us a chance to lose a lot of money in the athletic department. I think I would have told Raymond that I would come and eat dinner at your Mom and Daddy's every time I go to the beach. We're doing it and we're going to have good time. I wished we could play in Latta. I worry about it for the athletic department because it's a game and you make a lot more money in the Smith Center. I think Cleveland State because takes Jawad back home. We don't have the big time opponents that we will have. The scheduling is all most like beauty, it's in the eyes of the beholder. Eventually we will have the most difficult schedule in the country but we are not ready to play that kind of schedule right now. Justin, Byron and Reyshawn need to have a little more confidence, This schedule is good to the extent that hopefully we will be able to get some confidence for those guys. We are talking to Arizona and Texas, and I think we are starting with Southern Cal. We are trying to get a game scheduled before we head to Maui next year."

How do you keep your players balanced?
"I do think that's a good question because I do want to be realistic with them but I do want to be positive with them. My whole deal is, if you think your good and you act like your good and you think that people are supposed to give you things it ticks me off. What I want you to feel like is to feel like you are good and be good and humble. And, if you do it in that direction everybody is going to handle pretty well. The bottom line is, the thing that I think this team really needs is, they have got to be hungry. They can watch all of the McDonalds All- American games they want, but the bottom line is they better be able to win right now. And , I think for the most part our kids really are hungry. I have gotten on them sometime for a little less than stellar effort or something like that, because when you're a player and here that so-and-so wants to run you say hey man that would be fun but when you start trying to do it you find out it's hard. Then all of the sudden it's not as much fun anymore. The way we play can be fun but it is demanding, but that's a tough question because you have to balance out a little realism but be very positive too."

Is this team able to run the way the way you want them to?
"We have been between a rock and a hard place. I would like to push them more than I have but we are not able to do that because of numbers and health problems. I had some teams and some guys before that I thought could just run all day and most of those teams were pretty deep. I haven't had anybody flop around all year since the conditioning program began and that is amazing because we've always had that. But I haven't been able to push these guys as hard as I would like. You know the word stress comes from stress. So if I was mad at Sean May and I put him on the in-line to do a lot of extra running would be counter productive. I am not the brightest guy in the world but I am not dumb. Rashad had quad strain or tear and it was pretty significant. If I get mad at him and say you are not in shape and put over there run and what he does is tear it some more. I would like for us to run more and to be in better shape and yet you can't do it and so that the reason I will at least in the preseason call more timeouts than I have ever called in my life."

What do you know about Old Dominion?
" Old Dominion has four of their top six guys back from last year. Carolina started out last year making the first nine shots of the game and with two or three minutes to play it's a five point game even after starting out making nine out of nine. Blaine Taylor, their coach, is a really good guy and a good coach. They will be ready and they will understand the significance of the game and they will be fired up. I have always felt like that our "wants to" has got to match the other teams "wants to." I want to win and they want to win too and our's has got to match theirs and protect our home turf. It's not a kind of game that we're going to go in to and everybody is trying to decide where they are going to go eat after the game. We realize that we have to go out there and play. I think when a team has four of it's top six guys back and played us very well last year, I think we have to understand that old thing, respect everyone, fear no one."

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Justin Bohlander

Jackie Manuel

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