University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Williams Keeps Coaching, Heels Win
November 8, 2003 | Men's Basketball
Nov. 8, 2003
By Adam Lucas
With 20 seconds left and Saturday night's exhibition against North Carolina Central long since decided, most of the assembled crowd of 16,658 was primarily concerned with whether or not the Tar Heels would break 100 points.
That did not concern Roy Williams. What concerned Roy Williams was that just a few seconds earlier, Carolina senior Jonathan Miller had been raked across the face by a Central player with no whistle blown.
This was a problem. You get to know Roy Williams, you find out that he's not going to let his guys sweat and dive on the floor out there and then take the short end of a whistle, even with a 40-point lead and less than a minute left. His guys are superstars like Raymond Felton, but his guys are also walk-ons like Miller, a Burlington native who practices as hard as anyone on the team.
So while most of the Smith Center crowd stood and begged the Tar Heels to shoot a three-pointer to crack the century mark, Williams vaulted off the Carolina bench, met the offending official at halfcourt, followed him all the way down the floor, and then continued to let him hear about his mistake on the way back up the court after the Heels missed a shot. Nothing violent, nothing foul, just a simple point: my guys are out there trying. You do the same.
After the 97-59 victory (the rare 38-point victory that was not as close as the score indicated), when the team gathered in the locker room, Williams singled out that play and told his squad that just as he expected 40 minutes of effort from them, they'd get 40 minutes of coaching from him and (hopefully) 40 minutes of officiating from the referees.
That is coaching. That is Roy Williams.
"It means a lot for him to do that," Miller said after the game. "That means a lot to know that he's on our side and he'll go to battle for us just like he will for our All-Americans."
Ask Melvin Scott about it, who was on the bench when Williams exploded over the call, and you get a simple answer:
"Man, that's just Coach."
Not to belabor the obvious, but the guess here is that this particular coach could be a good one.
The signs were apparent early. The Tar Heels had spent just a couple of days practicing their zone offense, and when Central opened in a 2-3 zone, it was reasonable to expect Carolina to try and shoot over it--the easiest, although not necessarily best, way to defeat a zone.
These are how the Tar Heels' first three possessions went against the zone:
1. Sean May throws a pass from the foul line to Jackie Manuel in the paint, who is fouled.
2. Sean May posts up and misses a good look at the basket.
3. Jawad Williams scores on a beautiful alley-oop set up by a solid backscreen.
If the Smith Center ushers had come down after those three possessions and told everybody to go home, it still would have been worth the price of admission. Even without all the dunks, all the alley-oops, all the fancy passes that filled the rest of the game, those three possessions provided a heartening glimpse into this team's offensive approach.
"I love when teams play zone," said Sean May, who thrived at the high post--the same place he picked apart Kansas last year. "It opens up so many gaps and it's easy to see the holes."
It's also easy to see the holes when you blitz downcourt before the other team has a chance to gather their thoughts. A sequence early in the game probably showed Central coach Phil Spence all he needed to see about what was to come.
Trailing 12-4, the Eagles battled the athletic Carolina defense and were able to convert a basket to trim their deficit to 12-6.
Whoosh, Raymond Felton already had the ball, seemingly before it came through the net, and was dashing up the floor.
Zip, two Felton dribbles and the ball was tossed 35 feet to Jackie Manuel, who was open under the basket for a layup.
For the record, that's a fast break off a made basket, and it's the kind of basketball Roy Williams loves. It's also crushing to opponents, who have just spent 20 seconds trying to find a hole in the defense and then have to watch their opponent zip down the floor and score in under five seconds.
For opponents, it's depressing, disheartening, and demoralizing.
And for two hours Saturday night, it was mighty fun to watch.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly, click here.
