University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: To Tell The Truth
December 1, 2003 | Lucas
Nov. 24, 2003
By Adam Lucas
Hearing Jackie Manuel talk after Carolina's 91-68 win over Davidson Monday night, you couldn't help but question him.
Early in the second half of the Tar Heels' second straight victory, Manuel dove into the Wildcat bench to save a loose ball. His mission complete, he could've easily strolled up the floor and waited for Raymond Felton to do what he usually does--find the best way to get the ball in the basket.
Instead, Manuel motored down the court, receiving a pass at the top of the key.
Here's where the suddenly wizened junior might be stretching the truth. Last year, definitely the year before that, Manuel might have thrown up a haphazard three-pointer from 20 feet.
"No," he protests. "I probably would've taken it to the basket."
But Jackie, even on Monday it looked like you hesitated for just a second, like you might have been considering it.
"I was reading the defense."
Truth is, it's ill-advised three-pointers in that same situation that made Manuel a 27-percent three-point shooter last season. Roy Williams didn't watch much tape of last year's Tar Heels over the summer, preferring for his players to start fresh with him when practice began, but he does know how to read a stat sheet. When he saw that meager percentage for Manuel, the solution seemed pretty simple--less shooting, more passing.
It's a message he hammered in during early-season practices. On one occasion, the soft-spoken Manuel passed up a jumper from the right side and instead fed Sean May in the post.
Williams blew his whistle, stopping the action.
"Jackie, that's what I'm talking about," he said. "I can't have you on the floor if you're shooting 27 percent. But I can have you on the floor when you're passing the ball like that."
The way Williams gets him on the floor shows that the new Carolina head coach already has a firm grasp on the personality of his team. A starting position probably means more to Melvin Scott than it does to Manuel. Scott, a shooter, is at his best when he gets into the flow of the game early but can struggle when asked to come off the bench cold.
Despite constant praise from the coaching staff for Manuel's effort since practice began slightly over a month ago, it's Scott who is announced with the starters, Manuel who comes off the bench. They play similar minutes, but there's no question that the roles they're filling best suit their respective personalities.
"Jackie leads us by defense," says Jawad Williams, who has requested nearly 100 tickets for Saturday's game at Cleveland State, when he will play in front of his grandmother, Louvenia Hillman, for the first time since sixth grade. "He deflects a lot of passes and pressures the ball really well."
Oh yeah, about that fast break against Davidson. Turning down the open three-pointer, Manuel zipped into the lane, ripped off a nifty spin move and dropped the ball softly into the basket. The play gave Carolina a 59-39 advantage, and when Scott hit a three-pointer seconds later a 12-0 run was finished and, for the most part, so were the Wildcats. The spurt silenced a Davidson crowd--many of whom sported special t-shirts made up expressly for this game--that had been energized by an 18-point halftime deficit melting away to 11 points by the first media timeout.
Used to be, before the Hornets or Panthers or Bobcats or cable or satellite, Charlotte was a Carolina town. When the Tar Heels came to the Queen City it was an event not to be missed, a certain sellout and a chance for fans three hours away to get a rare glimpse of their heroes.
As Carolina made their game-clinching run, it almost seemed that way again, almost seemed that the teams were back in the old Charlotte Coliseum playing on that ugly orange court. The coup de grace came late, as the Wildcat cheerleaders threw out Davidson t-shirts during a timeout, only to have one rudely fired back onto center court by an uninterested Tar Heel fan.
Those kinds of rejections are usually the domain of Carolina's designated defensive stopper, Jackie Manuel, who played a large role in forcing the Wildcats into 27 turnovers. His defense has always been solid but unspectacular. But with his offense improving rapidly, the paradox is that more observers--like the ACC coaches who inexplicably left him off the league's All-Defensive team last year--will pay attention to him and take notice of his defense.
Ask him how he wants his opponents to remember him, and Manuel still thinks defense first.
"Nightmares," he says. "That's what I want them to have. I want them to think about me the whole night."
And you got the feeling, after watching the harried Wildcat guards on Monday night, that that's one statement from Jackie Manuel that no one would question.
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.
