Lucas: UNC Basketball Mailbag December 14

December 14, 2004 | Men's Basketball

By: UNC Athletic Communications

Dec. 14, 2004

By Adam Lucas

Good news, folks: we've got a Jesse Holley update. Holley, who as Mick Mixon once noted, "will never die from a stress-related disease," plans to take a couple days off once the football team wraps up the Continental Tire Bowl on Dec. 30. He'll then return to practice with the basketball team on Jan. 4 and hopes to suit up for the first time on Jan. 8 against Maryland--which just happens to be his 21st birthday. We assume, of course, that the students in the risers who have made Holley such a crowd favorite will serenade him with a chorus of "Happy Birthday."

By the way, the 24 jersey Holley wore last year has been taken by Marvin Williams. He plans to wear number 0 this season.

My question this week is about Rashad McCants. I was wondering if you had any idea on why almost every wide open dunk Rashad uses his left hand instead of his right, even though he shoots right handed and so I'm guessing is pro dominantly right handed? Is it maybe because of an injury or is it just because he's so amazing that he likes to mix it up and just use his left hand?
Philip Martinez, Ogden, Utah

As you might have guessed, Philip, your humble Mailbag correspondent has not exactly logged a large amount of above-the-rim time. So, we took this question straight to the source.

"My sophomore year in high school I sprained my left ankle really badly and I had to start jumping off my right leg," McCants said. "At that point I started using my left hand more. It's something I needed to adjust to. When you can't use your left ankle you have to adjust, and it was something I was able to add to my game."

The way he tells it, it sounds pretty simple. Without much of a personal frame of reference (although I did recently slam home a beautiful reverse dunk on my daughter's small goal, which is about two feet high), we asked Carolina's resident Doctor of Dunk, David Noel, about the skill level involved in dunking with the off hand.

"It takes a lot of strength," Noel said. "It's crazy. He's one of those ambidextrous people. Most people are one or the other. It's hard to get the steps down with your off hand. You get used to doing it one way and it's a whole lot harder to do it the opposite way."

How is Felton's wrist doing?
Peter O'Brien, Philadelphia, PA

It always seems to me that Chris Paul has gotten all the hype at the point guard position this year in the ACC. In my opinion Raymond Felton is a more productive "Point Guard" in the fact that he dishes out the ball and gets almost 8 assists/game. Where would you rank Raymond Felton in the ACC compared to Chris Paul and maybe Jarrett Jack as far as point guards go.
Bo Stump, Charlotte

Rumor has it that other ACC point guards are considering spraining their wrist in an effort to play like Felton, who had another typical game--seven assists against three turnovers--on Sunday night. He currently has an assist/turnover ratio of 2.08, good for second among the quartet of ACC point guards (Jarrett Jack, John Gilchrist, Chris Paul, and Felton) most commonly cited as the league's best.

His wrist is going to continue to bother him for several weeks to come. He sat out large parts of Carolina's two practices last week and will follow a similar schedule this week, when the Heels have two off days and one light run-and-shoot day as they finish exams. If Felton were a player more prone to talking about himself, his injury would probably be getting more attention. Sometimes, it's national headlines when a player plays through an injury. But when Felton excels through a painful sprain--so painful Roy Williams said it would have kept most players he's coached from even suiting up against Iowa--it's little more than a footnote.

Chris Paul has gotten an exceptional amount of preseason attention this year. Felton got much the same treatment last year, when he was anointed the Preseason Player of the Year in the conference and then struggled at times. We'd add Gilchrist into Bo's question and say that you can't go wrong with any of the four point guards. We'd venture a guess that the respective Mailbags at any of the other schools would prefer their player; we'll take Felton. The way he controls the tempo of the game, both on offense and defense, is absolutely indispensable to this year's team. The defensive part of that statement is what he hasn't always done in years past, and it's turned the Tar Heels into a lethal transition team.

If there's a knock on him, it's his shooting, but at 44.7 percent from the field, he's a better shooter than Paul (37.1 percent) or Gilchrist (42.6 percent). If he ever added an Ed Cota-like 12 to 15-foot floater, he'd be completely unguardable.

Question: Is it my TV, my aging eyes, or are our basketball uniforms getting "bluer"? I know, dumb question. But, having left school in 1994, it seems to me that the Carolina blue on the trim of our home uniforms and the entire away uniform is getting brighter or "bluer." Or is it just my TV? Also, is it fair to say that the NC logo uniforms are never coming back? I do not miss them.
Andrew Wilkinson, Hagerstown, Maryland

There is an official Pantone Carolina blue color--it's PMS 278. But in Chapel Hill, the official arbiter of the color is Julian's on Franklin Street. A recent stop by the store revealed the opinion that the current blue is much "bluer" than the official color, something the Julian's folks (and remember, they're the ones who designed the current argyle style) say is due to a desire to have the jersey show up better on television. The actual PMS 278 color looks somewhat washed out on television.

As for the "NC" jerseys, they started looking a lot better when that 1999-2000 team made the Final Four. But don't look for them to be pulled out of the closet any time soon.

How has Quentin Thomas been doing in practice? Is he good enough to play significant time against a legitimate team this year? Could you comment about Felton's injury to his wrist and also what you think might happen if we lost him for say, a 3 game stretch against ACC teams? If we can't even beat Santa Clara without Felton, how could we match up against Duke or GA Tech without him?
Sam Jacobson, Rockville, MD

Not to state the obvious, but Quentin Thomas is no Raymond Felton. That means one thing: he's right on schedule.

It can be a little overwhelming to make the transition from high school basketball (where Thomas said recently his team played two defenses--zone and man-to-man) to college, where Roy Williams expects Thomas to quarterback the team when he's in the game and sort through at least five different halfcourt defenses after every made basket. You can see that Thomas isn't entirely comfortable with the way he runs the team. When he's in the game, the offense sometimes runs east-west, whereas with Felton everything is north-south.

That aggression will come with time. In terms of recent Tar Heel point guards, we'd compare him most closely to Derrick Phelps, who averaged just 9.8 minutes per game, scored 2.3 points per game, and had an assist/turnover ratio of 1.45 as a freshman. Through eight games, Thomas is averaging 8.9 minutes, 1.0 points, and has close to a 1.1 assist/turnover ratio. Another, less appreciated stat: against Kentucky the Tar Heels were +9 when Thomas was in the game (thanks to criminal law professor extraordinaire Arnold Loewy for the stat).

We've heard a lot of talk about the dire straits facing Carolina if Felton gets hurt. But what major college team has two All-American-type point guards on the same roster? Any team in the ACC--Wake, Maryland, and Georgia Tech included--would be facing hard times without their starting point guard. The days of finding super-talents willing to patiently wait their turn on the bench is over.

A lot of folks in the Dean Dome have been wondering about the young teenager with the big hair and perpetually dressed in basketball warm-ups seated at the end of the Tar Heel's bench this season, and even sometimes hovering behind the huddle during timeouts. Speculation is that he's a coach's son, that he's a recruit, or that he's a "water boy". But none of these make sense - I haven't seen him offering Gatorade to the players, for example. He's got one of the best seats in Chapel Hill week after week - how do I get to be him?!
Calvin Blue, Carrboro

If there was an AP poll for most popular mailbag topics, it would probably look something like this:

1. Justin Bohlander
2. Anything to do with Rashad McCants, including his diamond sign
3. Raymond Felton's wrist
4. Damion Grant
5. "That kid on the end of the bench"

Bad news, Calvin. The odds of you getting to be like him are very slim, unless you're willing to be adopted into the Robinson family. The frequent guest on the end of the UNC bench is Denzel Robinson, the youngest son of assistant coach Steve Robinson.

I love everything about the UNC Tar Heels men's basketball program! But I've always wondered what the guys are majoring in for study? Being a college student myself, I wondered what their plans are besides basketball.
Heather Halverson, Summit Lake, Wisconsin

Heather, the breakdown looks like this:

C.J. Hooker--Mathematics
Jackie Manuel, Melvin Scott, Jawad Williams, Rashad McCants--African Studies
Raymond Felton, Damion Grant, Sean May, David Noel--Communication Studies
yron Sanders--Information & Library Science
Wes Miller--Political Science

The rest of the Heels haven't declared a major yet.

No matter what their major, this is an extremely busy week for everyone on the team. Noel, for example, had five exams in four days this week. Last week, Felton had a 25-page paper due two days after the win over Kentucky. They're getting a terrific education at a price that's hard to argue with, but they also have significantly more demands on their time than the average student.

By the way, Melvin Scott's post-basketball ambition is simple: he wants to be the President of the United States. So don't forget to Vote Melvin in 2020!

Adam Lucas will answer your questions about the Carolina men's basketball program this season in an exclusive column published each Tuesday on TarHeelBlue.com. Lucas, editor of Tar Heel Monthly and author of the new book on Roy Williams and the Tar Heels Going Home Again, will answer your questions on personnel, strategy, opponents and anything on your mind about the Tar Heels other than recruiting specifics. You can email your questions to Adam--please make sure to include your first and last names and hometown.