University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Stop Leads to Silence
December 2, 2004 | Men's Basketball
Dec. 2, 2004
By Adam Lucas
BLOOMINGTON--At Carolina basketball practices, Roy Williams is rarely bound by the clock.
Each segment of practice is timed and counted down on the Smith Center scoreboards, but Williams doesn't mind tacking on extra time during certain drills. One of his favorite additions comes during defensive drills.
"We can't quit on that," he'll say. "We have to get one good stop. At some point in our next game, we're going to need one good stop."
His judgment on what constitutes a good stop is merciless. If the offense misses an open shot, that doesn't count. If they make an impossible shot, that doesn't count. It has to be five defensive players working together, playing 35 seconds of solid team defense.
Wednesday night at Assembly Hall, in his 20th month as Carolina's head coach, his team finally got that one good stop at a crucial moment. They'd failed last year--against Duke twice, against Florida State, against Georgia Tech in the ACC Tournament, against Texas in the NCAA Tournament.
And with the Hoosiers slicing into a once-bulging Tar Heel lead late in the second half, it became apparent it was time for a stop. There was 6:55 left in the second half, IU trailing just 60-54, 17,402 screaming college basketball fans imploring their team to put the ball through the hoop.
But they couldn't. In fact, they couldn't even get the ball to the hoop. Carolina played maybe their best 35 seconds of defense this season--Jackie Manuel hawking Bracey Wright, the unsung David Noel refusing to allow Marshall Strickland to free himself for even a desperation jumpshot--and forced a shot clock violation.
Indiana would score just one field goal over the next five minutes of action and the Heels built a double-digit lead with two minutes left on their way to a 70-63 win.
"That was our one stop," Noel said. "Because of our depth, a lot of guys were out there still fresh at that time."
That depth was especially important late in the first half, when May was saddled with foul trouble and Marvin Williams left the game with a cut above his left eye that required four stitches. The Tar Heels, suddenly paper-thin in the post, got a significant lift from Byron Sanders and Noel in the paint. The pair of juniors didn't have gaudy stats--just six points and four rebounds between them--but were crucial in helping the Heels through a potentially dangerous part of the game.
May eventually came back and scored eight points in the second half, including one three-point play off a scrum that boosted the lead to seven. He was the object of derision by the crimson-clad crowd from the moment he appeared on the court. Despite their particular dislike for Sean May, the Assembly Hall fans represented the best pure college basketball atmosphere Carolina has played in front of in several years. The cheerleaders were all over the floor, the band was loud, the flags were waving, the students didn't need cute chants to have an impact on the game, and during several timeouts, the entire crowd sang the IU fight song in unison. It was almost like something out of, well, Hoosiers.
On this night, though, Sean May was not their Jimmy Chitwood. The barbs aimed at him ranged from "Traitor" to much stronger, but there was never any outward sign by the Bloomington native that he heard anything. Oh, maybe a little extra umph on the high fives he exchanged after a made free throw, but otherwise no ears turned to the crowd, no gestures to the fans, just a poised young man playing in front of his home crowd.
That doesn't mean, however, that he never noticed them.
"Coach Williams always says it's the best thing in the world to watch the other team's fans leave," he said. "What I really noticed was that with about 1:10 to go, they started to leave. Rashad pointed it out to me. I told him, `It's not over yet,' but I was kind of excited.
His night wasn't finished, as he entered the game one more time. In most of these "home" games played for the benefit of players in front of their family and friends, they leave the court to a rousing ovation. Sean May got something sweeter. When he left the court for the final time in front of thousands of friends-turned-foes, all their venom was spent. For the better part of nearly three hours, old Assembly Hall had been a cacophony of catcalls, the jeers bouncing off the steep main stands. Sean May walked to the bench, slapped hands with his teammates, and took a seat. There were 22.9 seconds left and Carolina held an insurmountable 68-60 lead.
You had to cock your head to hear it, but the sound was unmistakable. The only thing bouncing off the corners of the building, the overwhelming sound roaring its way through thousands of Hoosiers, was the sound of complete, total, and utter silence.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. His book on Roy Williams's first season at Carolina, Going Home Again, is now available in bookstores. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly or learn more about the book, click here.
