University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: A New Streak
January 29, 2005 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 29, 2005
By Adam Lucas
CHARLOTTESVILLE--There were plenty of impressive stats from Saturday's 110-76 thrashing of Virginia. But Roy Williams only cared about one of them.
As soon as he came in the Tar Heel locker room after the victory, he grabbed a blue marker and walked to the white board at the front of the room. He marked a large "5" on the board, stood back, and looked at his team. The number represented the straight losses for the Tar Heels at University Hall coming into Saturday's play.
Then he drew a forceful X through the number and wrote "1" on the board next to it, reinforcing it with two underlines. Before the game, he'd told his team they were about to start a new streak in Charlottesville, and now they had.
They did it with gusto. The Heels had averaged 68.6 points per game in their last 10 trips to University Hall. Saturday, they had 62 by halftime.
In many ways, the game bore some resemblance to the loss earlier this month at Wake Forest, a game that somehow became the reference point for everyone who wanted to argue that Carolina couldn't win on the road. Two Tar Heels--Rashad McCants and Marvin Williams--were in foul trouble. McCants had a scoreless half, and Jackie Manuel also failed to crack the score sheet.
The resemblance stopped there. Raymond Felton engineered a first half that was as close to perfect as Carolina has played recently, ripping down defensive rebounds and igniting the fast break. By the time Melvin Scott nailed a three-pointer just before halftime, it was 62-26 and some of the orange-clad fans were reaching for their jackets.
Roy Williams prefers not to look at the score during the first half, wanting to base his assessment of the team's play on how they're playing rather than what the score is. So when he took his first glance at the scoreboard on the way off the court, there was only one possible reaction: "We're playing pretty doggone good."
Virginia is a team on the ropes, there's no question about that. There was a fatalistic feeling in the air as soon as the doors were thrown open to fans at 11 a.m. But that shouldn't diminish the quality of the victory, the rare 34-point win that wasn't as close as the score indicated.
Carolina demolished the Cavaliers the same way they breezed through the Maui Invitational. Even though they were getting plenty of fast break opportunities, they didn't try to make the play that would get them on SportsCenter. They just made the simple pass, the pass that would lead to the best scoring opportunity. That's not always easy to do when you're stretching out a lead, because the urge to get fancy increases in proportion with your advantage on the scoreboard.
It was no surprise, then, when Williams mentioned what he'd emphasized during the week off. "We wanted to make the easiest play we could make," he said. "And I thought today we made great decisions on the break."
Great decisions on almost every offensive possession, actually. The poster child might have been McCants, who was still scoreless five minutes into the second half when he caught the ball with a good look at a three-pointer. But across the court he spotted sophomore Reyshawn Terry--a player McCants has consistently tried to encourage over the past few months--even more wide open. He fired the ball to Terry.
As soon as Terry began his shooting motion, McCants threw his index finger in the air. The ball ripped through the net, and McCants thrust his finger skyward.
A new streak was being created. Five was history.
One was the present.
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.
