University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Perfect Vision
April 3, 2005 | Men's Basketball
April 3, 2005
By Adam Lucas
ST. LOUIS--You can see farther at night.
Or is it "further?" No, you know it's "farther" because it was two years ago this very same weekend that Roy Williams pushed his chair away from the table at a post-championship game press conference and thanked the media for not pursuing the Williams-to-Carolina angle more vehemently by saying, "Thanks for not pursuing it any farther than you did."
He stood up and turned to walk away from the microphone. But then he leaned back down, grabbed the mike, and said, "I mean further."
That was just two years ago this very weekend. And you knew immediately that if this Williams guy was still espousing Dean Smith-taught grammar lessons ("F-a-r measures distance" was a frequent Smith teaching point) then it was likely he'd have a pretty good handle on the Smith-taught hoops lessons, too.
Two years later, after an it-couldn't-have-been-that-easy-was-it 87-71 win over Michigan State, here we are in a place visited by Carolina just twice in the past 23 years.
So maybe that's why you can see further at night. What's in front of you is downtown St. Louis, where the streets are currently lined with trash. Hot dog wrappers, popcorn boxes, shattered plastic beer bottles (exactly what do you have to do to shatter a plastic beer bottle, you wonder).
You don't see that.
You see downtown Franklin Street, where it's the 4 a.m. Sunday morning and things are, as usual, pristine. There is a gigantic orange crescent moon hanging over the village, the kind you have to check twice to make sure it's real. The only odd thing you notice is the complete lack of cars parked on the street, the only hint that a couple hours ago this block was in full celebration mode. Some of the night owls are still out. One is wearing a 2005 Final Four t-shirt, heading in the direction of Time-Out, where they are lined up out the door for biscuits, so you blow your horn. This is an exact transcript of what he says:
"Alllll riiiiiiight go Tar Heels Woo-HOOOOOO!"
That is exactly what you were thinking.
What's in front of you is a locker room full of Carolina basketball players and they are surrounded by a horde of media. This is not the usual media, this is media from places like Oakland, Nashville, and Chicago. It begins to sound a little bit like the scene from Forrest Gump when the nation is trying to determine why Forrest is running across the country.
"Are you doing this for Roy Williams?"
"Are you doing this for Jawad Williams?"
"Are you doing this for the seniors?"
You don't see that.
You see a white dry-erase board in the corner of the Carolina locker room, where after everyone has left Melvin Scott will grab a black marker and write, "1 more for Ms. Burgess R.I.P."
It's a tribute to Burgess McSwain, the longtime academic counselor who passed away on July 9, 2004. She is, perhaps, the person who would have most enjoyed this run and the one who would have least liked to be in the spotlight. But she is in their hearts, and if they seemed a little more joyful on Saturday night--and they did, easily seeming to be the least tight of the four teams on the Edward Jones Dome floor--maybe they were picturing her dogs, Brandy Nan and Lille Langtry, wearing some of that outlandish doggie fashion.
What's in front of you is nearly two full days of stress over Monday night's national championship matchup with Illinois. Maybe it will help you, then, to ponder a quick story from the Carolina postgame locker room. Roy Williams gathered his team and in a ceremony that's become habit during the NCAA Tournament, wrote "2" on the board in reference to the number of teams still possessing the opportunity to be called national champions. It started at 32, dwindled to 16, then to 4, and the numbers are getting heart-skippingly low.
His team was still cresting on the high of holding the rough, tough Spartans--they'd spent all week hearing MSU called the "better team" but Carolina the "more talented team" as though that was something that required an apology--to 33.8 percent shooting while hitting 57.1% of their second-half shots. They were, maybe, a little giddy.
Roy Williams looked at them. After big wins--only the biggest of the big--they've made a tradition of engaging in a little postgame mosh pit, with players, managers, and coaches all flailing about in the middle of the room.
"We can do that jump around thing and it will feel really good," Williams told his team, "or we could wait until Monday."
They waited. Monday is not too far away to see it from here.
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.
