University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Thomas Keeps Moving Forward
January 19, 2006 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 19, 2006
By Adam Lucas
Most college players aren't equipped to handle turning the ball over 7 times in 9 minutes against a conference opponent. They've reached the Atlantic Coast Conference level of play because they're simply too talented to have an outing like that, and they've been so good for so long that their confidence is never shaken enough to allow a few misplays to snowball. So a performance like the one Quentin Thomas suffered through at Virginia Tech on Jan. 10 would have been cause for panic for most players.
Not for Thomas. It was easy to imagine him burning the game tape in a cleansing ceremony, or maybe coming back in the locker room and tossing everything out of his locker. He'd probably earned the right to do that.
But he didn't.
"A game tape like that is something you hate to watch, especially if you're in my position," he says. "But you learn so much from it. Sometimes in life you need that kind of step backward in order to keep you headed forward."
In the world of college basketball, where "take them one game at a time" qualifies as very quotable, Thomas's comments are downright insightful. He's been one of the most discussed players on the Tar Heel roster this season. A nagging foot injury plagued him throughout the preseason and eventually cost him the starting slot many outsiders assumed was his by default. He sat out a key 3-game stretch that included some of Carolina's best basketball of the season--wins over Kentucky and Saint Louis, plus a close loss to Illinois--and then made his return against Southern Cal, when the entire team struggled to put together a complete performance.
Prior to the Miami game, he'd committed 10 turnovers in his last 22 minutes against ACC competition.
"It gets frustrating sometimes because you want to do so well for your team," Thomas says. "You want to contribute in any way you can. And in certain games when I'm not doing that I feel like I'm letting them down. That's the frustrating part for me.
"Basketball is a game where you're going to make mistakes. But you can't think about that. That's something coaches have always gotten on me about thinking too much about mistakes. It's hard not to do that, especially when you're making mistake after mistake consistently in the course of the game."
That's what was so impressive about his performance against Miami. Almost as soon as he entered the game, he committed a turnover against the Hurricanes' quick guards. Would this be another case of the mistakes multiplying?
No. He played a solid first-half stretch that included a nice jumper, some quality defense, and a pass to Reyshawn Terry that led to a three-pointer that gave the Tar Heels their first lead. He finished the day with just that one turnover, a solid step forward for a player who is essential to Carolina's perimeter rotation.
It helps that Thomas is well acquainted with another player going through some similar growing pains this season. He and fellow West Coast recruit Marvin Williams formed a tight bond last season. Both have similar, low-key personalities and both are well-mannered to a fault. While Thomas has been adapting to an enhanced role with this year's Tar Heels, he's kept in close contact with Williams, who has been thrown into an unfamiliar situation with the Atlanta Hawks.
"I don't go two days without talking to Q," Williams says. "Q is my guy. He was part of my success last year. As a fellow freshman, he was going through the same things I was going through. He was big to me. He was a blessing to me. We talk all the time."
"Most times we don't even talk about basketball," Thomas says. "We just try to keep each other's spirits up."
To help keep his spirits up, he's tried to improve his defensive effort this season--added weight has been a bonus and he's tried to do less reaching than he did as a freshman. And the numbers suggest he's been much more efficient on the offensive end than he was as a rookie. Prior to the Blacksburg native, his assist/turnover ratio was leading the team. Even with that game factored in, his mark of 1.57 is still one of the highest on the team and substantially better than last year, when he was slightly under 1.0. To put it into some historical context, it's also better than former Carolina point guard Jimmy Black--who, like Thomas, has a championship ring--as a sophomore.
Don't expect Thomas to try and protect that ratio as Carolina's schedule becomes more daunting. He has no patience for a cautious approach to the game.
"I picked up a lot by having to watch from the bench when I was sitting out," he says. "Watching Bobby and Wes I picked up a lot on both offense and defense. I saw where I could attack and be more aggressive, and that's something I'm still trying to do each game."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. He is the coauthor of the official book of the 2005 championship season, Led By Their Dreams, and 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 Going Home Again, click here.
