University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Maturation Continues For Thomas
October 5, 2006 | Men's Basketball
Oct. 5, 2006
TarHeelBlue.com will have a new player profile each Thursday leading up to the season opener on Nov. 14 (next week's subject is Bobby Frasor). We'll also have the return of the popular Basketball Mailbag on Nov. 7. For even more basketball coverage that you won't read anywhere else (including more on the summer pickup scene), order your full-color, all-glossy Tar Heel Monthly basketball preview issue now.
By Adam Lucas
Carolina's loss to George Mason ended the 2005-06 season. It also marked the beginning of the 2006 pickup season, when current and former players mix on the Smith Center court for approximately four months of intrasquad action.
Quentin Thomas was one of the most buzzed-about players during the early part of the 2006 offseason. Continuing the monumental improvement he showed during his sophomore campaign, he was a confident floor general, a savvy passer, and an occasional scorer.
But he thought his rapid ascent would be stunted when he felt his finger hang in a teammate's jersey during one pickup session. He tore a ligament in his left thumb, an injury that prevented him from playing pickup for almost a month. Thomas still went to the gym, where he worked on shooting form with one hand, but he was afraid the floor sense that makes a quality point guard would desert him without full-speed game action.
That's when he discovered the benefits of videotape.
"I really thought the injury was going to slow me up," Thomas says. "But I started watching a lot of film while I was hurt, and it really helped. I paid attention to things I did well and things I didn't do well. I also watched tape of Raymond (Felton) and tried to focus on his key plays and the things he did to put the team in a good position.
"I honestly was kind of surprised when I started playing again. I felt like I had really improved at seeing the floor. My court awareness was a lot better."
Court awareness is an area where Thomas had already made dramatic improvements during his second season in Chapel Hill. Remember, this is a player who committed 7 turnovers in 9 minutes at Virginia Tech on January 10...and then proceeded to commit just 7 turnovers in one 10-game stretch (116 minutes) late in the season. It was one of the most stark in-season turnarounds in Carolina basketball history.
Thomas credits former roommate David Noel and some heart-to-heart sessions with his parents for part of the turnaround. Roy Williams played another major role.
"Coach told me that things like this happened to good players," Thomas says. "There are some players who have this happen and they can never recover from it. He said that good players bounce back from it, and he saw me as one of those players. He also told me he hadn't lost faith in me and my teammates hadn't lost faith in me."
Thomas was mostly content to be a distributor last season, attempting just 61 shots in 337 minutes--the lowest ratio of any returning player. While he still has a firm grasp on the expectations Williams places on his point guards--"He wants you to be an extension of the coach on the floor," Thomas says--he also wants to add more offense to his game.
One of the benefits of his video study was the realization that he was occasionally flinging his jump shot, especially when fatigued. After some mechanical adjustments over the summer, Thomas believes he's ready to be a more complete offensive player as a junior.
"Ever since I was little I've been a player who wanted to get everyone else involved," he says. "But I know I have the ability to score. I worked on shooting midrange shots a lot this summer. And once I get that down where I feel comfortable taking it regularly, that will open up my teammates."
As he says it, he's describing the changes he expects to take place on the floor. But the easygoing way he says it reveals the off-the-court maturation Thomas has experienced.
Making a new home thousands of miles away from his family hasn't always been easy for the Oakland native. He and fellow west coast product Marvin Williams leaned heavily on each other during their freshman seasons; with Williams in the NBA last season, they spoke at least every other day.
Thomas is unfailingly polite and has never complained once about anything that's happened to him during his Carolina career. But it was apparent that he was tense at times as a sophomore. During some of the early-season snowballing turnover episodes, you could almost watch the confidence ooze out of him.
Now, as a junior, he no longer acts like he's trying to prove he belongs. He acts like someone who knows he belongs.
"I'm having a lot more fun," he says. "My freshman year and at the beginning of last year, I was doing a lot of thinking. Now I'm just having fun. During my freshman and early sophomore years, I would get mad when people would tell me to relax and have fun. I would think, `How can I relax when there's so much pressure? I'm at a school that is constantly on television and the key is to win.'
"But now I've realized they were right. If you have fun, everything else will take care of itself."
Adam Lucas's third book on Carolina basketball, The Best Game Ever, chronicles the 1957 national championship season and is available now. His previous books include Going Home Again, focusing on Roy Williams's return to Carolina, and Led By Their Dreams, a collaboration with Steve Kirschner and Matt Bowers on the 2005 championship team.
