University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Q Stays In The Game
November 19, 2006 | Men's Basketball
Nov. 19, 2006
By Adam Lucas
It's amazing what you see when you don't watch the game.
Sure, it's fun to watch racehorse victories like Sunday's 103-50 win over Gardner-Webb. Keep an eye on the court and you might see the latest Brandan Wright alley-oop or Wayne Ellington jumper or Marcus Ginyard headlong dive for a loose ball. Those things are fun.
What makes a team, though--the little things that transform a bunch of good basketball players into a unit that displays cohesion on and off the court--often happens off the court. Watching the sideline while the Tar Heels ran up and down the floor against the Bulldogs, one thing was immediately obvious:
Quentin Thomas talks a lot.
This is a little surprising to anyone who has spent much time around him. He's not the most loquacious Tar Heel, so to look over and watch his mouth moving constantly is somewhat jarring.
This is what he says:
"Help side!"
"Go!"
"Get back!"
"Run it!"
They might be Carolina basketball players, but the players on the bench are still college students. So they still let their minds wander from time to time, still take a moment to crack a joke or needle a teammate. Thomas, though, looks like he belongs at the other end of the bench with the coaches.
Wes Miller had told his father, Ken, how much he respected Thomas. He'd told him about the junior point guard's stellar play in summer pickup games and in practice. And he'd told him how--even when he's labored through his periodic difficult stretches as a player--Thomas was perhaps the most positive player on the Carolina roster.
This week in Charlotte, the elder Miller had seats behind the Tar Heel bench. It's not the greatest vantage point to watch the game because of the constant standing and sitting of the players, but it's the perfect spot to watch the interaction of the team members. Ken Miller's son is a gym rat, so by definition he's had to become a gym rat parent. He's spent enough time in gyms and knows the game well enough to understand the subtle parts of a player's personality.
Wednesday, he saw his son airmail a three-pointer on his second shot of the game, and saw Thomas make a point of being the first player off the bench to encourage Miller the next time he came to the bench. This week, the father called the son with an observation.
"At the time, I thought, `Typical Quentin,'" Wes Miller said. "That's how he always is, picking us up. And then I talked to my dad later and he said, `You were right about Q. He was always picking everyone up. He was the most positive person on the bench.'"
Think about that for a minute. Thomas, the upperclassman seeing the least amount of playing time on a team stocked with players trying to steal his job, was the most positive person on the bench. He's a good passer, a good floor general, a good defender, and an emerging shooter--just check out the improved stroke on the jumper he hit against Gardner-Webb.
But he's an even better teammate, and in the year 2006 that's something that can be even harder to recruit than a seven-foot center who intends to stay in college for four years.
"I try to always be there for my teammates," Thomas said. "Even if I'm playing badly or off the court I'm not feeling that good, I try to keep them up. They would do the same thing for me.
"With this type of team, we know you can play a lot of minutes for two games straight and the next game it might be somebody else in your position, because maybe you're not playing well or you're in foul trouble. That's the kind of talent we have on this team."
He played well with that talent on Sunday, turning in a strong 4 first-half minutes, finishing with 11 minutes, and picking off 2 steals. So far, he's been the third point guard in a three-player rotation. But he's been here before. He fell out of the rotation at Florida State last season but ended the year as a solid backup to Bobby Frasor. Things change. Roles change. After two years, he has enough experience to realize that his place in the rotation now isn't necessarily the same as his place in March.
Not everyone apparently has that same wisdom. One newspaper mistakenly reported that Thomas "made a quick exit" after Tuesday's game against Sacred Heart. The implication, of course, was that he was unhappy with his role. Look, everyone wants to play 40 minutes. There will be times this year when players are miffed about their role. This is not one of them. The reality is that Thomas got dressed very methodically Tuesday and then sat at his locker for several minutes.
"People are going to say what they say," said Thomas, who laughed off the comment. "My teammates and coaching staff and my family know what kind of person I am. And hopefully some Carolina fans know what kind of person I am."
And so does everyone who takes a minute away from watching the game.
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.
