University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: UNC Basketball Mailbag Feb. 14
February 14, 2006 | Men's Basketball
Feb. 14, 2006
By Adam Lucas
First, a helpful note as a reader service: it's Valentine's Day. You know--candy, flowers, chocolate, that whole bit. Or maybe what your beloved really wants is another dose of the Carolina Basketball Mailbag. In that case, you're in luck.
By the way, don't forget to check the Tuesday Talking Points each week. Credit goes to reader Aaron Dunham for sending along a couple very good suggestions.
For Brownlow's Down Low, she stated, "Carolina fans are better off in sticking to their superstitions, like wearing a certain T-shirt or hat on game day then trusting statistics to predict wins and losses." This makes me laugh because I ALWAYS wear my Loud and Proud Carolina t-shirt along with my UNC hat for games. So I was curious if the crack mailbag staff has any superstitions about games? Any special shirts etc you wear? Maybe you could do a poll of us readers...
Stephen Cleary
Nope, no superstitions here. Have you ever noticed that people who are superstitious always say, "I'm not superstitious, but..." That's a sure sign they're getting ready to tell you they've eaten the same thing on gameday for 28 years. It's kind of like (in honor of Valentine's Day) in middle school when you like a girl and go up to her and say, "I have a friend who likes you. Not me, of course. It's a friend, see." So she names every guy in the 7th grade, you say no, and then finally she says, "Is it you?" and you laugh heartily while expressing great surprise that she would ever think such a thing, especially considering that you are having to beat the women off with a stick at all times.
Let's be honest: it was hard to be smooth in the 7th grade.
So, I'm not superstitious. But, uh, there are a few things I have to do. During pregame warm-ups, if I see a player from the opposing team make a shot (I try not to watch warm-ups at all), I then have to see him miss a shot. The reverse is true for watching the Tar Heels (although, again, I try not to watch at all). Also, it is incredibly bad luck to make a pregame prediction about the outcome of any game. This is especially tricky when you are in the sportswriting business and people are automatically compelled to ask you, "So, who's going to win?" right after they say, "How are you doing?"
I also stumbled into helping the Tar Heels win the national championship last season. As readers might remember, my son was born March 15, 2005, right before the NCAA run. Things were, needless to say, a little hectic around the Lucas household. My then 19-month-old daughter, McKay, somehow hid the semi-dressy shoes (semi-dressy is sportswriter code for "not made by Nike") I usually wear to games. Because of the frenzy on the homefront, I didn't travel with the team to Charlotte and instead went the day of the game. In the whirlwind of trying to get my stuff together on the morning of the Oakland game, I realized I couldn't find my shoes. So I had to wear the previous pair of semi-dressy shoes, which dated at least to my college years, and possibly earlier. I also wore them to the Iowa State game. The Tar Heels won both games.
McKay finally revealed the whereabouts of my first-string shoes before the Syracuse regional games. By that point, of course, there was no way I was going to risk wearing those shoes and breaking a lucky streak. So the old shoes were worn all the way through the championship game. You might credit Sean May for the victory. I credit a ratty pair of brown shoes with torn laces (Joe Holladay didn't have the same explanation for wearing a pair of vintage Nikes for Sunday's Coaches vs. Cancer game while his fellow coaches were wearing shiny new Nikes. He had been on the road recruiting and forgot to pack a pair of new kicks. So he broke out what he called his "garage shoes," which coupled with the victory earned him a significant amount of good-natured ribbing.).
SID Steve Kirschner, incidentally, credits the traveling party's dinner routine. The same group of administrators and coaches ate dinner together on the evening before every NCAA game. Roy Williams made sure the same group stayed together throughout the postseason. It can be carried too far, however. In Syracuse Kirschner ordered the same thing before the Wisconsin game that he'd ordered before the Villanova game. Holladay looked at him quizzically and asked, "Didn't you get that same thing the other night?" Kirschner replied that he was trying not to break the mojo. Holladay's response was an all-time classic for superstitious fans:
"We're superstitious, we're not stupid."
The most superstitious Tar Heel player of recent vintage was Jawad Williams, who had an elaborate set of pregame routines he had to follow. That, of course, made him the perfect target for his teammates--especially Sean May, who greatly enjoyed trying to mess up Williams's pregame habits.
Lauren writes: When I was about 12 or 13, I had the team poster hanging on the wall above my bed. My friends and I would stand on my bed to address each player and staffer individually and implore them to do their part in helping the Heels win that day. When I say everyone, I mean everyone - we would beg Shammond Williams to make his three-pointers just as earnestly as we would Charlie McNairy and Webb Tyndall to cheer hard from the bench or Marc Davis to keep our boys safe and injury-free. When it didn't work, I usually excused it by saying that clearly the boys weren't listening to me or Dean Smith that day - but I had done my part.
I had what I thought to be a lucky sports bra that I've worn since the home game against Virginia in 2004. My friends and I had riser tickets, so we all wore Carolina blue sports bras and painted the characters "R-O-Y-!" on our four stomachs. We dominated the Cavaliers that day after losing to them in Charlottesville, and I felt like the sports bra had riser karma, so I wore it for every home game the next year (and we never lost at home). It had been in the laundry for the home games that we lost this year, so I brought it out again for the Duke game. It didn't work, so it is no longer a good-luck charm.
Adam writes: Thankfully, we do not have a Mailbag-wide policy of participating in the sports bra superstition.
Now it's your turn. We want to hear the best superstitions that got you through the national championship run last year. In honor of your obvious contributions to the title, the best one (as judged by two obvious experts on this topic--the Mailbag staff) will receive a free copy of Led By Their Dreams. Of course, you've already bought your copy--or several copies--but this will give you an extra one. Make sure to send in your entries by the end of the day Friday and we'll use some of the best submissions next week.
Tar Heel Monthly readers should make sure to check out Jones Angell's column on this very topic in the March issue of the magazine.
I was watching last night's game against Duke. I realized that we play Duke again of course, but the problem I have is the new schedule is not fair. There are teams that do not play Duke twice. Also teams that we have beaten we do not play but once. If you do not play the better teams but once, wouldn't it be more likely that your win loss record could be better in the conference. This year the Tar Heels play Clemson, Ga Tech, and Wake once. We play Duke, Miami, N.C State twice. They are the top three teams. Am I wrong? This is a potential 1-5 record. How is this fair?
Joan, Greensboro
It's not fair. It's the new ACC. There's a big difference.
A 12-team league means all kinds of great things, such as a league championship football game, more money for league members, and regular road trips to Boston, which slightly edges out Tallahassee in terms of being a tourist destination.
But it also means the regular-season league basketball race is cheapened. Regular readers might remember that we ranked the strength of league schedule late last season. It's a little early to do it again, but we'll give it a shot. First, the list of teams faced only once by every ACC team this year:
BC: Clemson, Duke, FSU (all at home); UNC, Maryland, Virginia (all on the road)
Clemson: Maryland, Duke, State (home); UNC, Boston College, Miami (road)
Duke: State, Virginia, Miami (home); Georgia Tech, BC, Clemson (road)
FSU: UNC, Maryland, Georgia Tech (home); Wake, State, BC (road)
Georgia Tech: Virginia, Duke, Miami (home); UNC, FSU, Virginia Tech (road)
Maryland: Wake, BC, Virginia Tech (home); State, FSU, Clemson (road)
Miami: Wake, Clemson, Virginia Tech (home); Duke, Georgia Tech, Virginia (road)
UNC: Georgia Tech, BC, Clemson (home); Wake, FSU, Virginia Tech (road)
State: Maryland, Virginia, FSU (home); Duke, Virginia Tech, Clemson (road)
Virginia: Wake, BC, Miami (home); Duke, Georgia Tech, State (road)
Virginia Tech: Georgia Tech, UNC, State (home); Maryland, Wake, Miami (road)
Wake: UNC, FSU, Virginia Tech (home); Maryland, Virginia, Miami (road)
Now here's the ranking of the opponents' winning percentage in conference games only:
Wake Forest: 95-78 (.549)
Carolina: 94-78 (.547)
Virginia Tech: 93-78 (.544)
Maryland (91-81 (.529)
Miami: 89-80 (.527)
FSU: 88-85 (.512)
GT: 85-85 (.509)
Clemson: 79-86 (.479)
Virginia: 80-89 (.473)
NC State: 79-91 (.465)
oston College: 78-93 (.456)
Duke: 73-95 (.434)
You'll notice that the top two teams have something in common: they also happen to be the only two teams that have home-and-home series with the two squads currently in the top two in the league (Duke and State). Also, consider that these rankings aren't completely fair to the teams at the top, because they don't get to play against themselves, meaning every team except the Blue Devils gets to count at least one game against 11-0 Duke. So it's really in the middle of the league where the rankings are most telling. Virginia, for example, appears to have been helped so far by a relatively weak ACC slate; in-state rival Virginia Tech may be struggling because of a comparatively tougher schedule. It's not necessarily bad to play a tougher schedule within the league. Because of the tough competition, Carolina's RPI has been on the rise in recent weeks--the Heels are 23rd in the latest CollegeRPI.com figures, which is good for 3rd in the ACC.
I'm guessing you'll be getting a lot of thoughts on Danny Green, but how's this. He reminds me an awful lot of Ademola Okulaja as a freshman. He doesn't play particularly smooth, he makes great defensive and hustle plays, and his shots often find me saying "no, no, . . . yes". Either way he gets the job done just like Ademola did. Any thoughts?
Michael Braun, Naples, FL
There's definitely a similarity there, as was noted in a recent Mailbag. Green's most recent stats for the sake of comparison (Okulaja's freshman stats are in the linked story):
16 MPG, .424 FG%, .375 3-pt. FG%, .769 FT%, 8.0 PPG, 3.9 RPG
In the most recent mailbag, there was a question that dealt with the amount of minutes played by freshman wearing the Carolina uniform. I remember watching a few years ago in Jason Capel and Kris Lang's final season that they were two players in a very small fraternity of 4 year starters at UNC. I am assuming Jawad Williams joined that list last year as the newest member. I was wondering how many 4 year starters there have been throughout the years, a feat that I think is extremely impressive.
Harold Spooner, Indianapolis, IN
It's a very exclusive list. Freshman became eligible in the 1972-73 season. Since then, only 10 players have earned the right to be called 4-year starters: Walter Davis, Phil Ford, Mike O'Koren, Sam Perkins, Brad Daugherty, Kenny Smith, Jeff Lebo, Ademola Okulaja, Jason Capel, and Kris Lang.
Jawad Williams started only 9 games his freshman year, so he didn't make the cut. The most surprising name on this list is likely to be Okulaja--he moved into the starting lineup for the final 7 games of the year as a freshman and periodically started throughout the rest of the season.
The key to this list is the four-year distinction. Plenty of players have been good enough to start the majority of their games at UNC--just from last year's group, Sean May, Rashad McCants, and Raymond Felton would quality. But they were only three-year players. That's why it would be surprising to see many more names added to this list in the years to come. With the way the game has changed, players good enough to start immediately usually won't be around for their senior year. One player with the potential to play his way onto this list: Bobby Frasor. Sure, Carolina has a ton of talent coming in next year, but they'll have to prove they have the court savvy of the Illinois native to bump him from the lineup.
Brownlow's Down Low
I had the privilege of meeting Al Wood for the first time at the
UNC-State women's game last week. What a class act. It's too bad that
his basketball accomplishments were all but forgotten after he left...
I still remember watching the game where Al scored 39 against UVa in the 1981
Final Four. UVa, of course, had Ralph Sampson that year, and had
basically been crowned by the press as national champs before the
season even started.
Mailbag had a poll for greatest dunks not long ago, how about a poll for greatest individual performances in UNC history? I'll nominate Al Wood's 39 against UVa in 1981.
Lee Gilliam, Zebulon, NC
This is a tough one for me, and you have to keep in mind that no one at Mailbag World Headquarters is old enough to have seen every great performance. I definitely think things like quality of opponent, age of player during said performance, and importance of the game should be taken into consideration. But I would define a memorable performance as not only one that wows you statistically, but one that made you feel as if you were watching something almost supernatural happening. We've all seen a lot of them, but the one that sticks out the most for me personally would have to be Shammond Williams against Georgia Tech in Atlanta on February 8, 1998. It was a back and forth game, and it took Carolina two overtimes to pull away with the win, but Williams scored 42 points (12 in the second overtime alone) and hit eight three-pointers to ice the win.
Joe Forte had perhaps two of his best games as a Tar Heel against Tulsa. He scored 28 against them in the 2000 East Regional Final as a freshman, literally carrying the Heels to victory as the only scorer on Carolina to break double figures. He also holds the record for most points in the Smith Center for his 38 points against Tulsa the next year. While both are impressive, I prefer his 24-point, 16-rebound, 6-assist, 3-steal performance at Duke in 2001 that helped lead the Heels to an 85-83 win. (His 16 rebounds are a Carolina record number for a guard.)
Al Wood's 39 points and 10 rebounds against Virginia definitely constitute a great performance, especially considering that Virginia was a No. 1 seed and that it was in the first game of the Final Four. Though the Heels would lose in the national championship game, Wood led the two-seeded Heels to a 78-65 victory in 1981. Wood's 39 points still stand as an NCAA semifinal record.
Everyone always talks about "the shot", and thus the 1982 national championship is always associated with Michael Jordan. But that is extremely unfair to the tourney MVP James Worthy, who scored a career-high 28 points and even made the game-winning steal of the errant Fred Brown pass. His 28 points still stand as the most points scored in an NCAA championship game by a Tar Heel.
Sean May also had a great championship performance, though. I remember feeling like Sean May absolutely could not miss against Illinois. He seemed absolutely unstoppable. His 26 points (on 10 of 11 from the field) and 10 rebounds aren't overwhelming, and he didn't hit the game-winning shot, but if you watched that game, you felt that he was the difference.
Since age of the player is something to take into account, there are plenty of great freshman performances to mention (that would have been great regardless). The freshman Mike O'Koren scored a career-high 31 points against UNLV in the Final Four on 14-19 shooting to help Carolina beat UNLV by just one point. J.R. Reid also had 31 points in the NCAA tournament, against Notre Dame in the East Regional semifinal. He went 15 of 18 from the floor to lead the Heels to a 74-68 win. Antawn Jamison at Maryland in 1996 is one of my favorite performances. He scored 31 points on 14-16 shooting and hit the game-winning basket in overtime (on a Dante Calabria assist from the seat of his pants). He was a big part of the feeling a lot of Carolina fans had that Carolina was simply invincible with guys like him on the court.
Antawn Jamison's best performance, in my opinion, was his aforementioned 31 points at Maryland. But it is worth mentioning that he literally owned Duke his junior year - 35 points and 11 rebounds in the Smith Center, 23 points and 13 rebounds and Duke, then 22 points and 18 rebounds against Duke in the ACC Tournament as Carolina won the title.
Another favorite performance of mine would have to be Rasheed Wallace in the ACC Tournament semifinal against Maryland in 1995. He had a career-high 33 points on 13-19 shooting, including six dunks (all of which, I'm sure, were crowd-rousers). He also sent the game into overtime by blocking the great Joe Smith's shot. The Heels won that game and went on to lose to Wake Forest in the championship game. Jerry Stackhouse's signature game was probably in the overtime win at Duke in 1995, when he scored 25 points, grabbed 11 rebounds and added four assists.
Phil Ford had a lot of great games at Carolina, but one of his most memorable was his last game in Carmichael Auditorium when he scored a career-high 34 points against Duke, hitting 13 of 19 shots and converting both free throws of a one-and-one with six seconds left to lead Carolina to an 87-83 victory. What a way to go out. Another one of the epic games in Carmichael - "eight points in 17 seconds" - had a different hero: Walter Davis. "Sweet D" had 31 points against Duke, including his 35-footer at the buzzer to send the game to overtime. Oh, and he was a freshman. I think a game like that is allowed to have more than one great performance. Bobby Jones scored 24 points in that game in addition to four points and a steal in that key 17-second rally.
Ford is not the only great Tar Heel to have one of his best games against Duke. The great Charlie Scott helped bring Carolina back from a nine-point deficit in the 1969 ACC Tournament finals against Duke with his 40 points, leading them to an eventual 11-point victory. He made 17 of 23 field goals and had 29 points in the second half alone. Larry Miller shot an incredible 13 of 14 from the field and scored 32 points to lead Carolina to an 82-73 win over Duke in the ACC Tournament finals. Lennie Rosenbluth had five games with 40 or more points, four of which were 45 or more (three against Clemson, interestingly enough). One of those 40-point games came against Duke in 1957.
The only two triple-doubles in Carolina history obviously have to be mentioned. Brendan Haywood got the first on December 4, 2000, logging 18 points, 14 rebounds, and 10 blocks against Miami. A little less than two weeks later, Jason Capel got 16 points, 11 rebounds, and 10 assists against Buffalo. Kenny Smith's best performance came against Clemson when he came back from knee surgery and scored 41 points to lead Carolina to a 108-99 comeback win. Brad Daugherty went 13 of 13 from the floor against UCLA, which tied and still stands as an NCAA record. The Carolina record for most points scored in a game is from one of the more overlooked Tar Heels, Bob Lewis, who scored a whopping 49 points against Florida State in 1965. Lewis's 27.4 points per game as a junior still marks the second-highest season scoring average in Carolina history. Another great player was Billy Cunningham, whose 40-point, 28-rebound game against Maryland marked the second-most rebounds in a game in Carolina history. York Larese's 21 of 21 free throws against Duke in 1959 still stands as an ACC record for most free throws made in a 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.
