University of North Carolina Athletics
Chansky: You Gotta Have Heart
February 20, 2006 | Men's Basketball
Feb. 20, 2006
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. -- While sitting in Joel Coliseum Sunday afternoon, watching the Tar Heels, the lyrics to the old Richard Adler (UNC, class of '43) song kept popping into my head.
You gotta have heart
All you really need is heart
When the odds are saying you'll never win
That's when the grin should start
Roy Williams wasn't exactly grinning, either in the locker room at halftime where today they are probably putting new paint on the walls, or in the second half when his underage overachievers were behind (by as many as 9 points). But, you've got to admit, they had some heart.
It wasn't going to be their day after letting 1-10 Wake Forest back into the game late in the first half. The recipe was clear: Put the struggling Deacons away early and don't let their three very good players, Justin Gray, Eric Williams and Trent Strickland, get going. But that didn't happen.
With a half-hearted defensive effort in the first 20 minutes, Carolina let Wake Forest build a five-point lead at halftime. That aroused an atypically quiet crowd in Joel on a day when all the seats were sold but not everyone showed up. (There's a reason for that - Deacon fans too distraught to attend preferred eating their tickets over selling them to the light blue brigade waving two fingers in front of the coliseum.)
Not quite singing, I said to myself, "We let them off the hook in the first half and now they're going to make everything they throw up."
Prophetic for a few minutes, as the Deacs' lead ballooned to 50-41. But then Williams, imploring his troops so hard that he almost suffered one of his semi-annual fainting spells, called for a little strategy and a lot of savagery on defense. He ran down the sideline holding up one finger for the "point" - the zone defense with man-to-man principles invented by Dean Smith 30 years ago - and clenched his fists tight enough for his teeth to rattle.
His team responded, forcing a couple of turnovers and getting the score back to a manageable margin, which allowed Wake Forest's recent history to kick in. When you're not used to winning, it's harder to win. The Deacs have much better players than 1-11, but they are sort of like the 1995 Duke team that (without its coach) lost so often it forgot how to win. The Tar Heels saw that in their eyes and took back the game.
This, in basketball terms and in life, is called heart.
Using a rotation of Byron Sanders, Mike Copeland and Reyshawn Terry (for a few possessions) at power forward to cover for the foul-plagued David Noel, the Heels pulled their jocks a little tighter and shut down the Deacs' offense and their crowd. Terry, who used to wear Gold and Black for the local Reynolds High School, kept showing what Matt Doherty saw in him as a second-team all-state player. He has NBA-quality skills . . .
. . . All he really needs is heart . . .
Terry is getting there, fast. His homecoming netted 24 points but a couple of 3s were daggers. With the offense bogging down and Williams waving his arms like a traffic cop in Manhattan gridlock, Terry stared down his defender, elevated and drilled a trey that cut whatever heart was left out of the Deacons. The Carolina lead went to double digits and all that was left was the TV timeout when the rotund, tie-dye guy in Section 111 dances to the Jump Around song until he's about to have a heart attack.
Clearly, this Carolina team is capturing the hearts of Tar Heels everywhere. With a 5-1 ACC road record in what expansion has turned into a scheduling hodgepodge, this is a club with a big name on the front of the jersey, some relatively no names on the back and a big-timer ticker in between. No off year here, sorry.
On paper, it's Tyler the Terrible and four other guys. On the court, enforcer Noel knocks down 3s, Terry looks more like Sweet D every day and the two starting guards (Frasor and Miller) just outrun and out-hustle bigger-name and bigger-game guards. Even Quentin Thomas is now letting his quickness be a help more than a hindrance.
At 8-4 in the ACC, the Year of Living Vicariously (through last season and next season) has suddenly turned into Williams' 17th consecutive NCAA team.
Any extra money the school makes from this post-season run surely ought to go to the American Heart Fund.
