University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Buying In
February 3, 2006 | Men's Basketball
Feb. 3, 2006
By Adam Lucas
COLLEGE PARK, Md.--Officially, Roy Williams arrived at North Carolina on April 14, 2003.
Officially, he got his first win about seven months later.
Officially, he won his first championship in 2005.
There will be media guides and banners and record books that document all those achievements. They will be there in black-and-white. You can look them up.
Here is something you can't look up. Here is something only those of us privileged enough to watch the 2005-06 Tar Heels will know: this was the season that Roy Williams basketball truly arrived in Chapel Hill.
Don't misunderstand. That doesn't mean we didn't enjoy watching Raymond Felton and Sean May and Rashad McCants and Marvin Williams and Jawad Williams and Jackie Manuel and Melvin Scott. That doesn't mean St. Louis was any less of an accomplishment, doesn't mean--even though it's easy to try and compare teams--this team is "more fun" than that team.
Those players combined to make a terrific basketball team. But these players--there is no need to name them all, but it's everyone from David Noel right down to Surry Wood on the end of the bench--have combined to make a Roy Williams basketball team.
Remember way back in 2004 when "buying in" was the key catchphrase around Carolina basketball? Who has bought in? Why hasn't he bought in? Boy, Jackie has bought in. Why hasn't everyone else bought in?
Right now, that seems like a very long time ago, like a cute little relic from the days before they invented color TV.
No one ever asks if this team has bought in. They don't have to. It's plainly evident in the way they careen around 94 feet of hardwood.
The head coach would occasionally point out last year that his team won because they were more "gifted and talented" than the opposition. He has not used that phrase at all this year. His team has plenty of talent, but they are not outrageously talented by Atlantic Coast Conference standards. During one critical second-half stretch against Maryland, he had these five players on the floor: Danny Green, David Noel, Wes Miller, Quentin Thomas, and Byron Sanders.
Two former walk-ons, two players who played minimal roles last season, and a freshman. Those were the players he entrusted with a 3-point lead in one of the most hostile environments in the league.
He has to trust them because he doesn't have a choice, of course. He can't go out and sign a free agent. But he also trusts them because they have developed into what he appreciates most: a true team. This team doesn't particularly shoot well, doesn't particularly pass well, and doesn't always defend well.
But here's what it does well: play a relentless brand of basketball with heart and tenaciousness.
Maryland made a conscious effort to eliminate Tyler Hansbrough from the Carolina offense. They defended him with burly Travis Garrison and the double-team came instantly as soon as he caught the ball. The gameplan made sense. It's just that they didn't plan on Noel, the senior who has been through a rough stretch, turning into an offensive dynamo.
And they didn't count on Danny Green having the gumption to look down the barrel of a critical three-pointer with 5:30 remaining and never blinking. The Terps had just made use of a 4-point possession, drawing within 57-54. But then Hansbrough fed Reyshawn Terry for a dunk and Green got the ball on the wing, exactly where he likes it.
"I don't know how that happens," he said of his proclivity for having the ball when it's time to make a big shot. "I just try to stay in the line of vision of my teammates. I definitely knew it was going in. Shooters know when the ball is going in."
The implication, of course, is that Green is a shooter. He knows it now, but more impressively, he knew it even when he was scuffling through one of the toughest stretches of his career three weeks ago.
Fellow freshman Bobby Frasor has endured some similar struggles. His form has looked consistently good; it would be easier if it didn't, easier if it was as simple as adjusting an elbow or tweaking a follow-through. He had exactly zero points through 36 minutes of the game Thursday night. He had exactly zero reason to want the ball at a key juncture.
But he is a Roy Williams player. Williams gets lots of credit for recruiting very skilled players. But he does something else: he recruits players who want to play. Just like him, they get a kick out of going into a hostile environment and watching a crowd go silent.
So it shouldn't have been much of a surprise that with 4 minutes left, the Tar Heels ran the shot clock under 10. There was Frasor against D.J. Strawberry, one of the toughest man-to-man defenders in the league, twisting, spinning, shooting, and making a 17-footer for his first points of the game and a 10-point Tar Heel lead. Ninety seconds later, with the Heels needing a final dagger, they ran "Quick" off the inbounds play. The ball went back to Frasor in the corner, exactly as designed. It was a big shot, so--of course--he made it. That is what Roy Williams players do. They make big plays.
"Just for the young guys to take some of the shots they take is pretty impressive," Wes Miller said. "Not just making them, but taking them. That takes some guts. Those guys don't know any better. They just play basketball. They're big-time players."
Miller has that typical veteran perspective and he's exactly right--they don't know any better. Minutes after Green made his in-rhythm big three-pointer, he took an equally bad shot right in front of the Carolina bench. Almost as soon as the ball left his hand, he understood his mistake.
"I thought I was a little open," he said with the grin all shooters have when they're talking about missed shots. "But it was early in the shot clock and it was the first pass. It was a mistake, and I'll learn from it. Coach told me next time to think time and score. He knew I knew what I had done wrong."
That's the thing--Green does know. This team makes some of the most maddening turnovers in the history of college basketball, but then they come back and play a demonic second half defensively and beat a team that hadn't lost a single game in College Park since the last time the Tar Heels were here. The 77-62 win marks the first time since the 1996 and '97 seasons that Carolina has won back-to-back games at Maryland.
"I was real frustrated in the first half," Frasor said. "But in the second half we came out and played Carolina basketball. We played harder, played tougher, and played smarter."
Not shot better or jumped higher or ran faster. They just played harder, tougher, and smarter.
That, folks, is a Carolina basketball team. And it's something else, too, something we'll probably start taking for granted over the next decade--it's a Roy Williams basketball team.
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.
