University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Waiting Game Begins for Tar Heels
March 15, 2006 | Men's Basketball
March 15, 2006
By Adam Lucas
This weekend is one of the best on the American sports landscape. Offices will grind to a halt, teachers will turn on the televisions, and brackets will bust.
Meanwhile, for those people who make it a memorable weekend--the players--time will tick...very...slowly.
The NCAA requires teams to be on site at their NCAA Tournament destination at least one day before the scheduled press conferences and open practices. That means the Tar Heels will depart Chapel Hill late this afternoon (be at the Smith Center at 4 p.m. if you want to send off the team). After the traditional pre-roadtrip meal at the Angus Barn, they'll arrive in Dayton later tonight.
Just in time to wait. And wait some more.
It's not the day before the game that requires the most creative thinking. There are a flurry of NCAA-related activities to attend to on Thursday--the squad will head to the University of Dayton Arena for required press conferences and a practice session.
At least, they call it a practice session. That's not exactly how Roy Williams sees it. The Tar Heel head coach expressed some frustration at the newly limited time allotted for open practices. Teams were allowed 50 minutes last year, but it's down to 40 minutes this year. Considering that the average UNC practice plan devotes between 12 to 14 minutes for on-court pre-practice stretching, that doesn't leave much time for a workout.
"It's going to be a dog-and-pony show," Williams said. "We'll go out there and I'll shoot hooks from the top of the key and crap like that. It's just a senseless waste of time."
Fans who want to watch Williams work on his hook should know that the Tar Heels' session begins at 5:10 p.m. Thursday. It is open to the public.
Not open to the public will be an earlier workout--a "real" practice as opposed to what is likely to be a lighthearted one at the Dayton Arena--at an area gym. Williams only required his team to practice once per day during last year's run to the national championship as long as they committed to going hard during the open practice (a different philosophy from many teams, who often turned the open session into a dunk contest or some other crowd-pleasing festivities), but the shortened time has required an extra practice.
But don't expect to hear players grumble about the extra court time. At least it gives them something to do.
One of the least understood aspects of life as a college basketball player is the significant amount of time killed at a hotel. It's especially significant this weekend because the University is on spring break, which means most players don't have homework assignments to occupy their time. Academic advisor Wayne Walden will still travel with the team, but instead of trying to make up for classes missed, he'll focus on getting ahead in case of potential class conflicts in weeks to come.
It's not so bad if there's a noon tipoff. But 9:40 p.m., in a strange city, on a day when snow flurries and a high of 38 degrees are in the forecast sounds like a recipe for utter boredom.
"It can be tough," Reyshawn Terry said. "You have to use that time to get your mind right. I'll try to read some and get focused on the game."
But even the most focused of competitors can't maintain an edge for 12 hours. Coaches have film to study, meetings (especially in the NCAA Tournament) to attend. Players don't. That's when they start looking for things to do, especially with an unscheduled block of five hours between Friday's lunch and the pregame meal at 5:30.
On some road trips, that's not a problem. In a place like Santa Monica, distractions are easy to find--although they sometimes come with questionable results. But in Dayton, it might not be so easy. The cruel irony is that the team will have more free time in Dayton than they had in the Bahamas during the pregame exhibition trip.
The ever-present PlayStation2 in the players' lounge won't make the trip this weekend. Yes, there will be other tournament games on television. But while fans will hang on every second of every game Friday afternoon, players aren't always as immersed in the action--consider that on Monday neither Marcus Ginyard nor Wes Miller immediately recognized the name of Craig Littlepage, the chair of the NCAA Tournament selection committee whose name has been on the lips of many Tar Heel fans this week. Fans revel in it. Players live it, and that often means they'd rather do something besides dissect a bracket with their free time.
Eventually, of course, the waiting has to end. And despite the hassles, despite the boredom, Carolina has found success with late tip-off times this year. The Tar Heels have played eight games this season that started at 9 p.m. or after and are riding a streak of three straight wins in 9 p.m. starts; Murray State, conversely, has played just one 9 p.m. start all season.
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.
