University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Road Lessons
January 13, 2007 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 13, 2007
By Adam Lucas
BLACKSBURG--The noise Marcus Ginyard made as someone told him the day's shooting statistics doesn't translate very well to the written word.
It was something kind of like, "Uggggghhh."
Or maybe, "Yuccckkkkk."
It might have been, "Eessshhh."
Whatever it was, it was perfectly appropriate. When told Virginia Tech had shot better than 50 percent from the field in both halves (51.5% in the first half, and then an even better 54.2% in the second half), his response was immediate:
"You're not going to win any games in the ACC that way."
Exactly. It doesn't matter if you're playing Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, or Wake Tech.
It's a very unfamiliar situation for a Roy Williams-coached team to experience. Usually, if an opponent hits better than half their shots from the field, the head Tar Heel explains exactly how unacceptable that is in the locker room and things change in the second half.
This time, though, the Tar Heels couldn't stem the Hokie assault. Some of them were open looks, some of them were very tough shots with a hand in the shooter's face. But by the time Carolina started consistently competing on defense for multiple consecutive possessions, it was too late because Virginia Tech had already built an ample storehouse of confidence--and an ample lead.
It was 23 points with 11 minutes left in the second half. And it was hard for Ginyard to identify just one problem with the way his team had played to that point.
"They were hitting tough shots, but we weren't doing everything we needed to do," he said. "We were letting them get to the offensive boards, we didn't have a sense of urgency..."
His words trailed off, as if he couldn't bear to list everything that had gone wrong.
It's hard to know exactly how to take the 94-88 defeat. On the one hand, it was a very bad 30 minutes. The Hokies picked up 14 steals, and several of those were simply taking the ball away from someone wearing blue.
On the other hand, it was very nearly an inspiring comeback. With a raucous crowd of 9,847 screaming--school isn't back in session until Tuesday but the Hokie students somehow managed to make it back to campus to fill the student section--shots falling from all over the court, and momentum firmly wearing orange and maroon, it would have been easy to give up.
"The coaches never gave up on us," Wes Miller said. "Every timeout and every chance they had they were telling us we were still in it. So we learned if we play with that kind of intensity and effort for 40 minutes, we wouldn't have put ourselves in that kind of situation. We can come together. We're never out of it. But you have to do it for 40 minutes. You can't wait like we did tonight."
There will be plenty of talk after this game about Carolina's inexperience. And it's true, the freshmen were getting their first taste of ACC road play. The most effective grouping, the group that brought Carolina back, was two freshmen, two sophomores, and a senior. But sophomores in today's world of college basketball are graybeards. That group has been to Cameron Indoor Stadium--and won. They've been to the Comcast Center--and won. They had even been to Cassell Coliseum--and won.
It may be time for one of the second-year Tar Heels to assert themselves. As of mid-January, they've replaced David Noel's scoring and his rebounding...but not his intangibles. Williams knew this might happen, and that's why he mentioned Noel's leadership to anyone who would listen over the past year. Leadership is that thing no one misses when you're running and dunking on people. But it's the first thing that's absolutely necessary when a team is in a hostile environment and shots are rimming out.
Senior Reyshawn Terry played just 16 minutes on Saturday, and Miller is battling to stay in the rotation. If he provides the same energy he did against the Hokies, he's a candidate to move into a leadership position. ut one of Carolina's numerous 18-minute-plus players still needs to speak up. It might have been Bobby Frasor, but he suffered a foot injury in the first half and will be reevaluated on Sunday. The next most likely candidate might be Ginyard.
The fact that the Tar Heels were able to make things nervous for the Hokies--and make no mistake, the Cassell atmosphere was somewhere between "Oh no" and "Someone make it stop" for most of the last minute of play--suggests they possess the kind of competitiveness Williams demands.
Saturday, they learned that type of intensity is required for all 40 minutes. Let off the gas for just a second--as they did after closing to 40-36 with 3:02 left in the first half, a manageable deficit, but then allowed Tech to finish on a 7-1 run--and the hole gets too deep.
For the last month, it's been fun to watch this team run, gun, and grow.
Now let's see how they learn. Their initial responses suggest at least some of them already know the most fundamental lesson from Saturday.
"One thing is for sure," Ginyard said. "That wasn't North Carolina basketball."
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.
