University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: UNC Basketball Mailbag Jan. 9
January 9, 2007 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 9, 2007
By Adam Lucas
If you're anywhere close to Fayetteville, I hope to see you tonight at Barnes and Noble. Not that you'd want to come see me, of course, but it's definitely worth the trip to see Lennie Rosenbluth, Joe Quigg, and Woody Durham. They'll all be in attendance for a Best Game Ever book-signing that starts at 6 p.m. Hope to see you there.
Several Carolina fans wrote in to stump for their favorite Tar Heel shoes after last week's column on Tar Heel kicks. Jeff Warren and Russell Currie favored the Air Jordan IX favored by Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace. Jeffrey Donald mentioned Dante Calabria's signature low-cuts, which he is still wearing while playing overseas. By the way, Lauren issues bonus points for any question that requires a photo of Calabria.
Our favorite shoe responses were from readers bringing up an old-school part of Carolina shoe lore. Tar Heel letterman Michael Norwood mentions the Carolina blue suedes worn in the 70s. He also adds, "The coolest uniform accessory ever was the jersey number on the socks as seen on Ford, Davis, etc." You can easily see the blue shoes, plus a hint of the socks with the numbers, on this Sports Illustrated cover. You can also check page 135 of this year's media guide for a view of the socks as modeled by Dennis Wuycik.
Finally, Andrew Stilwell of Pinehurst mentions the Converse Weapons worn by the Tar Heels during the 1980s. You probably have to be old enough to have seen the original Bird/Magic Weapon television commercial to fully appreciate these shoes, but Andrew is right--in their heyday, they were the epitome of cool.
One of the problems with having two regular installments of the Mailbag--the website version and the radio pregame version--is figuring out which questions fit best in each format. As you've probably noticed, the more in-depth questions are usually saved for this site, because a 3-minute radio segment doesn't always provide the time to give a topic the attention it deserves.
That's the longwinded way of saying I blew it last week in using this question during the pregame show before the Penn game:
I can't say too much for the pre-ACC schedule so I would wait before comparing Lawson to Felton and Ford and Black and Phelps. He doesn't have much of an outside shot and he has not been pushed at the end of a game.
William Loeffler
Lawson is hitting 33.3% of his three-pointers, so his perimeter shot is obviously an area where he can improve. And the Tar Heels haven't had a close end-game situation under his direction, but if you're going to hold that against him, you also have to give him credit for the fact that part of the reason Carolina hasn't been in a close game late is because of his excellent play.
The part of this question that's so interesting is the notion that Carolina's schedule during the first half of the season has somehow been uncharacteristically weak. Can we all agree that if the game at Arizona had been played in December rather than on Jan. 28, no one would be complaining? Still, though, there's a school of thought out there that previous Tar Heel teams had a nonconference schedule consisting of Bird's Celtics, Magic's Lakers, and Jordan's Bulls. That's not entirely correct, as you can see from this table:
|
Player (through 15 games) | Assists | TO | A/TO | PPG | FGs | Games vs. ranked teams |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lawson | 80 | 29 | 2.76 | 8.7 | 46-88 (52.3%) | 3 |
| Ford | 77 | N/A | N/A | 15.1 | 87-173 (50.3%) | 5 |
| Smith | 69 | N/A | N/A | 9.7 | 59-103 (57.3%) | 5 |
| Cota | 96 | 61 | 1.57 | 6.7 | 36-85 (42.4%) | 3 |
| Felton | 102 | 53 | 1.92 | 10.5 | 54-151 (35.8%) | 3 |
Turnovers weren't reliably tracked until the early 1990s, which is why Ford and Smith (whose freshman season was over 20 years ago--is that possible?) are shown as N/A in that category.
None of the above stats suggest that Lawson is in a different category from Carolina's best recent point guards. But they also don't suggest he can automatically be dismissed from the top echelon. Basically, they verify what most Carolina fans already knew--he has played very well through his first 15 games. They also verify what you might not have known--that he's done it against a level of competition that is at minimum comparable to that faced by other Tar Heel rookie point guards. As of today, he trails Clemson's Cliff Hammonds by .04 in the ACC's assist/turnover race.
Maybe I'm a bit biased because I believe that Reyshawn is the key to a deep run
this year but it seems to me that Coach Williams is a little harder on Reyshawn
than he is other players. Certainly, his (and my) expectations are higher for
an experienced senior but....Any thoughts?
Charles G. DeNormandie III, CFP, ChFC, AAMS
Alpharetta, GA
First off, let me say that I have no clue what all those initials after Charles's name mean. I'm pretty sure they mean he's a lot smarter than me.
Now, the bad news is that my email must be running slow. Really slow. Because I've got to think this email was actually sent in 2004, but for some reason just now hit the inbox. Terry was definitely the subject of significant scrutiny during his first couple seasons. There was a good reason for that scrutiny--he had a habit of making the kinds of mental mistakes that make Roy Williams's head spin. In general, Williams tolerates physical errors much more than mental errors. For that reason, when Terry makes a mental error, you're likely to see an immediate reaction from Williams. Sometimes that even means yanking Terry from the game, and television cameras are quick to pick up that type of discipline.
Over the last two years, though, the relationship between Terry and Williams has evolved. It's most obvious in practice, where it used to be impossible to watch a two-hour session without hearing the head coach bark, "Reyshawn!" Now it's unusual to ever hear his name called.
For the most part, fans don't get to see practices. But they do get to hear the head coach's postgame comments, and he's been almost universally complimentary of his senior from Winston-Salem. Last week's game against Penn was an example of Terry committing a few careless errors that led to him being removed in favor of Danny Green. After the game, though, Williams said this:
"Reyshawn Terry is a guy that I'm going to go down saying that in a lot of ways, I'm as proud of him as anybody I've ever coached. To be able to fight through things not going as well and then to still do the kind of things he did tonight was really good."
That's high praise from Williams. One of the things his players will tell you they love about him is that they always know exactly where they stand with him. If they're not playing, they know why. If he's unhappy, they know why. And if he's happy, they usually know the reason for that, too. There is no secret about his expectations, and as good a coach as Williams is, he also operates a fairly simple program: do the right thing and you'll be rewarded. That's why words that might look harsh in the view of a sideline thrashing usually aren't as badly taken by the player on the receiving end.
By the way, that reminds me of the best Reyshawn story of the year so far. About 20 minutes before Sunday night's game against Florida State, Terry approached the Tar Heel Sports Network broadcast position. The Smith Center video boards had just shown the ad for the 1982 DVD Legends In Blue. The ad, of course, features Woody Durham's radio call. The following conversation ensued:
Reyshawn: "Mr. Woody, was that you yelling on that ad?"
Woody: "It sure was."
Reyshawn: "Wow."
Woody: "And if you win one this year, I'll scream the same way again."
Reyshawn: "Yeah, that's right."
So after watching the ESPN broadcast of the Penn game, I was wondering
exactly why a matchup between the 2005 championship team and today's
squad has to be hypothetical. I know it would require all kinds of
approval from the NBA, but let's say none of the players were paid for
the game, but it was arranged purely to benefit some non-profit
humanitarian organization or something. Or maybe the NBA got to take a
chunk of the profit themselves. But why couldn't this actually happen?
I'm pretty unsure myself who would win, but it would pretty much be the
blue-white game of a lifetime.
John Gjertsen
Tell you what: let's table this until the conclusion of the NCAA Tournament. If that little event ends up the way we all want it to, I'll bring this discussion back to the forefront and will do everything possible to make it happen.
Keep in mind that age is a powerful advantage when you're talking about the difference between a 21-year-old and an 18-year-old. On the first day of practice this year the freshmen were all on the blue team, and they spent most of the day bumping into each other and couldn't even come close to keeping pace with the sophomores. Mini-matchups between '05 team members and '07 players took place every day over the summer in pickup games, and the '05 Tar Heels almost always had the advantage. It will be interesting to see how that changes next summer when the `07's have the advantage of a year in the Carolina system.
Brownlow's Down Low
If you look at the ACC in the Top 25, we currently only have 3 teams. Do you think that will hurt our chances in the NCAAs because we will not have faced 5 or 6 top 25 programs during the regular season? I know that whenever anyone plays Carolina, they turn it up so it often feels like a Top 25 match up, but even so.
Adam Kendall
McKinsey & Co., Johannesburg
Lauren writes: To answer your question, I decided to look at the amount of ranked teams the Tar Heels face in the season and how they then fared in the postseason. Since the inception of the poll in the 1948-49 season, Carolina started off 0-13 against ranked teams until beating 8th-ranked NC State in Raleigh, 70-69.
The 1957 national championship team went undefeated, so obviously they did not lose to a ranked team. However, before the NCAA tournament that squad only faced four ranked teams. Carolina faced three ranked teams in the NCAA tournament to bring its total to 7-0. The 1982 national championship squad went 7-1 during the regular season and 9-1 overall on its way to a national championship. In 1993, that championship team went 9-2 against ranked teams during the regular season and knocked off four more on their way to the national title to bring their total on the season to 13-2. The 2005 championship team played seven ranked teams before the NCAA Tournament and went 5-2 against them. They then proceeded to knock off four more ranked teams on their way to the title to bring their total on the season to 9-2.
The 1994-95 team faced a ranked team the most times in a season - both before the NCAA Tournament and including it. The 1995 squad faced ranked teams 17 times, amassing a 12-5 record on its way to the Final Four. That team also faced ranked teams 13 times before the NCAA Tournament, with a 9-4 record. However, the highest-ranked team the Tar Heels knocked off before the postseason was the then seventh-ranked Terrapins in January, and they lost to the then seventh-ranked Demon Deacons in the ACC Tournament. Including the NCAA Tournament, the highest-ranked team the Tar Heels faced or knocked off was the 2nd-ranked Kentucky squad in the regional finals. That team lost in the Final Four to sixth-ranked Arkansas.
The highest amount of ranked teams faced during the regular season and ACC Tournament is 12, and both teams failed to make the NCAA Tournament. The 2002-03 team went 19-16 and went out in the third round of the NIT, while the 1957-58 team faced 12 ranked teams on its way to 19-7 record. A loss in the ACC Championship game to Maryland kept the team out of the postseason.
In addition to the 1993 team, two other teams faced 14 ranked opponents over the course of both the season and postseason - 1998 and 1981. Both of those squads reached the Final Four, and the 1981 team lost in the national championship game. The 1981 was 8-3 before the tournament and 2-1 in the tournament to bring its record against ranked teams to 10-4. The 1998 team went 10-1 against ranked teams before the tournament and 12-2 overall following its loss to Utah in the national semifinal.
Last year's squad went 4-4 against ranked teams, but actually had a better record on the road (3-0) than at home (1-3) or on a neutral site (0-1). The lone home win against a ranked team was against then-13th NC State, and the losses were to Illinois (12), Boston College (20) and Duke (2). The Heels also beat State (15), Kentucky (10) and Duke (1) on the road.
This season, the Tar Heels have already faced three ranked opponents - Gonzaga (23), Tennessee (21), and Ohio State (3) and are 2-1 against them. One was a home game, and the other (Gonzaga and Tennessee) were played on neutral courts. Though Gonzaga has fallen out of the rankings, Ohio State is still a top-10 team (sixth) and Tennessee has risen to 19th.
Assuming for argument's sake that no one in the ACC is able to climb into the top 25 before the season ends, the Tar Heels would still end this season facing three more ranked teams - Duke (twice), Arizona, and Clemson.
Part two of Chris's question will come next week: how will so few road games affect this Carolina team compared to past teams? It will be even more relevant the week of Carolina's trip to Littlejohn to face the currently undefeated Clemson Tigers and 11 days away from a trip to Arizona.
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.To submit a Mailbag question, click here.
.jpg?DB_OEM_ID=3350){kind=link}
