University of North Carolina Athletics
Top-Ranked Tar Heels Ready To Take Court
November 13, 2007 | Men's Basketball
Nov. 13, 2007
By Lauren Brownlow
The Tar Heels certainly have had all kinds of trouble forgetting about the way that last season ended. But seven months and twenty days later, the Tar Heels will take the court in the season-opener in Charlotte against Davidson tomorrow night. The team has been itching all season long to get the collective bad taste out of its mouth. But Roy Williams is entering into his 35th year of coaching, and as with most coaches, the tough losses are something that linger no matter how many games his teams win later on.
"We're really ready, but you can't erase that. I mean, you just can't. It's just not going to happen. I still feel like I failed our '97 team at Kansas. We won the national championship in 2005 and this is 2007 and I'm still saying I failed that '97 team, so it's not going to go away. But you are anxious about getting back out and playing," Coach Williams said.
This team has been made more anxious to get out on the court by all the pre-season hype accompanying it, being picked as national champions by many pundits. The Tar Heels were No.1 in both preseason polls and remain there now for the second straight week. It is the first time since the 1986-87 season that Carolina has been ranked No. 1 in the preseason in both polls and the first time in the AP since 1994.
Coach Williams pointed out that only a few national media outlets ranked Carolina No. 1 in 2005, but that year's team did fine. He has been around the block enough to not get caught up in preseason rankings, but he still coaches 18-22 year-olds. Danny Green was on the 2006 Tar Heel team that was perceived to be in a "rebuilding year" and he knows from experience how much teams wanted to beat Carolina even then. Being ranked No. 1 only adds more fuel to that fire. "We know it means nothing to these other teams; it's just a bigger target on our chest. They're going to come after us and give us their best shot. But we definitely take pride in it and we want to keep the high expectations from others and then ourselves. We have long-term goals and short-terms goals, and our short-term goal is to play our best basketball tomorrow," Green said.
Some teams might open with what the pundits would dub "cupcakes," but going on the road to face a tough Davidson team that took Maryland to the brink last season in the NCAA Tournament is far from easy. "Opening against a quality opponent like Davidson is probably more difficult than where you're playing, it's who you're playing. Five starters back from a team that won 29 games, a very confident team, a very well-coached team, a very dangerous team, regardless of who they play and where they play. So that's probably a bigger part of it than just on the road, it's who we're playing. But we've lost a few of them and still done okay and we've won a few of them and struggled the next couple of games," Coach Williams said.
The starting lineup is essentially set - Tywon Lawson at point guard, Wayne Ellington at shooting guard, Marcus Ginyard at the three-spot and obviously Tyler Hansbrough anchoring the middle. But the starting spot at the four-position has not yet been decided between Deon Thompson and Alex Stepheson. "I don't know that it will ever work itself out, and I don't mind. My God, we had a guy that was the second player picked in the NBA draft and he never started a game. So I don't worry about that. I guarantee you if I go to bed at night, that's the last thing I'm worrying about. It better be the last thing they're worried about, too. They're going to play," Coach Williams said.
Injury update: Tyler Hansbrough sat out half of Saturday's practice and the off-day on Sunday, but practiced on Monday and will be fine for Davidson. Will Graves has been nursing an ankle issue, but he practiced yesterday for the first time since Wednesday of last week and should be able to play Wednesday as well. The only scratch for the Tar Heels will be Michael Copeland. He ran into Alex Stepheson's elbow (literally) during Saturday's practice and suffered a concussion and a wound that required five stitches above his left eye.
Lauren Brownlow is the managing editor of Tar Heel Monthly.
