University of North Carolina Athletics
History Shows Importance Of Experience
November 6, 2007 | Men's Basketball
Nov. 6, 2007
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The following story originally ran in the November 2007 issue of the magazine.
By Lauren Brownlow
"Loaded" is a word that Carolina fans will hear often about this year's basketball team--from opposing fans, from fellow fans, from the media. Carolina was "loaded" last season as well--loaded with talent, but not with experience. In today's college basketball world when Syracuse freshmen Carmelo Anthony and Gerry McNamara can come in and lead Syracuse to a national title in 2003, expectations are higher when freshmen are good.
But since 2000, Syracuse is the only national title team to have more than one freshman in its starting lineup. Maryland's national championship team in 2002 started three seniors, a junior and one sophomore. Seniors Lonny Baxter and Juan Dixon and junior Steve Blake were third-year starters. When Duke won the title in 2001, it started two seniors (Shane Battier and Nate James) and three sophomores (Jay Williams, Carlos Boozer and Mike Dunleavy). But the two seniors started alongside Williams and Boozer for not only the 2001 season but also the entire 2000 season. Dunleavy did not start in his freshman year but averaged 24.1 minutes a game.
The Florida team that repeated last season was led by its superb class of juniors, which won its second national title in their 76th game starting together and 105th total as a foursome. Florida's back-to-back national titles made many Carolina fans wonder what might have been if the 2005 core of Raymond Felton, Rashad McCants and Sean May had returned for their senior years.
The 2005 team was Carolina's most loaded returning team on paper. It was a team that returned all its starters from 2004; the 2004 team had returned all of its starters from 2003. As a whole, the team returned eight players that had started at least one game and 364 total starts between them. It returned five players averaging double-figure scoring and four averaging 4.5 rebounds or more (the most since 1986). It also returned seven players averaging double-digit minutes and it was one of only two teams in Carolina history to return 11 upperclassmen.
Starts were not kept reliably until 1987 and since then, no team has returned within even 100 starts of the 2005 team. The 2001 team, which returned nine players that had started at least one and 255 starts total, comes closest. The 1993 team returned the most players who had ever started a game (10) but still returned only the sixth-highest number of total starts (212). The 2008 team ranks ninth out of 22 in both returning starters (7) and returning starts (191). Of the Carolina teams that have returned 165 or more starters since 1986, five of those teams have made the Final Four.
The 2007-08 Tar Heels are now loaded with both talent and experience. Brandan Wright and Reyshawn Terry are gone, but All-American junior Tyler Hansbrough is back. Sophomores Ty Lawson and Wayne Ellington both return, making three returning starters. Juniors Marcus Ginyard, Danny Green and Bobby Frasor are back along with sophomores Deon Thompson (who continues to shed weight) and Alex Stepheson.
Last year's team had as many as 11-12 players seeing regular game action. That will pay off for this year's team as the rotation will tighten. All but two members of the rotation averaged double-digit minutes with Stepheson (6.4) and Quentin Thomas (6.1) being the notable exceptions. The rotation accounted for 70% of last season's total minutes played.
The return of players with double-digit minute experience seems to help, as the 2008 team is the 12th Carolina team since 1984 to return six or more. Two of the previous 11 won the national championship (1993 and 2005). However, just one other team reached a Final Four (1995). The 1984, 1986, 1989, 1994, 2001 and 2007 teams were all widely considered top-ten teams throughout the regular season, but all had disappointing early exits from the NCAA Tournament.
Last year's team returned a higher percentage of its scoring--80.2%--than the 2008 team (68.6%) does. In fact, this season's percentage of returning scoring ranks 24th out of all Carolina teams since 1955. But the 2004 team returned 97.3% of its scoring (2nd) and ended up with a 19-11 record. The 1982 team has the second-best record in Carolina history and returned just 63.4% of its scoring (27th). Ten Final Four teams and two of Carolina's three national championship teams returned 70% of more of their scoring.
Since 1955, 11 teams have improved a Carolina team's record from the previous year by ten percentage points or more (when the previous season was not a losing season). Of those 11 teams, four won the national title, three went to a Final Four and one won the NIT Championship. That means that while those teams ultimately found glory, the experienced members had to endure some losses to make those improvements.
In 2005, a group comprised mostly of players who had to overcome a coaching change and double-digit losses in consecutive seasons (including three seniors who went 8-20 in 2002) banded together for a common purpose and decided not to lose.
"That year, (freshman) Marvin (Williams) was the only player that hadn't been through the turmoil. That team just got on a tremendous run and they were so focused. They had a goal of winning the whole thing and it was extremely important to them. It was a single-minded purpose. They handed all the extracurricular stuff: Sean's (May's) dad had done it, Coach Williams had never won one, what's it going to be like considering where you where 2-3 years ago, all of that. They handled it and shrugged it off and played," Roy Williams said.
| Year | Players with a Start | Total Starts | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | 8 | 364 | National championship |
| 2001 | 9 | 255 | NCAA 2nd round |
| 1989 | 8 | 228 | NCAA Sweet 16 |
| 1990 | 6 | 225 | NCAA Sweet 16 |
| 1994 | 5 | 223 | NCAA 2nd round |
| 1993 | 10 | 212 | National championship |
| 2004 | 8 | 203 | NCAA 2nd round |
| 1998 | 7 | 200 | Final Four |
| 2008 | 7 | 191 | ?? |
The 2007 bunch seemed to be a team that struggled at times to find motivation, losing twice to Virginia Tech and continually giving back large parts of--or entire--leads. Both Lawson and Ellington missed the final shot in a Carolina loss--in Ellington's case, he missed a game-winner at Maryland and then missed a three-pointer that would have given Carolina a Final Four berth against Georgetown.
"The Georgetown game was the first game I felt like our freshmen and sophomores the last eight minutes of the game acted like freshmen and sophomores. We got away a little bit from what we'd done all year long. We took some bad shots and didn't get the ball to Tyler (Hansbrough) and Brandan (Wright) inside. So we've got to make sure that in the big games, when the stress and pressure and whatever it is that the kids feel, they've got to continue doing what got them there in the first place and I think we got away from that," Williams said. "Making bigger plays at crunchtime of games usually comes with experience and we will be an experienced team this year. So you hope you'll do a better job of executing down the stretch. Heck, the last play of our college basketball season we didn't do a very good job of executing that. That's after 38 games."
The 2004 Tar Heels lost a number of close games and the 1981 Tar Heels lost in the national championship game to Indiana. While painful, both of those teams were able to use the adversity they faced to feed their desire and focus the next season. Last season, Williams recognized that he had a young group and often took the blame after losses. But this team has had time to get the basics down and both the head coach and the team should be able to more reliably use concepts like extending the defensive pressure, which allows no margin for error.
"There's no question when you're that experienced that you can move faster, you can make little changes to what you've done in the past and it's easier for them to grasp. It will be more fun for me because I'll push them harder and I always think you can push more talented, more successful, more experienced teams (harder) than you can push guys that are hesitant," Williams said. "Last year, Alex Stepheson for one told me the first two-thirds of practice he was just trying to get through practice. He didn't care what he found out or what he learned or whatever, he just wanted to be alive at the end of practice. That makes it sound like I kill them, and I don't but there is always that doubt in their minds."
Point guard play is absolutely crucial to any championship team. The early NCAA loss to Indiana in 1984 happened in part because point guard Kenny Smith broke his wrist, missing eight games. When Smith came back, he had a brace on his wrist and was not quite the same. Derrick Phelps's battered body managed to remain free of major injury in 1993, but it couldn't withstand a Danya Abrams flagrant foul in 1994 and the Tar Heels made an early NCAA Tournament exit.
The now-sophomore point guard Lawson had a turbulent freshman season, going from dishing nine assists one week to being benched for a bad practice the next. He played very well for much of the postseason, but he regressed against Georgetown. He shot 2-of-9 from the floor and had six assists and five turnovers, his most since a seven-turnover performance in January at Clemson.
"I think his freshman year was really a good year," Williams said. "The last three or four regular-season games and through the Tournament may be some of the best basketball he played all year. He's still a long way from Tyler (Hansbrough), but his discipline and his workouts are so much better than they were and I think he understands all those little things now that go in to being the kind of player that he wants to be and that I want him to be. I really think he'll have a great, great year. He'll be much more focused. That year of experience as a point guard is something that will be invaluable to him."
Leadership doesn't always come from the point guard. Perhaps most famously, George Lynch's hard play and blue-collar attitude set the tone for the 1993 national champions. The 2005 squad had a few leaders, including senior Jackie Manuel. Reyshawn Terry was last year's senior leader and it was a role he never seemed fully comfortable in. Marcus Ginyard seems the likely successor because he can lead with his words and example.
"As good a compliment as I can give somebody is to say they're starting to do Jackie Manuel-type things. Marcus goes in, he'll get a steal or get an offensive rebound. He's always been very stable for us defensively and getting those other little things," Williams said. "Marcus has been doing a good job continually on the defensive end of the floor. During certain points of the game I look over there and I say, `I don't care what else is happening, I've got to have Marcus in the game.'"
Ginyard's leadership could set the tone for another hallmark of great teams--defensive improvement. The 1982 team went from allowing 63.4 points per game in 1981 to holding its opponents to 55.4 points, lowest in Carolina history. The 1993 team held opponents to 68.3 points a game, down from 75.6 points in 1992. The 2005 team improved from allowing 74.8 points a game and 44.1% field-goal percentage in 2004 to 70.3 and 40.1%.
Last year, freshmen were playing a large percentage of the minutes and struggled to adjust to playing defense on the collegiate level. In 2006, Carolina held opponents to 41.1% shooting and 33.1% from the three-point line but regressed in 2007, allowing 41.6% shooting and 35.8% from the three-point line.
"They're kids and that's the best thing about them and sometimes it's the most frustrating thing about them. I love my team. Eleven freshmen and sophomores and we can lose our focus in a heartbeat and we can lose our intensity in a heartbeat, but they are great kids that have the ability to pretty much get it back just as quickly as they lose it. But as a coach you'd love to have a team that is diving on the floor, pulling the nails out of the floor, slobbering and spitting and taking charges 40 minutes a game," Williams said.
Lauren Brownlow is the managing editor of Tar Heel Monthly.
