University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: No Doubt About It
February 18, 2007 | Men's Basketball
Feb. 18, 2007
By Adam Lucas
CHESTNUT HILL--Maybe this wasn't meant to be.
Boston College's Tyrese Rice had just thrown in a shot while parallel to the hardwood. The circus leaner brought the Eagles within 73-72 with 30.1 seconds left. A previously slumbering Conte Forum crowd was suddenly roaring, ghosts of close games lost in the recent past were stirring, and it was time for some armchair coaching. You know you were doing it. Over the past three days, Carolina's late-game strategy has been a popular topic of conversation from the coffee shop to the internet to Franklin Street.
Everyone wants to be a coach. Even on the Tar Heel bench.
Before Carolina inbounded the ball, Bobby Frasor--the son of a coach--leaned over across a couple teammates and within earshot of the coaches.
"Should we put Wayne in to shoot free throws?" he said.
The implication was obvious. Ellington would come in for Marcus Ginyard.
But the substitution wasn't made. Ginyard had attempted just one field goal all night and was shooting 71.9 percent from the line. Ellington, the team's smoothest shooter, hits at a 76 percent clip.
The Tar Heels have to inbound the ball. And as the teams line up to trigger the play, one of the Eagles looks at Danny Green and says, "We're not fouling you."
It was probably sound strategy. Green had been the player chosen by Roy Williams earlier in the game to shoot a pair of technical foul free throws, and he makes over 90 percent of his charity tosses.
Apparently, there were several players Boston College didn't want to foul, because Carolina had the chance to cycle the ball up the court for eight seconds. As soon as the ball hit Ginyard's hands, the cry went up from the BC bench:
"Foul him!"
Green came out. On the bench, he relayed the Eagle comments to Frasor. The Illinois sophomore responded by telling him his substitution suggestion just a few seconds earlier.
As Ginyard toed the stripe, Frasor and Green were wearing subtle grins.
When the shot dropped through the net, the subtle grins turned into toothy smiles.
There has never been a North Carolina player like Reyshawn Terry.
It's a fan's compulsion to try and compare players. You know the drill--Brandan Wright reminds me of Sam Perkins. Wayne Ellington reminds me of Joseph Forte.
But Terry is in his own category. There's never been one like him.
Who else would make a mistake by throwing the ball to Wright 22 feet from the basket on a fast break...and then turn around and nail a three-pointer at one of the game's biggest moments?
Who else would make what Roy Williams described as one of the game's biggest shots, a three-pointer that put the Tar Heels up 73-66...and then foul Jared Dudley in the act of shooting a three-pointer on the other end?
Just as you're getting ready to bellow, "No, Reyshawn!" he's on the other end making a crucial play. It's dizzying.
Sometimes literally.
When Terry hit the trifecta that gave Carolina a 64-61 lead, it prompted Williams to exhort his team defensively. He was screaming, he was clapping his hands--and then he was down. Crouched in front of the Tar Heel bench rubbing his temples, experiencing one of the periodic head rushes that mark his most intense of moments, he had his head in his hands. Had he been a boxer, it would have been time for the corner man to come over and squirt water on his face. Instead, it was up to Steve Robinson to hop out of his seat and grab Williams's shoulders to make sure he was steady.
That's what kind of game it was. And that's what kind of year it's been for Terry. Moments of sheer euphoria tempered with the heavy responsibilities of being a senior in the Carolina program.
"Being a senior has definitely been harder than I thought it would be," he said. "It's been a real task for me, and it's still challenging to this day. I'm still learning how to do it, and it's a great deal to learn."
What's enabled him to succeed is that he's a different player than he was his first three years. Now he hustles. Now he wins defensive awards. Now he balances the frenzied errors with rebounding. He is not perfect and wouldn't claim to be. But over the past couple of months, there have been flashes of a true senior.
His coach has noticed. Two sentences into his postgame press conference, he singled out the Winston-Salem native.
"I couldn't be more proud of Reyshawn," Williams said.
"He's successful when he lets the game come to him," says Green, who watches Terry's every move when he's on the bench to try and pick up pointers. "And there have been more times this year when he's let the game come to him. It's more natural, and that's why he gets better results."
For the first part of his Carolina career, Terry measured those results largely in points per game. It's no coincidence that as he's discovered other categories on the stat sheet, he's earned more rope from his head coach. There was a time when a play like the pass to Wright would have earned a laser-beam stare from his head coach.
Saturday night, though, Williams was standing right next to Terry when he made the play. He clapped, nodded his head, and called out the next defense.
Williams didn't like the play, of course. But he couldn't yank Terry because his senior was too important.
For all the right reasons.
The Tar Heels had jumped around in their spacious Conte Forum locker room to celebrate the crucial road victory. And now there was just one thing left for Bobby Frasor to do.
He approached Ginyard, his fellow sophomore.
"Hey, man," Frasor said. "I knew you had those free throws. I never doubted you."
He pounded his teammate on the back.
And then he laughed.
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.
