University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: UNC Basketball Mailbag
March 25, 2008 | Men's Basketball
March 25, 2008
By Adam Lucas
A couple storylines emerged in the wake of Carolina's run through the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament. It just so happens that I am already tired of those two storylines. And although this equates to preaching to the choir, let's briefly review those issues:
1. Carolina got an unfair advantage by playing at "home."
The last time I paid attention to the NBA, Michael Jordan was hitting the title-winner against the Jazz. But answer me this: when one team has homecourt advantage in the NBA Finals, do people complain about the game not being on a neutral court? No, they recognize that the homestanding team earned that advantage by virtue of its play in the regular season. It's the same situation with Carolina's top seed in the Charlotte region. It was a luxury afforded them by a stellar regular season. If they'd lost a couple more games, we'd all be spending the upcoming weekend in some scenic venue like Detroit. (Now, if Georgetown wants to talk about Davidson's crowd advantage, that's another story.)
And how come I never heard anyone bringing up the fact that when UCLA plays in Phoenix this weekend, it will be the first time they've left their home state for NCAA regional play since 2005, a stretch that included two Final Four runs? That's right, since losing in the first round in Tucson in 2005, the Bruins have played in San Diego, Oakland, Sacramento, San Jose, and Anaheim. It's a variation on "to the victors go the spoils." To the regular season champions go the favorable placements. That's just the way the NCAA Tournament operates, and that's how it should be. Otherwise, we could just ditch the regular season and start a 340-team NCAA Tournament in January.
2. Carolina hasn't been tested yet and might falter in a close game.
Last year, I could have gone along with this one. But the Tar Heels have had plenty of late-game tests this year. It just so happens that those tests haven't come in the NCAA Tournament so far. Will they come? Absolutely, probably as soon as Thursday against Washington State because of the style the Cougars play (more on that tomorrow). But not playing a close game in the first two rounds isn't reason to discount Carolina's very impressive showing. Of course, winning the first two in blowouts also doesn't guarantee future success, so it cuts both ways.
Also, to answer a frequently asked question, those ridiculous NCAA logo stickers at midcourt won't be a problem this weekend because the NCAA uses custom courts for the regional round forward. That negates the need for the decals. So the NCAA will have to fulfill its obsessive need to slap the logo on everything--while endangering the student-athletes playing (for free) the games that make billions for the organization--in some other way.
There, now I feel better. On with the questions...
Is UNC taking advantage of its proximity to home by watching game tape in Chapel Hill while in Raleigh?
Kevin Bullard `97
With the Tar Heels playing first and second round in Raleigh, is it mandated by the NCAA that they must stay in a hotel chosen by the NCAA or could Roy keep his team on campus since they are so close to the arena?
Ryan Davis
Raleigh, NC
Surprisingly, the NCAA doesn't require participating teams to stay in a hotel. However, they do require teams to be a part of all the open practices and press conferences that take place during tournament week (the Tar Heels had an open practice and press conference on Thursday and a press conference on Friday). Usually only the head coach and two players are on the podium for the press conference, but the entire team is required to be present in the locker room for the full 40 minutes during media availability. That means Roy Williams would have to load his entire team on a bus and drive the 20-30 minutes (more when you factor in the unpredictable 5 p.m. traffic) from Chapel Hill for four straight days. Rather than do that, the Tar Heels elected to stay at their NCAA-assigned hotel. As Williams pointed out, that also enables his team to maintain some semblance of its usual postseason routine.
Part of that postseason routine includes watching film. Thanks to the video library established by C.B. McGrath and Eric Hoots throughout the season, the Tar Heels can essentially do everything film-wise on the road that they do at home. The coaches still grade the game film, the players still watch cuts, and the assistant coaches still scout the upcoming opponent. Assistants, by the way, watch DVDs of their scouting assignments. But Roy Williams, an old-school coach, only watches VCR tape. So Hoots carries the scouting film for everyone else on a handful of DVDs that take up very little space, while Williams's collection of tapes and video cassette recorder is considerably more bulky. His fellow coaches have tried to get Williams to make the switch to DVD--and even briefly tried to teach him how to use a portable DVD player on a long plane ride earlier this season--but so far he has resisted.
During the ACC Tournament I noticed that there was one walk-on dressed in street clothes for every game (Greg Little against FSU, Jack Wooten against VT, and Patrick Moody against Clemson). Why was that? Will we be seeing the same thing in the NCAA Tournament?
Max Gongaware
Raleigh, NC
Roy Williams was trying to determine which of his walk-ons could grow the best moustache and was rotating them in on a moustache-by-moustache basis.
OK, that's not true. In the postseason (ACC and NCAA Tournaments), one of the many rules requires a team to dress no more than 15 players. With Greg Little on the roster, the Tar Heels had 16 healthy players on the roster, so one had to sit out each game in the ACC Tournament. This is actually a bigger deal than you might think, because if it's not entered in the official scorebook correctly Carolina could start the game with a technical foul.
The rotation won't be a problem in NCAA play, because Greg Little has made the transition back to football, bringing the roster back to 15 healthy players (by virtue of his knee injury, Bobby Frasor doesn't count against that total).
I'm sure I wasn't the only one annoyed Friday night by CBS deciding to skip nearly all of the second half of the Carolina game in favor of the closer games... I ended up watching a large portion of the Mississippi State game, who the other Hansbrough plays for. Which got me thinking -- if both guys are playing at the same time -- what do Tyler and Ben's parents do? And I saw all the flooding in the Midwest... in particular, shots from network correspondents in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. Obviously, the flooding has been disastrous in the area with more than dozen deaths so far. How is the Hansbrough family doing?
Jane Young Choi
Northern Virginia
Not many other families in NCAA history have had to negotiate this predicament. Gene Hansbrough, the current First Father of NCAA hoops, divided it this way: during conference tournament weekend, he prioritized Ben. Dr. Hansbrough watched Tyler's game in Charlotte at noon and then hopped a plane for Atlanta, where he saw Ben play Friday night. His plan was simple: stay with Ben as long as the Bulldogs were winning.
This weekend, the plan was reversed. Dr. Hansbrough prioritized Tyler and saw both games in Raleigh in person. Tyler and Ben playing at the same time on Friday night was tricky, but their dad was able to watch the final minutes of Mississippi State's win on an arena television that had been commandeered by some friendly Tar Heel fans. Meanwhile, Ben and Tyler's mother was in Birmingham watching the Bulldogs nearly pull the upset of top-seeded Memphis.
As for how Hansbrough's hometown is coping with the flooding, I would recommend this story in the St. Louis paper. The paper continued its coverage this weekend in Raleigh and will follow the Tar Heels throughout NCAA play. With no NCAA teams in either the state of Missouri or Illinois, the Post-Dispatch was looking for a postseason saga to follow. After consultation with its readers, the paper picked Hansbrough. That kind of single-player coverage isn't unusual for smaller community papers, but the Post-Dispatch is America's 23rd-biggest paper by circulation. Of course, by this point Hansbrough is accustomed to unusual coverage--both on the court and off it.
Brownlow's Down Low
I keep hearing about how hard it is to beat a team three times in one year. How true is this adage? What are Carolina's records in the ACC Tournament against teams it goes into the game 2-0, 1-1 and 0-2 against, respectively?
Randy Hucks
Chapel Hill, NC
Lauren writes:
I decided to just go from 1967 on, which is the year of Dean Smith's first Final Four. I also wanted to compare how Final Four did against teams they faced more than twice in an ACC season versus other teams (obviously, expansion has affected that). But since 1967, Carolina has faced 43 teams that it went 2-0 against in the regular season. Carolina is 36-7 in those games. Evidently, it is easier to beat someone twice than to beat someone three times (there is perhaps a reason Carolina had swept the season series) because the Tar Heels have played 33 games in the Tournament against teams that it has split the season series with and have a 22-11 record. In the days of the Big Four Tournament, Carolina would sometimes face one of the "Big Four" (Wake, NC State, Duke and Carolina) more than twice a season. So Carolina has played a team for the fourth time in the ACC Tournament five times. Carolina has gone into the game with a 3-0 record once (and is 1-2 in those games) and with a 2-1 record twice (and is 1-1 in those games).Since expansion, Carolina has now played five games against Tournament teams that it faced just once during the regular season. After beating Virginia Tech this season, Carolina brought its record against teams it had played once (and beaten) in the regular season to 3-1, dropping only a meeting to Georgia Tech in 2005. Carolina is 0-1 against teams that it has faced (and lost to) once in the regular season after losing in the ACC Tournament and in Chapel Hill to Boston College in 2006.
Carolina's only two wins going into the Tournament 0-2 against an opponent have both come against Maryland - once in 2003 (when the Terps had pounded the Tar Heels twice that season) and previously in 1999. Carolina has gone 0-3 against an ACC opponent on the season just six times. Duke has done it three times - 1988, 1999 and 2002. Georgia Tech won three meetings in 1985. NC State won three meetings against the Tar Heels in 1973 and 1974, even though the teams did not meet in the NCAA Tournament either year (they played in the Big Four Tournament).
By beating both Florida State and Clemson three times this season, Carolina became the first team since 2005 to beat an ACC team three times (also Clemson) and the first team to beat more than to beat more than one ACC opponent three times since the 1992-93 team (Virginia and Maryland).. Of ACC opponents it faced in the Tournament, Carolina had a perfect record against all three (8-0) for the first time since 1967, when that Final Four team went 9-0 against its three ACC Tournament opponents.
Carolina's 14 Final Four teams since 1967 have a combined 93-24 record against teams that it faced either two or more times or in the ACC Tournament (since expansion). The three Final Four teams in the 1969's went a combined 25-2; the 1967 team is the only team to not lose to a team it faced more than twice. The 2000 Final Four team is the only team to have a losing record when facing an ACC opponent three times, splitting with Wake Forest in the regular season and dropping the quarterfinal game. The 1993 team went 8-1, losing only to Georgia Tech, against its ACC Tournament opponents in the season and Tournament. The 1982 team also went 8-1, having lost to Virginia earlier in the season and avenging the loss in the title game.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.
