University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Big Story Is No Story
April 2, 2008 | Men's Basketball
April 2, 2008
By Adam Lucas
Quentin Thomas went on an official recruiting visit to Kansas just a few months after Roy Williams departed Lawrence for Chapel Hill. It was the fall of 2003, some emotions were still raw--especially in Jayhawk country--and he wasn't sure what to expect.
Williams had recruited him to Kansas and then continued to recruit him to North Carolina. It was the opening of a California pipeline to Chapel Hill that has since been very fertile for the Tar Heels.
But Thomas might have been dissuaded from picking Carolina if his visit to Lawrence hadn't gone so well.
"When I visited Kansas, Aaron Miles and Keith Langford were there and they told me nothing but positive things about Coach Williams," Thomas says. "They didn't have to do that. They were still at the stage where he had recruited them and then he left while they were there, so I wasn't sure what they would say about him. But everything they said was positive. And then when I got here, it was the same way with Coach Williams talking about Kansas--he is always completely positive about it. To me, that says a lot about Coach and a lot about Kansas."
To the dismay of Williams, his ties to Lawrence have been the major national topic in advance of Saturday's Final Four matchup. He's handled it smoothly so far, but by the time the Tar Heels meet the media in San Antonio on Friday afternoon, it's easy to imagine that his patience might be waning with answering the same questions for the tenth time.
Storylines are bountiful for this game (by the way, starting tomorrow with a look at Carolina's multiple defenses, we're following our own advice and turning the TarHeelBlue.com focus to the game itself). It's Kansas's stingy defense against Carolina's potent offense. It's a potential fan's delight because of the high-octane style of play. It's a Final Four rookie taking on a Final Four veteran.
But it's also Williams against Kansas, and that has dominated the conversation.
Then why doesn't that particular theme feel that important in Chapel Hill? In 2004, yes, this would have been a major grudge match. That's a season that Williams spent frequently mentioning Kirk Hinrich and Nick Collison. There were still some hurt feelings among KU players, including Wayne Simien. At Carolina, some Tar Heel players occasionally grew tired of constant Kansas-related stories and examples.
In 2005, perhaps, this would have been a bitter contest. That's the year when Sean May prominently mentioned his desire to destroy Steve Robinson's Kansas Final Four t-shirt after the Tar Heels defeated Wisconsin to earn their own Final Four berth.
But in 2008, it just seems tired. It might be different if either side had faltered, but Carolina just broke the school record for victories and Kansas spent most of the year in the nation's top five. The programs have far more similarities than they have differences. Williams and KU coach Bill Self have spent the past five seasons building their own foundations and new memories at their new locations. Williams, in fact, had closer player connections to the members of the rotation of regional final opponent Louisville (he recruited David Padgett) than he'll have to Kansas on Saturday (Jeremy Case averages just five minutes per game).
The thaw is partly because of Williams's induction into the Hall of Fame in September of 2007, when a remarkable collection of Tar Heels and Jayhawks turned out to support their coach. On that night, no one asked him to compare and contrast the two programs. No one demanded that he identify more closely with one or the other. The evening was perfectly symbolized by Williams's Hall induction flag, which featured both a Kansas and Carolina logo.
By that point, even Simien's tone had changed. "Coach means so much to me," said Simien, who attended the induction. "He's been not only a coach, but a positive role model and a father figure, as well."
That's not the venom that some will try to manufacture over the next four days. Sure, it's possible that this game might serve to reignite some fires from the two Williams-to-Carolina sagas that played out earlier this decade. But no matter which side advances to the national title game, it's more likely that this game will finally close the book on that chapter of the Carolina and Kansas basketball histories.
What the Kansas and Carolina players who gathered that weekend in September learned was that they had the same Williams stories: the practice explosions, the in-game laughs, and the lots and lots of victories.
Here's the thing: without Carolina, he's not the Roy Williams that Kansas loved for 15 years. And without Kansas, he's not the Roy Williams we've loved for the past five years.
How long ago was April 2003? LeBron James was still a high school basketball player and the Florida Marlins were on their way to a World Series championship. Likewise, Williams has changed. He's a different coach--and as he'd tell you, hopefully a better coach. He's a different person who has seen his family expand (his son Scott's marriage) and dwindle (the painful deaths of his father and sister).
What seemed critical in those spring months of 2003 no longer seems as important as, say, defending Brandon Rush or preparing for Kansas's perimeter ball pressure. Tar Heel fans should be well acquainted with changing perceptions. After all, if the football team had played Texas in 1998, it would have been a showdown. But by the time Mack Brown brought his Longhorns to Chapel Hill in 2002, it was much easier to view Brown in the light of what he'd achieved at Carolina than how he left.
"To be truthful, I had no idea about that whole Kansas thing," Alex Stepheson said Tuesday afternoon. "Apparently it was pretty big news."
You're exactly right, Alex. It was big news.
But now, at least from the Carolina vantage point, it's just old news.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.
