University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: UNC Basketball Mailbag
February 10, 2009 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Feb. 10, 2009
By Adam Lucas
This week's column starts with something I never thought we'd see: ACC Tournament ticket availability. If you're a Rams Club member, you are eligible to purchase ACC Tournament tickets right now by buying online. The deadline has been extended through Thursday, and it's a terrific opportunity to give the Tar Heels a "homecourt advantage" at the Georgia Dome as they shoot for their third straight tournament title. If you've never been to the Tournament, this is a great chance to watch a fun weekend of basketball, cheer for the Tar Heels, and cheer against...well, you know.
Speaking of tickets, some emailers have wondered why there were several open rows of seats at Saturday's Virginia game. The answer: students didn't pick up all their tickets, which has been a recurring theme this year. That's especially disappointing for a game like Virginia--a weekend afternoon game that was a hot ticket for the general public. Unfortunately, the ticket office had to turn away many members of the general public...and then watch, disappointed, as rows and rows of student seats that could've been used by other fans went unused. What's the moral of the story? If you're a student who doesn't already have tickets, go to the stand-by line and you've got a very, very high probability of success. If you're a member of the general public, it wouldn't hurt to check with the ticket office 30-60 minutes before tip-off and see what the current situation might be. You could be surprised.
In your mailbag from today, you referred to the "The 1998 team with the infamous alphabetical starting line-up." I have never heard of that before. I can't right off remember if Haywood started as a freshman that season or not. But Ademola Okulaja, Antawn Jamison, Vince Carter, Ed Cota, and Shammond Williams was the starting lineup I think. And I can't figure out anything alphabetical about that. Can you help enlighten me?
Greg Blackwell
Charlotte
Now you've done it, Greg. There are two ways readers can respond to the above question: 1. Yeah, I don't remember that, what is he talking about? Or 2. Noooooooooo.
When historians dig up the Carolina basketball time capsule in a few centuries, my guess is they'll be very puzzled by the 1998 Tar Heel stats. National Player of the Year Antawn Jamison didn't start in five games in which he played, and Ed Cota also came off the bench in five contests. High flyer Vince Carter didn't start in six, and Shammond Williams also didn't start a half-dozen.
Here's the problem: the '98 Tar Heels were not very deep. Just six players averaged double-figure minutes, but those six played the vast majority of the minutes. There was a huge gap between the player who averaged the sixth-most minutes (Makhtar Ndiaye, 23.8) and the seventh-most minutes (Brendan Haywood, 8.1). Faced with an unusually even but shallow talent pool--it was somewhat similar to the 1995 team, but there was an even larger gap between the fifth and sixth man (Pearce Landry) on that squad--Bill Guthridge came up with a typically logical solution. Rather than taking the normal solution and proclaiming he had "six starters" but making one of those six a reserve, he actually had six starters. The starting rotation changed every game, with one of the six taking a seat on the bench based on the alphabetical rotation (Carter first, then Cota, etc.).
In hindsight, of course, the outlier in the six starters is Ndiaye (the sixth player in this conversation is Ademola Okulaja). But Ndiaye provided a post presence to help relieve some of the attention on Jamison, and he grabbed a rebound every 5.8 minutes, the second-best ratio on the team. He was also an above-average post defender and a shot-blocking threat. The negative, as every Carolina fan remembers, is that Ndiaye was prone to on-court explosions that sometimes had a negative impact.
The player most affected by the rotation was Williams. In games he didn't start, the senior shot just 40 percent from the field, including a bizarre meltdown in Charlottesville that saw him play just four minutes and verbally spar with Guthridge on the bench. As luck would have it, Williams's turn to come off the bench came in the Final Four game against Utah, and he shot 2-of-12 from the field in Carolina's very painful 65-59 defeat.
So, thanks for the wonderful memories, Greg. Next week maybe we can chat about the '77 Marquette game, Dan Dakich, or 8-20.
Just checking if you've heard any word on Zeller? I know the coach mentioned after Tuesday's game that they would get a report yesterday. If not, I do have a question for you...do you think, with us not getting Marcus and Will back for the rest of the season, that he (Zeller) would be able to contribute with the amount of games left?
John Lawrence
New Bern, NC
In terms of Mailbag popularity, Tyler Zeller is on the verge of eclipsing Justin Bohlander. In some ways, that would be a welcome occurrence, but in others it's about to make Lauren put a virus in all your inboxes.
Smith Center early arrivers know Zeller has frequently been spotted shooting around before games. That fuels speculation that he might be close to a return. After Saturday's win, Roy Williams said Zeller had practiced one-fourth of the total practice time on Thursday and Friday. "Somebody asked me whether I thought Tyler would play today," Williams said. "My gosh, guys, he only missed 12 weeks. He doesn't even know what offense and defense is. He thinks defense is something that goes around your yard. So it's going to be a while, then we're going to make decisions later on. Don't ask me this week, there will not be a decision. We'll look at it down the road a little bit. There's a reason they give you four and a half weeks of preseason practice--so you can get ready to play."
Based on Williams's comments, that means the earliest possible return date for Zeller would be Feb. 16. At that point, there would be five games remaining in the regular season. One quirk of the schedule that might work in his favor is the Feb. 21-28 open week. The Tar Heels don't have a game between the road trip to Maryland and the home contest against Georgia Tech.
The timeline on this injury has put Zeller squarely in the gray area where a decision isn't simple. If this was late January, of course he'd come back. If it was early March, of course he wouldn't. But it's mid-February, and there are a variety of factors--Zeller could certainly help this year's team, is he 100 percent healthy and not rushing back, how do you mix in an essentially new player who is on a completely different learning curve than the rest of his teammates, etc.--to consider. The most recent comparison would probably be Sean May's freshman year, when he came back from a broken foot and played against Duke in the ACC Tournament. After being cleared medically, May went through two weeks of limited practice before playing 10 minutes against the Blue Devils. When he came back, there was public concern that he upset the chemistry Carolina had developed over a late-regular season surge. There's no science to bringing back an injured player.
Now, to your other question--would he contribute? If he's healthy, absolutely. Zeller makes the Tar Heels taller (in case you haven't noticed, Carolina is not an especially tall team this year), longer and more athletic. He'd give Ty Lawson another speedy post threat running the floor, and he can comfortably shoot the ball out to the 3-point line. In his two games of action this season, he hadn't been an especially effective rebounder, but he impressed Roy Williams enough during preseason practice that he earned a starting job over Ed Davis when Tyler Hansbrough was out with an injury.
Brownlow's Down Low
I assume that over the past four years these Tar Heels have been one of the best, if not the best, road teams in Carolina history. Our few losses over the four-year span have been at home. I was wondering what Tar Heel teams were the best at defending the home court, and where this team stacks up?
Jacob Willis
Spruce Pine, NC
Lauren writes: Well, actually over the past four years, Carolina has been very good on the road (28-7) but has a chance to be only second all time at 32-7 (0.821). That would be the second-highest road winning percentage of a four-year group; the 1981-84 class went 30-6 (0.833). It would be the best record since last year's class (31-8), which had the first single-digit road loss record since the 1984-87 group (34-8).
The Tar Heels from 1984-87 went 40-3 at home and that is the highest percentage (0.93) since. The 1992-95 Tar Heels came close (0.927) and the last class to be above 0.90 is 1993-96 (0.904). Since then, the highest winning percentage by a Carolina class was Quentin Thomas, who went 58-7 (0.892). This year's group has a chance to go 57-8 at home, but it would still be just 0.877. Right now, it is 54-8 at home (0.871). The 2006 season has affected those numbers; Carolina was 13-4 at home and 8-2 on the road. Last season's group was 14-2 at home and 9-0 on the road.
Since the 1957 season, 12 Tar Heel teams have gone undefeated at home (obviously, including the 1957 team which went undefeated). Of those 12 teams, three won the national championship (1957, 1993 and 2005), two went to Final Fours (1969 and 1972) and one won the NIT title (1971). Others include some of Carolina's more talented teams, like the 1959 squad with Doug Moe and York Larese, the 1984 team with Jordan and company and the 1987 team. Of the 16 one-loss home seasons, one national champion (1982) and six Final Four teams (1967, 1968, 1977, 1995, 1997 and 1998) are among them. The only Final Four teams with more than one home loss are both in this decade - the 2000 team went 7-5 at home and the 2008 team went 14-2.
Since the 1957 season, the best class has been the 1959, 1960 and 1961 Tar Heels who went 18-1 at home. In three Final Four seasons (1967, 1968 and 1969), those Tar Heels went 25-2. The 1969, 1970 and 1971 Tar Heels also went 25-2, featuring one Final Four team and an NIT Championship team. The 1970, 1971 and 1972 Tar Heels also did it, including the NIT title team and a Final Four team. The 1974, 1975 and 1976 teams went 26-2 but there was not a Final Four in that group. The best home records by four-year groups were consecutive classes from 1976-79 and 1977-80, each of which went 34-2 at home.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.
