University of North Carolina Athletics
Jacobs: Patron Saint For 2010
January 2, 2010 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 2, 2010
by Barry Jacobs, TarHeelBlue.com
He is, in a sense, the patron saint of the 2009-10 Tar Heels, a gifted but largely unproven group trying to sustain very high standards.
He monitors their performance, on tape and from afar -- from Roanne, the city in east central France where he plays professional basketball. He speaks occasionally by phone with this year's seniors, preferring to talk of life rather than basketball.
But while David Noel is a continent away, the standards he helped set in similar circumstances in 2006, when he made his mark in Carolina lore, remain a touchstone for the program in another season of transition.
"David Noel to this point in my career is the best leader I've been around," Roy Williams said on the eve of preseason practice this past October. "He saw the big picture every day. It's certainly a security blanket for the coaching staff."
Back when Noel was a senior, North Carolina faced a deep drain of experienced talent in the wake of winning a national championship. Four stalwarts left early to become first-round NBA draft picks, an ACC record, and three significant seniors finished their careers. Yet the '06 Heels exceeded expectations with 23 wins, a second-place ACC finish, and an NCAA bid.
The parallels with this season, which follows an NCAA title and an exodus of veterans, are obvious. But expectations are far higher now than in 2006, and the Heels remain a Top 10 team.
"Around this time, honestly, I want to say we had about the same record," Noel recalls of an '06 unit that stood 7-2 on New Year's Day. The current team enters the new year at 11-3. "But for us it was an achievement. For them it's a disappointment."
UNC lost three of its first four ACC games in 2006 but grew stronger as the season wore on, winning 12 of its last 15 outings. In the process freshmen on that squad -- Tyler Hansbrough, Danny Green, and Marcus Ginyard -- developed habits and attitudes that helped yield another NCAA title in 2009.
"For the most part our freshmen were tough-minded and they understood that, if you were telling them to do something, they knew that they had to get on it and do it," Noel says. "I tried to be kind of the peacemaker, so that when Coach Williams would yell at them I would come behind and be like, `You're OK, man. Just do what Coach Williams is telling you.' Just try to kind of pick up their spirits a little bit."
Noel did more than soothe the adjustment by the newcomers. The 6-6 wing, a basketball walk-on from Durham recruited as a football wide receiver, went from valued reserve to starter his final year as a Tar Heel. He nearly doubling his playing time and tripled his scoring average from the previous season. And he emerged as the quintessential team leader in the eyes of his Hall of Fame coach.
"He tried to help our team win on and off the court as well as anyone I have been around in my life," Williams said of Noel minutes after UNC's loss to George Mason in the second round of the 2006 NCAA tournament. "I was very fortunate to coach him. I'm better today because I have coached him."
Noel, who hopes to go into coaching himself, preferably at the high school level, says of Williams' assessment: "Sometimes I pinch myself to make sure he's still talking about me. It was a great compliment coming from one of the best coaches I've ever had."
Now playing for Chorale Roanne Basket, Noel says Williams prepared the team well for the transition from champion to aspirant. In the absence of experienced point guards, that included encouraging Noel to take on an expanded role.
"I became a little bit more vocal," the player notes. "I think I was just an extension of him on the floor, trying to make the right decisions out there, trying to get guys in the right place, being vocal and things like that. I think it helped us out a lot to get over some of those humps that people didn't really expect us to get over."
Noel translated the dictates of authority into a language his teammates could absorb. "The freshmen just bought into anything David Noel said," Williams recalled this past fall.
Speaking from experience, Noel told the younger players what to expect when traveling to hostile ACC venues. He impressed upon them the importance of paying close attention to detail, such as tendencies revealed in scouting reports of opponents. He counseled shaking off officials' calls, urging cultivation of the "quick memory" necessary to move on to the next play.
"There's just something about hearing something from a head coach," Noel explains. "It almost intimidates you sometimes, like, `Oh man, I have to do this right because he yelled at me. I have to do this right.' And it lights a fire under you. But I think it makes you relax and kind of not feel as much pressure when it's coming from a peer or coming from somebody you play the same game with."
Noel's credibility also was bolstered by his oncourt performance, starting in the season opener, when his late 3-pointer proved decisive in a game against Gardner-Webb.
Ultimately, though, Noel believes leadership arises from a complex set of qualities, some only visible to close observers. "Leadership starts from somebody's work ethic," Noel says. "I think you can have two different leaders on a team, it's just what's their preference of leading. I could do it both ways. I could lead by example and I could lead by what I said. I think that's kind of big in so many different ways because I could almost be two people in one."
Asked today if Noel was a good leader, assistant coach Steve Robinson replies, "Oh, God, yes. There's no question about his leadership."
The burdens of that role, and the aspirations of a senior watching his playing days dwindle, did at times take a toll.
Noel recalls breaking down in tears following a loss at Virginia, the team's second ACC defeat in a row. "There was just so much built up inside me," he says, laughingly reenacting his sobs in the locker room incident. The outburst shocked Noel and earned an invitation to Williams' office the following day.
"He told me to just play the game of basketball, have fun. Let it be the fun that it's supposed to be. At the time I was thinking more, let's be the rock for everybody."
No great leap is required to imagine Noel - and Williams - offering the same advice to 2010 seniors Ginyard and Deon Thompson as they lead the Tar Heels through inconsistency, occasional lapses in judgment and execution, and the challenges posed by erratic outside shooting, a still-evolving playing rotation, and a tough schedule.
Gazing across an ocean, Noel conjures a quote that Williams once shared at practice. "You can't control the wind, but you can adjust the sails," Noel recalls. "We couldn't control what people said about us. We couldn't control where they had us ranked. Yet we could control what we did that season, and we did more than anybody felt that we could do."
