University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Pushing And Pulling
January 21, 2011 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Jan. 21, 2011
By Adam Lucas
In the immediate aftermath of Sunday's whipping at the hands of Georgia Tech, Carolina's players were getting dressed in a very quiet Tar Heel locker room. There wasn't much time to sulk, as there would be just one practice day before a home game against Clemson. Roy Williams had just proclaimed that he would "fight somebody with a chainsaw," and punctuated his remarks with, "We stunk and my coaching stunk."
In Atlanta terms, the mood was about as comfortable as a Pepsi convention in the diehard Coke town.
A reporter approached Harrison Barnes. "So," the Carolina freshman was asked, "what do you think practice will be like tomorrow?"
It was a fair question. It didn't take Jessica Fletcher ("Blowout, she wrote") to figure out Williams was displeased, and the common perception is that an angry coach leads to a spirited practice. And had the Tar Heels hit the practice floor at that exact moment, it's entirely possible that it would have featured a high volume and lots of running.
Instead, they still had 12 hours (including an adventurous bus ride from the airport to the Smith Center that doubled as an audio tour of the Triangle area) to ponder the ramifications.
What followed were two of the most important days of coaching thus far in the Tar Heel season. Williams already knew he couldn't run his team into the ground. "Think about it for a second," he said. "If you get your butt kicked and you're playing your third game in six days, you're stupid if you go out and take your kids' legs away."
At Monday's session, there was a less than 10-minute review of Georgia Tech, and then the focus turned to Clemson. What the head coach saw during that portion of practice shaped the way he handled Tuesday. The Hall of Famer saw a team that looked almost too eager to please--too intent on making the perfect pass or the perfect shot. Even with some significant lineup changes that included Kendall Marshall, Leslie McDonald and Justin Knox with the White (starters) team, they looked like they were pressing.
So by Tuesday morning, Williams knew how he'd approach his squad--overwhelmingly positively. In public, he'd been harsh on Sunday night. But it was the back end of a three games-in-six days stretch, and it hadn't just been a hectic week on the court. On Saturday, Williams and Steve Robinson had traveled to Kinston to attend funeral services for Reggie Bullock's grandmother.
But the commitment to positivity didn't mean he was unwilling to make any changes. Marshall stayed in the starting lineup even after McDonald was sidelined with an injury. It was the first of several technical moves that worked well for the Tar Heels. After being outscored by a combined 29-11 in the opening minutes of the previous three ACC games, Carolina built a 10-7 lead in the first four minutes against the Tigers.
It was that Marshall-for-Larry Drew swap at the beginning of the game that drew most of the attention. But it was the series of moves at the end of the game that might have proven to be the difference. Williams made nine substitutions over the final three minutes and 13 seconds, constantly swapping offense for defense and vice versa at nearly every stoppage.
It allowed Marshall to help run the team offensively while keeping Drew's quality defense (he would ultimately win the coaches defensive award for the game) on the court to guard Clemson's quick guards. The moves put the right players on the court at the right times doing the things they were best equipped to do. It was, in other words, exactly the job description of a coach.
All the while, Williams was maintaining a positive sideline presence. Even when the Tar Heels suffered some potentially serious late-game unforced turnovers--a high pass out of bounds and a fumble out of bounds with the game tied at 63 were particularly dicey--a glance at the UNC bench showed the head coach standing and clapping. "There were some little things where guys might get yelled at, and instead he was saying, `Come on, we'll be alright, you can do better,'" Henson said.
Part of the charm of the regular season is the learning process an entire team goes through. They figure out which pieces fit together. And the coach learns, too, because every group is different. Sometimes they need to be pushed. Sometimes they need to be pulled. Learning which moments require a pat on the back and which require a sharp word is one of those behind-the-scenes elements that can change a season. Last year, it felt like no one ever quite arrived on the same page. This year, for all his talk about the mystery of dealing with 18- and 19-year-olds, it feels like Williams has a better feel for how to generate the right response.
Even Drew had exactly the reaction you'd want a player to have if he lost his starting job after a year-and-a-half in the spotlight. He expressed some enjoyment of the rotation tweak that featured him with Marshall on the court together, but he also refused to cede anything permanently. "I'm going to fight back," Drew said. "I'm not stopping. I'm not quitting."
How to handle the situation going forward? That's up to Williams. This week, for two important days in mid-January, it felt like all his moves were the right ones. He gets the exact same reward every other high-profile Division I coach receives--a brief reprieve, at least until tipoff of the next game.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of six books on Carolina basketball, including the official chronicle of the first 100 years of Tar Heel hoops, A Century of Excellence, which is available now. Get real-time UNC sports updates from the THM staff on Twitter.
