University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: UNC Basketball Notebook
March 4, 2011 | Men's Basketball
March 4, 2011
By Adam Lucas
Tomorrow night's 8 p.m. tipoff with Duke is fairly simple: the winner takes home the Atlantic Coast Conference regular-season championship, while the loser gets the league's second seed. The winner gets the league's top seed and will open play in Greensboro at noon; the loser gets the second seed and will play at 7 p.m.
But one question remains--exactly who are the Tar Heels planning to start in the senior day contest? Tradition holds that seniors usually start the final home game, but this is a bit of an unusual senior class. Justin Knox only arrived on campus in August, and the remaining seniors--walk-ons Van Hatchell, D.J. Johnston and Daniel Bolick--also only joined the varsity program this season.
"I still do not know," Roy Williams said Friday afternoon about his plans for the starters. "My staff and I talked this morning. There is not a consensus. I'm going to talk to the guys this afternoon and make a decision before we go out there."
Williams did say that Knox will definitely start, and that, "Every time I've ever coached I've (started the seniors), but that doesn't mean I'll do it tomorrow."
For the record, Carolina also had no four-year seniors for the 2004 senior day, Williams's first year back in Chapel Hill. Damien Price, Jonathan Miller and Phillip McLamb did get the start that evening. Of course, that was also against Clemson rather than Duke, and the ACC regular season title wasn't on the line. In 2005, a game against Duke, C.J. Hooker and Charlie Everett started and played the first 90 seconds as the Tar Heels battled for the regular season title. Duke built a 5-0 lead while they were in, but Carolina led 47-41 at halftime.
Awards and rewards: Saturday's game should be important in determining some of the ACC postseason accolades. Traditionally, with the season finale played on Sunday, some voters have already turned in their ballots before tipoff. That won't be the case this year. Williams has a shot at ACC Coach of the Year (although a recent ESPN survey showed him getting a surprising lone vote among 15 personalities polled) and several Tar Heels are in the hunt for All-ACC and All-Freshman honors. Harrison Barnes would seem to be the frontrunner for Freshman of the Year, and John Henson has a chance at Defensive Player of the Year.
Williams doesn't have a vote for Player of the Year, but if he did, he knows how he would vote.
"To me, Nolan Smith has had the best year of anybody in the league and the best year of anybody in college basketball," Williams said. "If I voted for the AP National Player of the Year, Nolan Smith would be my vote."
Briefly: CBS College Sports will have expanded coverage from Chapel Hill on Saturday. They've added Jerry Stackhouse to their studio crew and will air a special edition of Inside College Basketball starting at 6 p.m. Once the regular CBS network broadcast begins at 8 p.m., Jim Nantz and Clark Kellogg will have the call...Roy Williams spoke to students in The Pit on Friday at lunchtime...
After some mental breakdowns in the closing minutes of Wednesday's win at Florida State, the coaching staff reviewed the errors with the players involved. Williams specifically addressed the usage of timeouts, including a couple of situations when a timeout could have been burned to avoid a timeout. "I said to both Harrison and Kendall that they had an opportunity to call a timeout rather than making a turnover," the head coach said. "I told them that when we run out of timeouts, we will tell them. Until them, we can use those."...As usual, the Tar Heel Sports Network will broadcast every game of next week's ACC Tournament. Every session will have a pregame Mailbag segment. Fans can be a part of that Mailbag by sending in their questions now.
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.
