University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: At Home On The Road
February 3, 2012 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Feb. 3, 2012
The following story originally appeared in the January 2012 issue of Tar Heel Monthly, a member benefit of joining The Rams Club.
By Adam Lucas
Occasionally, Roy Williams might wonder if his message consistently reaches his players. On one topic, he shouldn't worry.
Ask any Carolina player about competing on the road, an area where the Tar Heels have had remarkable success in the Williams era, and the conversation always comes back to one phrase.
"He has this one saying," Kendall Marshall says. "I want to make sure I get it exactly right. He wants us to go in there and, what is it...take their brownies!"
The head coach's predilection for brownies first came to the public's attention during the 2007-08 season. It was not something he wanted to talk about. In fact, it was something he actively discouraged his team from talking about. But that wasn't enough to deter Danny Green, who had a nonexistent filter between his brain and his mouth. As the Tar Heels were in the middle of an 8-0 Atlantic Coast Conference road season, Green announced that his head coach referred to beating teams on the road as "taking their brownies." "Coach doesn't like us to talk about it," Green said, and then proceeded to talk about it.
The brownie banter has receded from the public since Green's departure, but it's still a frequent part of the Tar Heel locker room discussion. Independently, five different current Carolina players mention it as one of their favorite parts of winning a road game (although Harrison Barnes looks in a different part of the pantry and claims the Tar Heels want to "take the opponent's cookies"). What is it about the brownie analogy that sticks so well with the players?
"The first time I heard Coach say we were going to take their brownies, he asked me, `How would you feel if someone tried to come in your house and take your brownies?'" Reggie Bullock says. "And I thought, `We'd be ready to fight.'"
That's exactly the attitude the Tar Heels seem to have on the road, where they'll be again Saturday in a 4 p.m. tip-off at Maryland (College Park is one of only two ACC venues--Georgia Tech is the other--where Williams has a losing record). They've been uncannily good away from the Smith Center in the Williams era, winning a remarkable 64.1% of the program's conference road games over the last eight seasons. For the sake of comparison, in the last eight years of the Dean Smith era the Tar Heels won ACC road games at a 56.5% clip. Williams's 64.1% road success rate is the second-best in league history, trailing only the 66.7% mark of Duke's Vic Bubas.
Both those marks are especially impressive because Carolina always sees the very best of road venues. Players notice the difference. When the Tar Heels went into Miami last year, they found a boisterous student turnout and screaming fans. A few days later, Dexter Strickland was watching a game on television and noticed the Hurricanes' arena was nearly empty for a less visible league opponent.
"We notice it," Strickland says. "Everyone wants to watch their team play North Carolina. That means every away game we play is going to have a great atmosphere."
It's one thing to win on the road in an empty gym. It's quite another to do it in a packed venue that's one of the one or two biggest games of the season in that particular facility.
So, why does Williams have such incredible success away from Chapel Hill? Part of the equation is the fact that the Tar Heels often have a very good team. It's one thing to go on the road with an inferior squad. It's quite another to venture to College Park or Winston-Salem with a talented group.
But there are also other factors. Remember, Williams is a man who will compete at anything, from being the first to get the office keys out of his pocket to tossing trash in a wastebasket. Fill a building with fans eager to tell him he can't do something, and what's that likely to do to his mentality? In Williams-speak, he's going to want to beat those suckers.
"Coach Williams likes the competitiveness of the road," says senior Tyler Zeller, who has been a part of two Carolina teams that went 6-2 on the ACC road. "You're not supposed to win away from home, so it's more of a challenge. You get the chance to prove it against people who think you're not supposed to do it."
"He likes the intensity of the crowd and everyone wanting to beat us," Strickland says. "The crowd boos us when we come out. That gets him hype. We have something to prove. That's the mentality we're supposed to have in every away game."
That's an emotional advantage that occurs only at game time. There are also some physical differences to playing away from the Smith Center that can only be learned by experience, which is why young teams sometimes take a year of education the hard way before figuring out what's required to pick up a road win. Williams's first Carolina team went 2-6 in ACC games away from the Smith Center. The next year, they went 6-2.
Likewise, the John Henson/Leslie McDonald/Strickland class went 2-6 in ACC road games as freshmen.
"In college, it is so different," Henson said. "If you get out to the wrong start and let the crowd get into it, the other team builds confidence and they're going to beat you. Winning on the road is about starting right, focusing and paying attention to the little things."
Henson's eyes glaze over just a little bit. "I'll never forget my first road game," he continues. "It was brutal."
That's exactly what it was. Henson's ACC road debut came at Clemson--an environment that gets a surprising number of Tar Heel votes as the toughest place to play in the league--in a game in which the UNC starters combined for only 12 field goals. The Tar Heels committed 26 turnovers and lost 83-64 in the rare 19-point blowout that actually was not as close as the score indicated. At one point in the first half, there started to be some concern that Carolina might never be able to get the ball across midcourt.
"We were shocked," Henson says. "Other than Deon (Thompson) and Marcus (Ginyard), none of us had ever contributed in that kind of environment. I'll never forget it."
Older, wiser, and better, that class rebounded to a 6-2 road mark as sophomores, with some help from some unusually mature freshmen. And this time around, Clemson's Littlejohn Coliseum was home to one of the signature Carolina wins of the season, as Henson contributed a double-double in a 64-62 victory.
Several UNC veterans said the rhythm of going to class before home games is actually a benefit, because it feels more like a normal day. Knock out a couple tests, eat lunch at Sutton's, and it's almost time for tip-off. On the road, days are long and filled with sterile hotel lobbies and unusual hours. Last year during the NCAA Tournament, Carolina's team hotel wouldn't arrange for wireless internet service in the squad's meeting room. That led to hotel guests walking curiously through the lobby, where an entire basketball team was sprawled on the chairs, soaking up the free wireless for study hall.
"You have to be more mentally prepared on the road," Barnes says. "At home, you get into a usual routine--you go to your room at the same time, you come to the Smith Center at the same time. On the road, everything runs on the team's schedule. You have to be more mentally focused before the game, make sure you eat right, and get enough sleep."
Eating right on the road, of course, includes a healthy serving of brownies. After exposure to Williams's intense love of deflating a crowd, players start to sound just a little bit like their head coach.
"It's fun to have the gym against you," Marshall says. "I personally would much rather play on the road. That's a fun experience when you come out with a win."
And what advice would he give to a Tar Heel rookie about the best way to steal brownies?
"If you can like being hated, that's a really good start," Marshall says.
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 and Facebook.
