University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Bullock Stays On Course
June 14, 2012 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
June 14, 2012
By Adam Lucas
Roy Williams met the media Thursday afternoon and spent 33 minutes talking about Carolina basketball.
He talked about players returning to the team in 2012-13 (James Michael McAdoo). He talked about players recovering from injury (Dexter Strickland and Leslie McDonald, both of whom he expects to be fully ready when practice begins in mid-October).
He spent some time discussing players who won't be part of the 2011-12 team, and said he's not sure yet whether he'll be able to be in the green room for the NBA Draft on June 28 in Newark (for an updated composite list on the latest draft buzz surrounding Harrison Barnes, John Henson, Kendall Marshall and Tyler Zeller, click here). He discussed players who haven't played for Carolina in nearly 30 years (Michael Jordan).
He did not mention, in that 33 minutes, that he'd recently won the Coaches vs. Cancer golf tournament for the second straight year. This is a minor--well, maybe more than minor--point of pride for Williams, who puts the clubs away during the basketball season but still has some talent when he dusts them off in the summer.
More tellingly, it was only in the 33rd minute, long after he'd discussed virtually everything else in the basketball world, that he ever mentioned the name of Reggie Bullock. In fact, it was almost in passing that he said the name of his rising junior. In answer to a question about defense, Williams said, "Reggie really came along defensively last year."
And that was all that was said about the lone returning starter from Carolina's 2012 ACC regular season championship team. Bullock, you might remember, scored more points last year than Kendall Marshall. He was 0.1 shy of tying Harrison Barnes as the team's third-leading rebounder. At 38.2% from the stripe, he was easily the squad's most proficient three-point shooter. And virtually all his important numbers went up in the NCAA Tournament, when he became a double-digit scorer, got to the glass much more often (7.0 rebounds per game), and hit his three-pointers more frequently (42.3%).
This is the player no one wants to ask about?
Not to spoil it for everyone outside of the Carolina fanbase who will discover it this winter, but Reggie Bullock is kind of a good basketball player. In many ways, he's a throwback to the days when players arrived unpolished as a freshman and worked until they were major contributors as an upperclassman. These days, it seems that first impressions are lasting impressions. Those who remember Bullock only as a limping freshman might be surprised with what they see from him as a junior.
It's fine to look at all those sophomore numbers. Combined with his defense, which unexpectedly proved to be exceptional, it's what made him one of Carolina's unsung heroes of the 2012 campaign. Even more important, considering what's coming back from that squad--or, if you prefer, what isn't coming back from that squad--he was the emotional centerpiece of the team when Kendall Marshall was hammered out of the NCAA Tournament by Creighton.
When the Tar Heels lumbered through a Sweet 16 win over Ohio, it was Bullock who hit four second-half three-pointers on a balky knee, with all of them coming in either a tied or one-point game.
"It gave me a lot of confidence," Bullock said of his propensity for taking big late-season shots. "I know Coach believes in me to take those shots. I'll be ready to step up."
He's already stepping up in those offseason leadership-type ways. He says he talks to incoming freshman J.P. Tokoto several times a week, the better to build some of the chemistry the returning players know is essential.
They also know they'll have to make shots. The misguided talk is that Roy Williams is suddenly going to start five guards and use his big men only as screeners, but that only works at other places. Williams coaches the game he knows, prefers, and has proven to be effective over the past 25 seasons.
The Tar Heels are still going to try and get the ball inside, even without Tyler Zeller and John Henson. But it's true that they'll need Bullock and a host of wings--P.J. Hairston, Dexter Strickland and Leslie McDonald among them--to hit a few more shots to make next season's offense flow. It's also true that those guards could benefit from the tutelage of new assistant Hubert Davis, who once gave a speech to Bullock's middle-school basketball team in Kinston.
In the meantime, Bullock is using his summer to diversify his game even more. He took nearly 65 percent of his field goals last season from beyond the three-point line and made just 22 trips to the free throw line, the fewest of anyone in the regular rotation. As a junior, he wants to be tougher to guard.
"Ball-handling, getting a game in the post to post up smaller guards, and being more aggressive," Bullock said of what Williams asked him to improve in the offseason. "I want to drive to the basket and get fouled more so I can get to the free throw line."
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.
