University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Making A List
November 29, 2014 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
By Adam Lucas
PARADISE ISLAND—Let's start with this: Billy Donovan is an excellent coach. He is one of the best in college basketball. Virtually any program would be lucky to have him on the sideline.
But on Friday night, he got outcoached. That's not to say he coached a bad game. It's just that he was outcoached.
This is especially surprising because Donovan is supposed to be a savant and Roy Williams is supposed to be that guy who just rolls out the basketballs and somehow wins, even though everyone knows he didn't really have anything to do with it.
This summer, ESPN.com released a list of the top coaches currently in college basketball. Donovan was number one. Williams (seven Final Fours, the fourth-most all-time, in 26 seasons) was number sixteen, behind such individuals as Tony Bennett (zero Final Fours), Sean Miller (zero Final Fours), John Beilein (nine NCAA Tournaments and one Final Four in 22 years) and Bo Ryan (one Final Four in 13 years). Again, all of those coaches are excellent coaches. But they're not better than Williams. They're just not.
Athlon released a similar list this summer. In that one, Donovan is fourth and Williams (sixth-highest winning percentage among all college basketball coaches ever) is 12th. That same publication ranked Williams the fifth best coach in the ACC. That's right. Fifth-best in the same conference in which his team has won the regular season championship--playing head-to-head against all his coaching peers--in five of the past eight seasons. Because you're wondering, Duke has one regular season title in that same span.
It's hard to explain exactly why Williams is consistently underrated in those types of polls. Part of it might be his fault. He loves to make his job sound more simple than it is. Aw shucks, he just wants to play fast and score more points than the other guy and get the ball inside. Nothing fancy.
There also seems to be a bit of a silver spoon perception about Williams. He has coached at Kansas and Carolina, and really, who couldn't win big at those two institutions?
Except that he took over a Kansas program on probation and a Carolina program that bore very little resemblance to the one we know today. No, he's never coached at a place with a hyphen in the name. But when he arrived back in Chapel Hill, he was taking over what had essentially become a mid-tier program in the ACC and the perennial summer parade of pros returning “home” had largely evaporated, because they didn't feel like they were coming back to the same place they once knew.
On Wednesday, UNC lost to Butler and Williams spent most of his postgame press conference praising Butler's coaches and critiquing himself rather than the Carolina players, a move straight out of the Dean Smith playbook. With games remaining against two formidable programs, things looked ominous.
After all, based on these coaching rankings, Florida should've carved up Carolina in Nassau. You don't make that type of (essentially meaningless but still frustrating) list based purely on head to head competition, of course. After all, that would make it completely inexplicable that Tom Izzo (0-7 against Williams-coached UNC teams with an average margin of defeat of 16.7 points, including three defeats in the NCAA Tournament) consistently ranks higher than Williams. But it should matter in some way, shouldn't it?
It should matter that Donovan burned through three timeouts in the first 22 minutes of the game, leaving him with just two to work with in the final minutes, when his team could've used the opportunity to set its defense or at least get 90 seconds of rest from the frenetic pace it was playing.
And it should matter that when Florida began making a push and closed the deficit to eight, Williams called three offensive sets in a row in Carolina's half court offense, and the Tar Heels got points out of two of them, including a deadeye Marcus Paige three-pointer.
“We had struggled offensively,” Paige said. “We had gotten some defensive stops but the lead was still sitting there at eight points. We called three different sets in a row, and we got some great shots out of that. That's Coach's ability to recognize what we need at that point in time and know what we will be able to execute.”
The Tar Heels also made a defensive adjustment. With Kasey Hill and his teammates parading to the free throw line in the second half—at one point, the Gators scored 11 straight points on free throws, keeping them in the game—and creating fouls off dribble penetration, Williams changed the Carolina defense and began switching all ball screens.
Then, with a minute left and the Gators trying to make a final rally, Williams switched to a zone defense with Nate Britt running the baseline. Temporarily flummoxed, Florida committed a turnover, and Carolina cruised to a 75-64 win.
“Coach wanted to slow them down,” Paige said. “We didn't want them to be able to attack us full speed. Everyone knows we have a style we stick to that we're going to play essentially every game. But Coach Williams has those moments where he thinks one or two possessions might turn the entire tide of the game. Making those defensive changes changed the rhythm of the game.”
Don't expect to hear about any of those adjustments in any upcoming polls. Perhaps Williams will just have to be happy with the victory. His career winning percentage is now .793, the second highest of any active coach with at least 10 years of experience. He now has 729 wins as a head coach.
That's a lot of times to just roll the balls out.
