University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Rest Stop
February 3, 2015 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
By Adam Lucas
Well, here we are again.
Following Carolina's 75-64 loss to Virginia on Monday night, the Tar Heels are 7-3 in the Atlantic Coast Conference and on a two-game losing streak. Those two defeats came within 52 hours of each other and included a blown 18-point second-half lead and a second home conference defeat.
And yet the Tar Heels are still a game ahead of the conference pace set by the previous two UNC teams, both of which were 6-4 through ten league games. They are also just a game off the pace set by the two Tar Heel teams prior to that, the very talented 2012 and 2011 squads that were each 8-2 through ten league contests. We're at the handwringing part of the year, which is usually followed a few weeks later by the “How did Roy Williams do that?” time of year.
The last four losses are as follows:
At top-ranked Kentucky.
At home against current No. 13 Notre Dame.
On the road in overtime against No. 10 Louisville.
At home against No. 3 Virginia.
Win even one of those—as Carolina was in position to do against both the Fighting Irish and Cardinals—and this is a very different conversation. It's true that Tar Heel basketball long ago passed the point as a program that playing anyone close is a moral victory. But this particular group has encountered adversity well beyond the normal.
What do the very best Tar Heel teams always say? They talk about their intense practices, about never being able to take a play off even in practice. At the moment, this team has trouble even finding the bodies to run a play in practice. Here is how Virginia practiced on Sunday after losing to Duke on Saturday: “We had a pretty challenging practice,” said Tony Bennett.
Here is how Carolina practiced on Saturday after losing to Louisville on Saturday: “Yesterday, we basically had to do a walk-through because we didn't have enough healthy bodies to go full speed in a full practice,” Joel James said.
In order just to get through recent sessions, Williams has had to bring back former walk-ons Wade Moody and Denzel Robinson, along with current junior varsity player Spenser Dalton. Those are good and loyal teammates, but they're not as good as a very skilled and disciplined Virginia club.
An injury to, say, Stilman White might not look that catastrophic. He's played in just seven games and averaged only 2.4 minutes per game. No one believes he would've scored 20 against Virginia. But he—along with Luke Davis and Joel Berry, a freshman who was just starting to figure things out before his groin injury—would have been important in helping prepare for Virginia, which ultimately would have helped Carolina compete against Virginia. The “healthy” Tar Heel point guards are Nate Britt (who was just removed from the possible concussion list this week) and Marcus Paige (who has multiple ailments).
“I'm sitting here thinking that we need some practice time,” Roy Williams said.
What he means is that his team needs some quality practice time, not walk-through practice time. The head coach went on to say, “Virginia's sense of urgency was so much greater than ours.”
Theo Pinson has been out just long enough—he's now missed four games—that we've started to forget that he brings exactly what Williams says his team needs. Pinson bought in as a kid in Greensboro watching Carolina play on television; even in a suit and a boot, there's never any question about his sense of urgency. It's not a coincidence that J.P. Tokoto's production has faded without Pinson; the junior has played 30 minutes or more in each of the last four games after playing at least 30 in just two of the previous eight.
Again, consider the “healthy” bodies among the Tar Heel post players. Kennedy Meeks spent part of Monday getting fluids after sporting a 101-degree temperature. In an effort to prevent his back from stiffening, Brice Johnson stood behind the bench whenever he left the game. Afterwards, he walked around the Carolina locker room with the gait of a man three times his age.
It's easy to say the health concerns are excuses. But at some point, just on sheer quantity, excuses become explanations. It's one game. And for that one game, Carolina looked physically whipped at points on Monday night, with players bent over tugging at their shorts or failing to run the floor the way Williams demands. Virginia, quite simply, responded better to the demands of the quick Saturday-Monday turnaround than did Carolina.
For that reason, the Tar Heels will get exactly what they need over these next 11 days. Williams will get that practice time he's been wanting for weeks. There's just one game between now and Feb. 14.
It's early February and we still don't really know what this team might be. The coming weeks will be telling. First, the Tar Heels have to get as many players healthy as possible so they can get that practice time their coach craves. And second, everyone on the roster, healthy or not, starter or reserve, upperclassman or freshman, has to commit to getting better.
What's encouraging is that no Tar Heel is sitting around dreaming of a magical day when everyone gets healthy and Carolina transforms into a superpower. The message late on Monday night was clear: healthy or not, figure out how to get better.
That's what Paige emphasized to his teammates. Before Williams entered the locker room after the loss to the Wahoos, Paige addressed the team, urging them to reflect on the difference between talking about getting better and actually taking the steps to put in the work inside and outside of practice to get better.
“I'm not going to call guys out,” Paige said afterward. “But as a whole, myself included, we have to do a better job of buying into what (Coach Williams) says. When you invest and stop caring about yourself, that's when things start clicking.”
