University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Revival
March 22, 2015 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
By Adam Lucas
JACKSONVILLE—There was a time when adults who knew a young Roy Williams believed he was bound to be an engineer. A couple of them believed he might be wasting his time with basketball, with a mind that was sharp enough to excel in math or science.
Those adults likely would wince at the mid-March version of Williams, whose favorite activity at this time of year is pretending he has no idea about simple mathematics.
“Let's see,” he will begin in the locker room after an NCAA Tournament win, like the 87-78 victory Carolina earned Saturday night over Arkansas. “We started with 68 teams, and then we went to 64 after the play-in games.”
His players love this. It only gets better with every round.
“Then it went from 64 to…32?”
“Can I get an uh-huh?” Williams asked, and his team barked back, “UH-HUH!” and by now the revival was swelling, the head coach turned preacher in the front of the room and rolling.
“32 goes to…?”
And there stood the coach, the same one who has navigated through one of the toughest off-court years of his life, with the giddiest of all smiles on his face.
“CAN I GET AN AMEN?” he shouted.
And of course he could. He got an amen in the locker room and an amen in Chapel Hill and amen wherever you watched the game.
Thirty-two, in case you can't follow Williams' math, goes to 16, which is where you will find Carolina next Thursday in Los Angeles. They did it largely on the back of Marcus Paige, who pumped in 20 second-half points. But Carolina, and Paige, had been right on the cusp of the Sweet 16 last season against Iowa State. And what they found out was that just one player couldn't propel a team that deep into the postseason.
It takes, as Williams so often tells them, a team. And so it was that with Kennedy Meeks out with a sprained knee, and Justin Jackson jamming cotton into his right nostril so he could play with a bloody nose, and Paige with a cut bleeding on his right arm, and J.P. Tokoto playing with a cut on his arm and blood on his jersey, and foul trouble eliminating Tar Heels by the minute, Williams' team found a way.
We have marveled at Paige over the past three seasons. But what has sometimes been missing as Carolina had to watch the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament on television was that team-wide effort that characterizes so many squads that advance past the opening games. To move on, you need someone to do something unexpected. You need someone to amaze you.
What kind of night was it? At one point, Nate Britt was headed to the scorer's table to check in when he thought he heard his head coach say something strange.
“Nate, go in for Joel,” he thought he heard the head coach say. But he didn't say “Joel” as in “Jole,” as in Joel Berry, which would have been a fairly typical substitution. No, Britt thought he heard Williams say “Joe-ell,” as in Joel James.
Substitute Nate Britt for Joel James? Substitute 6-foot-1, 170-pound Britt for 6-foot-10, 280-pound James? Sure, whatever works. On this night, it worked. Britt scored 10 first-half points and then went scoreless in the second half but managed to block a three-pointer and get a key tip-out on a missed UNC free throw that helped seal the win.
Britt, who has faced some personal adversity of his own this year, was still beaming after the game. He was happiest about the tip-out. Because of the quirky lineups, as J.P. Tokoto prepared to shoot a free throw with 20 seconds left, Britt was lined up in the inside position—the land of the big men—on the lane. “That's probably the first time I've ever been in that spot,” Britt admitted.
But Britt knew what to do. The free throw missed, and there went Britt into the air, where he somehow outjumped every Razorback and tipped the ball backwards to a teammate. It's a play Carolina runs constantly with their post players. It's a play they have never run with Nate Britt…until now, until they needed one more game-sealing play to advance to the Sweet 16.
“The first thing I did was smile to the coaches and say, 'I got a tip out!'” Britt said.
Thirty-two, just to finish Williams' question from above, goes to 16. That's a round that has eluded the program for the past two seasons, and it's a round they needed to play in this year in order to feel like something was building. Play in the first weekend of the tournament, and you feel like you've been part of a special experience. Play in the second weekend of the tournament, and you start giving some serious thought to winning a national championship.
Williams wanted and needed his players to have that experience this week. He has believed at some times when not many others have believed, and he has pushed, and begged, and now the stakes get bigger. North Carolina is back. This is an imperfect team to make that return, but that's something to worry about next week.
What do the best revival speakers do? They believe, even when it makes no sense to believe, even when it's not exactly clear why they believe. And sooner or later, we start to think maybe there's a reason to believe right along with them.
Give the man an amen. Along with a trip to the Sweet 16.
