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Coach Roy Williams looks on during a preseason practice for his North Carolina basketball team.
Times-News
[Photo courtesy of UNC athletics], Times-News
CHAPEL HILL — As if five decades in the basketball coaching business, and a notorious competitive streak that extends to the golf course and craps table haven’t sharpened Roy Williams’ creativity for dispensing motivation, there’s a new tool at his disposal.
After all these years, the nine Final Fours and three NCAA championships, Williams is coming off the only losing season in his long Hall of Fame career.
And the North Carolina team he’s preparing now is being reminded of that dismal 14-19 experience, just the program’s second losing record since 1962, with all the subtlety of a blast furnace when the mood strikes Williams.
“Oh yeah, he’s pissed, for sure,” senior guard Andrew Platek said. “I think whenever he chews us out in practice for making a mistake, he always mentions 14-19 and how it’s not going to happen again, and it’s not. We’re going to do everything in our power to make sure it doesn’t happen again, and not even come close to that. We’re going to get back to winning.”
That’s undoubtedly the expectation this season for the 16th-ranked Tar Heels, who open Nov. 25 against College of Charleston. It’s not difficult to imagine North Carolina becoming one of college basketball’s most improved teams, while perhaps challenging projected frontrunners Virginia and Duke in the Atlantic Coast Conference race.
North Carolina has restocked considerably with the addition of six freshmen, a recruiting class ranked as high as No. 2 nationally, joining a group of returnees that includes starters in forwards Garrison Brooks and Armando Bacot, and swingman Leaky Black.
Then there are the flames burning off the 70-year-old Williams, whose method of moving on to a better place involves recalling unpleasant parts of the recent past.
What positives did the coach take from last season’s injury-marred struggle, during which the typically up-tempo Tar Heels starved for shooting from the perimeter and bogged down to their slowest pace on offense in his tenure? Few other than the determination to turn that frustration into fuel for this season.
“I’m hungry,” Williams said. “I did not enjoy that. It’s not something that was fun. So I’m hopeful that the hunger and the motivation, our players will feel it the same way.
“It was not a fun year for us. It was not a normal year that North Carolina has. It was the first losing season our entire staff has ever had. I’m motivated because I did not enjoy it, and I think our returning players are motivated because they didn’t enjoy it, also.”
Freshman guards RJ Davis, left, and Caleb Love, right, look like keys to North Carolina’s success this season.
Times-News
[Photo courtesy of UNC athletics], Times-News
North Carolina has an acknowledged leader and potentially the ACC’s top commodity in the senior Brooks — he was the overwhelming choice as the league’s Preseason Player of the Year — to go along with a wealth of big bodies to utilize around the basket and impact additions in the backcourt.
Highly regarded freshman Caleb Love, the Tar Heels’ top-rated recruit among their new arrivals, figures to run the team. He’s a lead guard with 6-foot-4 size and explosiveness. Combo guard RJ Davis, a 6-foot freshman billed as a natural scorer, should contribute immediately and step in to relieve Love at point guard on occasion.
Brooks called Davis the most surprising performer of the North Carolina freshmen during the preseason, and used “it’s not even close” for emphasis.
“I’m impressed with all the new guys, but I like RJ the most,” Brooks said. “RJ’s been great. He’s adapted really well, been pushing the ball really well, playing how Coach Williams expects his guards to play. He can get out there and score the ball the best of anybody.”
The 6-10 Brooks delivered 16.8 points and 8.5 rebounds per game last season and proved even better in ACC league play. He led the conference in scoring (18.8 points per game), while ranking second in rebounding (9.0 per game) and field goal percentage (shooting 53.5 percent).
Bacot, the 6-10 sophomore, started alongside Brooks during his inconsistent first season in college (9.6 points, 8.3 rebounds per game). The freshman duo of 6-11 Day’Ron Sharpe and 7-1 Walker Kessler provides North Carolina an ample supply of supersized options for mixing and matching in the frontcourt.
Platek already has described Sharpe as “one of the best offensive rebounding bigs I’ve seen in my time here.” Williams has hinted that the Tar Heels even could slide Brooks to small forward some, given his shooting touch and mobility on defense.
“The big guys can get to the board and rebound the ball and defend around the rim and score,” Williams said of Sharpe and Kessler.
Freshman guards Puff Johnson and Kerwin Walton might be needed to contribute their 3-point capabilities in spot duty off the bench, along with Love and Davis in their more prominent roles. The junior Black (25.4-percent shooting) and Platek (22.8-percent shooting) were unreliable from beyond the arc last season.
In the ACC, only Pittsburgh and Georgia Tech made fewer 3s than North Carolina’s 5.5 per game last season. The Tar Heels generated just 22.8 percent of their scoring from 3-point territory, ranking them 330th in that department out of the 353 college basketball teams competing in Division I.
Black said “we have a lot of different weapons” in assessing North Carolina’s backcourt depth.
“We all still feel everything we felt from last year,” Black said. “Every loss, buzzer beater, whatever the case may be, we still feel it to this day. Even if we have a great practice, we still feel the pain. I feel like we’re just going to take that fire into every game and make sure we don’t have a season like we did last year.”
