Feb. 11, 2005

By Adam Lucas

The unattributed quote, representing that day's Thought for the Day, was prominent at the top of Carolina's Monday practice plan: "There are four things you can do with a mistake: recognize it, admit it, learn from it, and change."

Five days later, they'll get to put that thought into action a little sooner than they might have liked. There are plenty of mistakes to recognize, admit, learn, and change from Wednesday night's 71-70 loss at Duke. The 23 turnovers alone encompass plenty of correctable errors, and some of the late-game execution was halting at best.

The Tar Heels had a planned off day on Thursday, a day most fans spent stewing over the previous night's Cameron Indoor Stadium shortcomings. There was no similar wallowing inside the Smith Center.

"I'm assuming Duke still has a game Saturday," Roy Williams said. "I don't think they sent them any trophies. And I think we'll still play next week. It's a barometer and a big-time game but it's not an end-all thing."

But that didn't stop much of Friday afternoon's press conference from looking back at Duke instead of ahead to Sunday's trip to Connecticut. Wednesday night's game has already been anointed an Instant Classic and will be replayed tonight on ESPN Classic (9 p.m. Eastern if you want to suffer through it again).

But the team won't be watching ESPN Classic Friday, because they've got other business with the network--they'll take a tour of ESPN's studios on Saturday after arriving in Connecticut. While fans and the media have spent the past 36 hours breaking down Duke, 18- to 22-year-old basketball players have a way of moving on more quickly.

"Losses do hold a little more weight than wins," said Jawad Williams, who over the last 7-10 days has quietly been playing through a strained knee muscle that limited him somewhat in Monday and Tuesday's practice. "You always think about what you could've done or should've done. You make mistakes, but you have to bounce back from them."

The importance of bouncing back is heightened by Sunday's opponent, a Connecticut team that won Monday night at Syracuse and currently boast a national ranking of 19 in this week's AP poll.

Despite the loss of Emeka Okafor to the NBA, the Huskies have maintained a distinctive inside focus. They rank third in the nation in field goal percentage defense, first in rebounding margin, and first in blocked shots by a wide margin (their 9.7 blocks per game is over two per game more than the next-closest team).

"It's hard to say that they lose a guy who was the second player in the draft and they can do this, but they're more inside-oriented (than last year)," Roy Williams said. "The things that I think are extremely important to success as a basketball team, they do those things as well or better than anybody else in the country."

UConn's reliance on their big men became even more important this week when it was announced leading scorer Rashad Anderson will sit out Sunday's game with an infection. That means the Huskies fall under a frequently mentioned Dean Smith principle, which Williams cited Friday afternoon: "When you lose a player for a game, everybody else elevates their game to try and make up for that."

Those other players include a formidable front line that features Josh Boone, Charlie Villanueva, and Rudy Gay, all three of whom stand 6-foot-9 or bigger. That means the versatile Marvin Williams--who guarded everyone from DeMarcus Nelson to Sean Dockery to Shelden Williams on Wednesday night--could spend more time in the post.

"It'll be big-time," Marvin Williams said. "Villanueva, Boone, and Rudy Gay are great players, so Sean, Jawad, and myself have our work cut out for us."

Notes: Discussion of Wednesday night's final 18 seconds continued on Friday. Specifically, Roy Williams was asked about the various offensive options on the last possession. "Raymond was very intent, in my mind, to run the play," he said. "But he forgot part of the play, which is his own penetration. But if we don't have what Raymond has done for the three or four minutes before that, we're not in that position to begin with."...While much of campus might have been gloomy after the 71-70 loss, Jawad Williams said he hadn't noticed. "People around me know better than to approach me like that," he said. "So what? It's a big rivalry game and it's a big game but we've got another big game on Sunday."...While the execution might not have been great on Wednesday night, one other area of the game pleased Carolina's head coach. "The competitiveness of this bunch is something I'm really enjoying," he said. "Maybe it's because it's something I questioned so much previously and even last year...To come back and have a chance to win the game is something you can draw from."

Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. His book on Roy Williams's first season at Carolina, Going Home Again, is now available in bookstores. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly or learn more about the book, click here.