Feb. 14, 2007

By Adam Lucas

The easy storyline from Carolina's 81-80 overtime loss to Virginia Tech will be Roy Williams's postgame comments.

"Congratulations to Seth (Greenberg) and his staff and his kids," the head coach said. "They played very well. Zabian Dowdell was really something...I've been coaching for 19 years, and that's the worst coaching job I've ever done. I did a poor job. I did the worst job I've ever done in my entire life."

The Tar Heel head coach said it publicly. He said it privately, telling his team in the locker room that at least 90 percent of the blame for the loss was on his shoulders. And he was still saying it an hour after the game, continuing to assert that the loss belonged to him.

Sadly, it's big news when a major college basketball coach takes responsibility like that. Columns will be written and ESPN will buzz.

Maybe that was the story for this night, although like Williams, you have to temper the blame with some credit for Virginia Tech, a team that nearly ran Carolina out of the gym in Blacksburg and then punched them square in the nose in Chapel Hill.

But the story for the rest of the season was happening outside the Carolina locker room. That's where Marcus Ginyard was sitting in a white t-shirt and a pair of jeans, rubbing his head as if massaging his brain might help him make sense of what he'd just seen.

He was provided with a handy excuse. A few days ago, Williams had called his team too "fat and happy." This was an easy explanation that fit perfectly with the theme that has been bestowed on the 2006-07 Tar Heels--a young team with a lot of talent. Probably, it was suggested to Ginyard, they just got too full of themselves. Maybe they thought they were a little better than they really are.

The Carolina sophomore disagreed. And in doing so, he turned a floodlight on this year's team.

"I don't think that's it," he said. "I think it's the opposite. We don't understand how good we really are. Because of that, we're not holding ourselves accountable for games like this. I don't feel like people are taking a game like this to heart as much as they need to. We can play so much better than the way we're playing. So much better. But I don't think everyone knows that."

This is where this column should end, because that's the most insightful comment you're going to read about this game. Sure, part of the problem was late-game execution and a series of three straight possessions in the final two minutes of regulation when Tyler Hansbrough never touched the ball and the Tar Heels never got the ball below the free throw line. But that's just a symptom of the problem. And Ginyard's comments cut straight to what ailed the Tar Heels on this particular evening. It's been what ails them ever since Gonzaga, when a handful of players chuckled in the locker room after losing a stunner.

It's maddening to you and to me because we know a collection of talent like this doesn't happen very often. We look at the roster on paper and see raw talent and potential.

But not everyone has that sense of perspective. It was fashionable early in the season to compare this team to the 2005 team. There's one enormous difference: a sense of urgency. The 2005 team had at least five players (the three seniors, Raymond Felton, and Rashad McCants) who knew it was their last chance at college basketball. They didn't just want to win. They had to win.

This team wants to win, and don't let anyone suggest otherwise. But they haven't yet pondered what it might be like to lose a heartbreaker in the NCAA Tournament and have to live with it--maybe even live with the idea that they could've or should've made a deeper run--all summer.

Someone will have to explain that feeling, and it might be Ginyard.

"Every time we lose a game like this it's because someone else wanted it more or someone else could take the bump more or someone else was willing to shove us and we backed off," he said. "We have to get it together some way, somehow.

"That's the thing. Nobody expects anybody to take the lead on getting it together. I feel like we keep approaching the point where we say, `OK, now we're playing our best basketball.' And then we have a let-up like this and it makes it hard to get back into the flow. We can't have those letdowns now. We have to go straight up."

That sounds suspiciously like a leader emerging.

At his leadership class Monday night, Ginyard was asked what his team could do better. His response:

Take practice more seriously.

The Tar Heels practiced poorly the last two days. Little things went undone, box-outs were missed, and Williams had to repeat himself multiple times. Those transgressions eventually resulted in extra running.

They also might have resulted in Tuesday's loss.

"When coaches are having to yell at you to pick up the intensity in practice, you shouldn't wonder why they have to yell the same thing in the games," Ginyard said.

Right now, in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, the stories from Tuesday's game are Zabian Dowdell's superstar performance and Roy Williams's postgame comments.

That will last exactly 24 hours, long enough for Carolina to take an off day from practice Wednesday.

Beginning with Thursday's practice and extending over the next seven weeks, the biggest story will be what leadership emerges from the wreckage of this game. If it's just a loss, then the same thing will happen sometime in March.

If it's a learning experience, team dynamics may shift.

It looks like it might start with Ginyard.

"Somebody's got to do it," he said. "Every day I'm thinking I need to do something better. Someone has to step up, and maybe it's me."

Adam Lucas's third book on Carolina basketball, The Best Game Ever, chronicles the 1957 national championship season and is available now. His previous books include Going Home Again, focusing on Roy Williams's return to Carolina, and Led By Their Dreams, a collaboration with Steve Kirschner and Matt Bowers on the 2005 championship team.