Lucas: UNC Basketball Mailbag November 16
Nov. 16, 2004 By Adam Lucas Welcome back to another year of the Damion Grant Chronicles...uh, we mean the Carolina Basketball Mailbag. Sorry, got a little confused there. It's only 72 hours until the start of one of the most anticipated Tar Heel seasons in recent memory, so we're going to get straight to the questions. Throughout the season, we'll be checking in every Tuesday with your latest questions and our best efforts to answer them. If you'd like to submit your question, we'd love to hear from you. Please keep in mind a few ground rules: • As per NCAA guidelines, we can't answer any recruiting questions. • Due to the volume of questions, we can't guarantee a personal response. • Only questions that include your name and hometown will be included in the Mailbag. That's it for the fine print. Now start sending in those questions. For our first edition, if we added up all the questions we received regarding Sean May, Rashad McCants, Raymond Felton, Jawad Williams, Jackie Manuel, and Melvin Scott, that figure still wouldn't equal the number of questions we received about another Tar Heel...Justin Bohlander. I noticed Justin Bohlander is not on this year's roster and wanted to know what happened to him. We got some very entertaining and diverse theories about where Justin had gone. Fortunately, it's not a conspiracy--he simply decided not to continue his basketball career. He's still enrolled at Carolina. Obviously, with our current depth, our starters should be able to get some rest for strong finishes. Do you think we are deep enough to see the old "blue team" strategy. It would give the coaches a chance to discuss closing game strategy with the player group that will be expected to execute it. The Heels are deep enough to use that strategy, but it's unlikely that you'll see it regularly--at least not in the same form Dean Smith used to employ it, when five fresh bodies would come into the game for a couple of minutes of high-energy offense and defense. The game has changed since then, and television timeouts now provide at least two minutes of rest every four minutes of clock time. That's a luxury Coach Smith didn't have when he created the Blue Team. That being said, there were very few moments in Carmichael Auditorium as enjoyable as when a less-heralded group of Tar Heels entered the game to a raucous ovation and proceeded to flummox an opponent that might have expected to catch a small breather against the subs. Somewhere, chants of "Timo, Timo!" still echo through that building. If UNC doesn't at least make the Sweet 16 this year, the senior class would be the first in recent memory to play four years at Carolina and not reach the Sweet 16 at least once during that time span. When was the last senior class at Carolina that didn't reach at least one Sweet 16 during their four years on the hill? Not a very uplifting question, Chris, but it turned into a very interesting one. We put our crack mailbag research staff to work and it turned up some amazing facts. To find a four-year class of scholarship players that didn't go to at least one Sweet 16, you have to go back before the days of freshman eligibility to the group that graduated in 1966. That class included Bob Bennett, Mike Conte, Bill Harrison, Ray Hassell, Earl Johnson, Jim Moore, Jim Smithwick, and John Yokley. They didn't participate in the NCAA Tournament at all during their careers. Of course, you have to keep in mind that only one team represented the ACC in those days. Things worked out pretty well for that group, however--there's an attorney, a dentist, a doctor, and the chairman of Chase Manhattan among them. That's nearly 40 years with each class coming through Carolina experiencing the Sweet 16 at least once. And it's likely that the people who most appreciate that achievement are Jackie Manuel, Melvin Scott, and Jawad Williams, who have a newfound understanding of exactly what it takes to advance into the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament. What's the current status on the supposed "renovation" of the Smith Center? I remember Roy saying something about wanting to "spruce up the place a little" (ie. new video boards, ribbon board, better student seating, etc.). Just wondering where everything stood with that. You might see new LED boards in the Smith Center before the end of the season. Better video boards are still a year away, as is an upgraded scoreboard that could potentially be of the center-hung variety. Student seating improvements are the least likely of anything you mentioned to see mass upgrades--it's simply not possible with the amount of seats granted to permanent rights-holders (and before you roll your eyes, keep in mind that it was those folks who funded the entire bill for the Smith Center). There have been a couple notable seating changes for this year. The band has switched corners and is now closer to the visiting bench, an arrangement that more closely mirrors the setups at the other ACC schools. And most of the press has been moved from their former floor seats to locations throughout the lower deck. You'll also see Woody Durham and Mick Mixon at courtside this year rather than in their former location in a box at the back of the lower deck--the boxes (save two) have been removed to make room for some of the people relocated in the above-mentioned seating moves. I have a burning question here: is CSTV--that's College Sports Television--even shown in the Chapel Hill area? I've never heard of the network before. CSTV is available on DirecTV. Another option for Time Warner Cable customers who have the high definition box and high definition package is to watch the game on INHD, which will provide a live HD broadcast. Transplanted Heels who don't want to miss out on any action should look into the Carolina All-Access package, which will give you archived video of the two exhibition games, the radio broadcasts of every game in the 2004-05 season, and all the Roy Williams press conferences and radio shows. Last season it seems like because of being a team with only a seven man rotation we had to go to a zone defense to combat fatigue. With the new additions to the squad this year comes (I hope) the ability to let May and Felton get some rest. Will we see the zone defense at all or do you think Roy Williams is going to push hard man to man defense all year?
P.S. I love the mailbag and am stoked about it being back on tarheelblue.com. Alex, we're stoked (are you sure you're not Connor Barth?) about being back. And not that we fall for flattery or anything, but yours was our favorite question of the week. Roy Williams had to play more zone than he would have liked last year. He prefers man-to-man because he feels it's more likely to create the type of uptempo game he prefers. However, it's unlikely he'll completely ditch the zone for this season. He has an advantage in teaching it this year because instead of having to indoctrinate an entire team in the way he wants to play the point zone, he only has to teach the two freshmen, Marvin Williams and Quentin Thomas. So the Heels could conceivably play it less but still be more effective with it. It's a valuable tool to give opponents a different look and make them prove they can execute against multiple defenses. It's also worth noting that the Heels don't have just one basic man-to-man set. Even when it looks the same, there are multiple options available every time Raymond Felton calls the defense at midcourt. Have we ever been ranked preseason #4 in the AP poll before this year? If so, what year(s) and how did we finish that year? Somewhat surprisingly, it's only happened twice. The 1967-68 team was picked fourth in the preseason and finished in that same slot in the final poll of the year. That team lost to UCLA in the national championship game. Thirty years later, the 1997-98 team went off as the fourth pick and was ranked first in the final poll of the year before falling to Utah in the Final Four (insert horrible memory of Antawn Jamison kissing the Alamo Dome court here). Adam Lucas will answer your questions about the Carolina men's basketball program this season in an exclusive column published each Tuesday on TarHeelBlue.com. Lucas, editor of Tar Heel Monthly and author of the new book on Roy Williams and the Tar Heels Going Home Again, will answer your questions on personnel, strategy, opponents and anything on your mind about the Tar Heels other than recruiting specifics. You can email your questions to Adam--please make sure to include your first and last names and hometown.
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