North Carolina responds to coach Roy Williams' intensity
HOUSTON — Roy Williams will tell you it’s all the same, he’s just coaching basketball, doggone it, like he always has.
But then he’ll do things like crouch down after a made three — the most important basket of North Carolina’s 83-66 national semifinal win against Syracuse on Saturday — and holler as loud as he can, imploring with urgency his players say they rarely see for them to run back on defense.
There’s something different about Williams in the final days of his 28th season, and the more anybody notices it the more easy it is to notice. Williams doesn’t want to be the story but doesn’t want to stop refuting that he’s the story.
His team proved to be just as determined to counter anything it got from Syracuse, a 10-seed that had gritted its way into the Final Four with late-game comebacks. Sure enough the Orange closed a 17-point gap to get within 57-50 at the 9:49 mark of the second half thanks to a Malachi Richardson three-pointer.
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Then sophomore point guard Joel Berry came up with the most critical of his 10 assists, finding senior guard Marcus Paige open for three. The Tar Heels hadn’t hit from deep in the game, missing badly on many attempts. Paige changed that, and Williams started shouting.
“You could see him over there, getting in his little stance, saying ‘C’mon get a stop’ because he knows the chance we have to get the momentum back,” Paige said. Of his coach’s renewed intensity, he said, “I definitely feel it.”
Senior forward Brice Johnson (16 points) followed that with a dunk and, after another Syracuse three, Theo Pinson hit from deep. The Tar Heels had emerged unbowed, headed to their 10th title game. They play Villanova, a staggering 95-51 winner against Oklahoma, Monday night.
That he feels under siege here is not something Williams has tried to hide. Saturday he told reporters not to ask any “stupid” questions about retirement, but also mentioned how difficult it had been for him to deal with the deaths of friends (the ESPN broadcaster Stuart Scott) and mentors (legendary North Carolina coach Dean Smith) over the past year and a half. He mentioned not reading many articles this year but also said he’d never been criticized and second-guessed so frequently by announcers and writers in his career.
Williams is heading to his fourth national title game, and first since winning his second championship with the Tar Heels in 2009. His health and whether it could force him to retire has been a major story line here, though he says he’s fine. His knees clearly bother him, but he can, he showed Saturday, still move quickly when he needs to.
The win also comes as North Carolina braces for the final notice of allegations from the NCAA in an academic scandal that has hovered over the school for years. Though none of the current players were enrolled during the period when the fraud occurred they have spent their careers answering questions about it — and worrying that they’d be punished for it.
Now they’re trying to become just the fifth team in NCAA history to be ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press’ preseason poll, win their conference regular season and tournament titles and the national championship. The first team to do so? North Carolina’s 1982 squad led by Michael Jordan and James Worthy.
This Tar Heels team doesn’t have transcendent superstars. It is built around experience and depth — especially in the frontcourt — and both were important in the first half.
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The Tar Heels couldn’t find their shot, missing 10 three-pointers, and had trouble infiltrating Syracuse’s vaunted 2-3 zone. It wasn’t until Johnson — usually the pivot to North Carolina’s attack — was on the bench that his teammates responded.
They took only one three after the nine-minute mark, and managed to build a 39-28 halftime lead with 26 points in the paint. Berry created driving lanes and fed big men Kennedy Meeks, Isaiah Hicks and even Joel James (who had 4 points but averaged 2.2 per game this year). Johnson sat with two fouls but his team still went on a 23-12 run.
“Brice is a key player but he’s not the main guy, you know what I’m saying?” James said, holding a hand in the air. “It’s a five-person sport. It’s not just a one-person sport. It shows the character of our team that we can adapt without Brice on the court.”
It helped that Syracuse started taking bad shots. The Orange surely wanted to slow the game down, but as soon as North Carolina clamped down on defense — both teams were sloppy in that area early — Syracuse started rushing.
This night belonged to nearly perfect Villanova; one more night to go
“I think the biggest change was defensively,” Paige said. “When (Brice) went out, we went small for a stretch and really upped our defensive intensity and got a bunch of stops.”
Whether the Tar Heels can cause Villanova — which shot 71.4% from the floor — similar troubles is less certain. Tar Heels players said they didn’t watch much of the Wildcats' convincing win, and Williams wouldn’t talk about the next game, saying he needed to savor beating Syracuse first.
He expects to have a scouting report in his hand early Sunday morning, and then he’ll tailor a practice plan based on what it says. Same as always, nothing different, just another game.
“We’ve got one more,” sophomore swingman Justin Jackson said when asked about Williams’ message to the team after the game. “That’s all he said.”
