There is a great story about a Georgia Tech recruit years ago holding a press conference to announce that he would be attending Georgia Tech University.

Georgia Tech’s official name is the Georgia Institute of Technology or GIT.

This one hurt especially though because I thought this team was going to be exceptional, and I deeply hated hearing Lawson saying that BC won because they wanted it more.

Hopefully, Ty and the others will get back to us and let us know when they (the Carolina guys) start caring enough to want to win as much as their opponents do.

Here is a great post that really hits the nail on the head:

Did I say UNC could go undefeated? Really?
Posted on: January 4, 2009 8:45 pm
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Gary Parrish

The flaw in my opinion that North Carolina could go undefeated wasn’t that the achievement is impossible.

The flaw was that I failed to recognize that UNC always loses home games it shouldn’t.

There was a home loss to unranked Miami three seasons ago; a home loss to unranked Virginia Tech two seasons ago; a home loss to unranked Maryland last season; and now there’s a home loss to unranked Boston College this season — an 85-78 home loss Sunday night in which the Tar Heels were 23-point favorites.

So long, perfection.

So long, No. 1 ranking.

So what the hell are we to make of this?

Answer: A lot and nothing, if that makes much sense.

It means a lot because it shows the Tar Heels are fully capable of screwing this up in the win-or-go home format that is the NCAA tournament. On various nights they have to outscore their opponents because their defense can be suspect, and that’s always going to be a concern, whether they can beat a quality opponent when they need 85 points to do it. On the other hand, it means nothing because you can check with any Las Vegas bookmaker and I assure you he’ll still have the Tar Heels as the favorites to win the ACC and national title even if they no longer have the nation’s best resume or body of work. So in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a big deal except for that it ensures UNC won’t be the first team to go undefeated since Bob Knight’s 1976 Indiana Hoosiers, and it probably takes the Tar Heels out of the running for Team of the Decade or Team of the Century or whatever.

And that’s too bad.

Because that’s what I thought they could be.

But now they look more like Ivan Drago with a cut over his eye against Rocky Balboa than Ivan Drago with a smirk on his face against Apollo Creed, and if you don’t know what I’m talking about you should really watch Rocky IV. To quote Duke the Trainer, the Tar Heels have been hurt, which proves they’re not machines; they’re men. And now they’re hurt men with a questionable home loss to an inferior opponent, just like they were at some point in each of the past three seasons, too.

http://gary-parrish.blogs.sportsline.com/mcc/blogs/entry/6271764/12717789

As far as I’m concerned, if Roy continues to win 25-30 a year, with kids who are fun to root for, as people, then I guess I’ll take it…

This is one of the interesting aspects about coaching where many fans and sportswriters see distinctions. Some coaches may be better at building a program and winning from year to year and other coaches may be better at winning during one season only, or with teams with particular types or quality of talent. This may be sort of the feeling that NC State people had about Herb Sendek, whose teams are always good, but rarely scintillating.

I have heard people say this about Mike Keenan, who used to coach the Rangers in hockey. In general, hockey people say that for one year, he was the greatest coach any of the players had ever had. By the second year, his schtick began to annoy the players. By year three, all of the players hated him and by year four, he was fired.

He was smart enough to only stay in NY one year though and he did get New York their one title in the last 60 years.

Some might compare basketball coaches like Frank and Al McGuire to Keenan (all Irish?) in their approaches. They seemed less interested in teaching basketball overall, than in teaching a particular team how to win that year. Al McGuire himself would later say that he wished his son had played for Dean Smith instead of at Marquette because he would have been a potential NBA player under Smith’s teaching.

Honestly, I think a lot of it is just luck. Both Frank and Al had some incredibly good fortune during their title runs, but there may be something to the notion that a system like Carolina’s is most efficient with good to excellent talent, rather than exquisite or creme de la creme talent.

If UNC does not make the Final 4, like UNC in 1994 and Duke in 2004, that is reasonable grounds for criticism, as I believe the odds are, and were, greater than 50%.

Maybe the charity comment was over the top. He earns his money for the finished product and not any game in particular, but ask yourself, apart from mental mistakes, did Carolina look well prepared for this game?

The audio is not great, but Coach Williams sounds both a bit too laid-back and a bit defensive during his press conference.

Roy himself is saying that the team was not making smart choices about fouling. Why weren’t they? If we here at THF know the foul percentages of the opponents and whom we should foul, why don’t our players know that?

UNC’s players are saying that they were surprised by BC’s offensive sets and had trouble defending them. Why weren’t they ready for them? Do they have a lot else on their plate this time of the year? What was more important than knowing all the in’s and out’s of BC’s flex offense?

I find it strange that we can criticize the players’ performance but not the coach’s. It is a team and both players and coaches have bad games and bad weeks. Ultimately, if a team with this much talent doesn’t win, it doesn’t reflect well on Coach Williams. That doesn’t make him a bad coach but it does mean that he didn’t reach this group perhaps as well as he might have, either in this game, or in the season as a whole.

Coach Smith had an amazingly talented team in 1994 and I bet he would agree that he got less out of that group of players than probably any other season in his career. If Williams does not win it all this year, like Coach K got in 2004 and 1999 when his teams were heavily favored and didn’t win it all, there may be legitimate criticism.