Early in the first half, Tyler Hansbrough was pulled from the game and dressed down by Roy for not boxing out on a play. This might surprise some folks who assume Hansbrough gets an easier ride from the UNC coaches because of his effort and work ethic. That is not the case and Roy treated Hansbrough like he would have anyone else. Hansbrough to his credit not only understood but used it as motivation to play a great game:
What was your reaction to Coach Williams benching you for not boxing out?
“He should have. He doesn’t give me any special treatment, and I messed up. I think every player needs that. If you’re not playing well, you need to be taken out and Coach will talk to you. It either motivates [players] or its gets them down. And for me, I think it motivates me.”
Great players generally make themselves coachable. That is how they improve their game. Any player can have talent and also work hard but if he is unable to listen to his coaches there will be a ceiling to hius improvement. In this case, we got a rare glimpse of Roy showing that he is consistent in his expectations of all his players and a star player taking his coaches’ chastisement to heart.
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compare this to how the VT player acted the other night
hmm–is there a Grave’s connection in there somewhere??
i’d suspect the “connection” would be tyler’s play in the fsu game. roy was sending a message that he will not tolerate sloppy play fron ANYONE: including the NPOY
I hope the Grave’s connection is that he was paying attention…
Glad that Roy did that. Hopefully it will send the team a meesage and help to encourage them to practice harder. Play harder too.
I sure hope Graves is paying attention. Otherwise, I suspect his playing time is over for the year. I had high hopes for him after he came back this season with a new and improved body, but the guy shows only dim signs of knowing how to play basketball.
Frasor has an excuse. Graves doesn’t. Time to get with the program.
For some reason, my first thought when reading this was the Larry Brown (coach)/Allen Iverson (player) “I don’t need to practice” fued of a few years ago. This post demonstrates the great qualities reflected in Roy, Tyler, and heritage UNC basketball.
Will Graves, the sophomore, reminds me very much of Reyshawn Terry, the sophomore.
CM, great comparison. However, given the situation THIS year with Marcus and Zeller out, we need Graves more than the 2005 team needed Reyshawn.
If Marcus comes back 90% or better, not so much.
Once again, this seems to be a huge break with Dean Smith. People talk about the McGuire/Smith coaching tree but Williams definitely differs with Smith on some things. Smith used zone defense a lot, for instance. Smith taught his players to slide through screens.
But it may be in terms of personality that Williams and Smith differ most.
Smith endeavored never to embarrass any of his players, either during the game or afterwards when speaking to the media. When Smith coached the Tar Heels, if you did something wrong, the practice was to take you out sufficiently long enough afterwards, so that it was not obvious that the player was being removed for a mistake.
When speaking to the press after a game, Smith would praise players who played well, but the others who did not would remain nameless. Coach K seems to have adopted this precept as well.
I don’t think that THF is trying to imply that Dean Smith did not treat all of his players in an equal manner, but simply to show that Roy Williams does as well.
Different coaches have different styles and yet, at the same time, I do not think that means that all styles are equally good. I wish Coach Williams were a bit more like Coach Smith in the way he treats players in the doghouse, either momentarily or in the long-run.
Roy is odd in the respect that he never “cleanly” compliments a player. For example say Danny Green has a great game, Roy will say “Yes, Danny was good for us, thought he could have been better on defense but he was very good tonight.” Roy is a perfectionist and so he seems to be afraid a player will get comfortable if he speaks glowingly of them without some criticism.
Personally, I relate to, and like, Roy’s style more. Can’t really argue with the results of either, though…
C.Michael — I defended Graves for the first half of the season while my wife groaned every time he came in the game. Eventually I had to admit she was right.
His play is what it is, there’s just no masking it. He was actually better last year, and last year was nothing to write home about.
Maybe he’ll become Rayshawn Terry, but there are few present signs that such a salutary development is in the offing. I dearly wish it were otherwise, because we’re going to need more off the bench than we’re getting now.
That is a good point, THF. Williams made a point about Green making a strange turnover. Well, it think it was actually a shot/over if you look at it, meaning he started to shoot and then wasn’t sure and lost control of the ball. It really wasn’t any worse than a missed shot.
This brings to mind the question as to why they don’t break down turnovers into two categories. One category would be dribbling off your knee out of bounds, which is no different than missing a shot. The second category would be for the bad ones, where the player is either picked or intercepted and it leads to either an easy lay-up for free throws stemming from a lay-up attempt.
I believe that the current way they do the stats obscures what we see when we watch a game and it is clear that not all turnovers are created equally. Green’s tend to be mostly of the first kind, while other players seem to have ones that are more often of the second kind.
For example, Ty Lawson passed the ball to Wayne Ellington in the back court at FSU and Ellington slipped, missed the ball and FSU got a layup. Neither player is at fault, Ellington slipped. I think the same is true of INTs in football. Some of them are bad decisions by the QB and some of them are just unfortunate plays like the ball gets tipped or a receiver falls down. They count as INTs all the same but some are not equal to others.
Baiscally what Jimmy Dykes was hitting at on Saturday with his football analogy. One of the few cogent thoughts he had all day…
Freddie Brown’s turnover against UNC in 1982 was one of the bad ones….
Jimmy Dykes probably cannot claim actual ownership of said cogent thought…it was probably written out for him by his producer.
He can read?
William. Once again I agree with your analysis and desire for Roy to be more similar in player treatment in terms of how we handle their mistakes and defeciencies.
william,
i think saying k has adopted coach smith’s style is quite too much. k takes it a whole another level by twisting the story. he’s done it with henderthug. he’s also done it by putting down hansbrough to make redick’s experience seem tougher. and there are more examples of his rewriting history.
as for liking coach smith’s style vs. coach roy’s style… i agree with c. michael that i relate to coach roy’s style more. also, despite coach smith’s greatness, he really never squatted down with two fists in the air and his head about to explode in an attempt to rally the boys. i love this aspect about coach roy. here’s an example:
http://ils.unc.edu/courses/2007_summerII/inls572_001/royWilliams.jpg
a quick side note about graves and terry. i agree that graves reminds me of terry his sophomore year. however, graves has had a redshirt year so he’s been with the program for a year longer. so, he actually is slower getting up the learning curve. also, i think it was a mistake to designate him this year’s danny green in terms of the whole jump around dance routine. don’t get me wrong, i love the routine. but graves needs to be more serious and be focused on his contribution to the team’s success.
I am just talking about how K refers to his own players.
I do remember Dean down on his hands and knees exhorting the team during the second half of the Purdue game in the NCAA tourney back in 1977, but he didn’t do that sort of thing very much. I don’t know whether any of those histrionics really work though. John Wooden didn’t go for any of that stuff, either.
I just don’t like to see our coach torch any player in public for such an incident as this. I do agree there are times that warrant it though, I didn’t think this was one of them. Again, I hated to see Roy storm the court, rush to apologize to State, and then rush to criticize our own player. Damn Roy, our guy could have been seriously hurt. I don’t blame him for wanting to be humble and apologize, but wait for the scorning of Copeland after the media has left and you’re back home. To me, it makes us look like we’ve committed a more harsh thing than we did.
I like Roy’s style of getting excited and jumping/pounding/screaming. Probably because I’m doing the same thing at the time
As during the fall-out during the Kansas game last year, Roy seems to have pleased all fans except his own. Interesting.
one major exception for Dean: he publicly upbraided Ranzino Smith after an NCAA Tourney loss. I expect he would even admit it was a mistake in hindsight, but it stood out all the more, precisely because that wasn’t his MO.
as to Roy, my take is that he sometimes says things in the press to manipulate (generally in a good way) certain situations. That’s what I was implying with the Graves reference–ie–were the two incidents unrelated, or did Graves whine about Tyler’s treatment, thereby drawing a benching, and a public example with Tyler? Who knows, but I wouldn’t put it out of the realm of possibility.
i guess it’s just a difference in opinion/preference.
here’s how i see it. roy’s like a father figure to his players. my father always had higher expectations for me than anyone else. he was quick to give me a pat on the back but quicker to scorn if i had done something wrong. he was polite to others and strict with me in public but was much softer towards me in private. he always wanted me to learn a lesson in both good and bad situations. that’s how i see coach roy. so i can’t fault him for what he does. and i would like to say that i don’t care how others view the situation (including myself) as long as coach roy does right by cope in private and they’re both on the same page in the end.
and william, about the kansas “fall out”: in the big scheme of things, i see it as such a trivial thing especially after his explanation and after a year has gone by… i have no problem with what he did. a sticker doesn’t tell me whether or not coach roy loves this school first and foremost. it’s time we all got over it in my opinion.
Until someone proves otherwise, I’m perfectly satisfied with calling Dean the God of college basketball and Roy the Jesus.
I don’t agree with everything Roy does, but I’ll take his actions on blind faith as long as we keep winning.
What was Dean? The kindly uncle?
I am not all that big on psychological preparation because very little of those tactics are testable. Nevertheless, it seems a least possible that Roy allowed his own private demons to infringe upon his team’s chances to win the game against Kansas.
I think in many fans’ minds, Roy’s title in 2005 only counts as approximately 1/2 a title for him. It may not be fair, but many of his critics still wonder whether he will ever recruit and coach a team to the NCAA title. I think he will, but there won’t be many better opportunities than last year and this year.
hell-that might’ve been one of the best wire to wire coaching jobs of all time. imo, he has his weaknesses like everyone else, but I’ll take Roy over anyone else out there.
it isn’t fair.
also, coach smith was not the kindly uncle. building on how heelyeah puts it, he was the omniscient God who didn’t need to get fired up and he really didn’t have faults. =) coach roy is just not there yet. =) but that just means i can relate to him more, right?
i know we’re all impatient as we see all this great talent of coach roy’s recruiting success come and go but i would give him more time. maybe it’s this year, or maybe it takes 2 stellar PGs, 2 legit scorers, and a bunch of trees to get it done (’10?). who knows.
“…in many fans’ minds, Roy’s title in 2005 only counts as approximately 1/2 a title for him.”
I’m sorry, anyone who thinks that is retarded. If anything, winning a title with someone else’s players, whose only reputations as collegians were as losers, should count as more than one, not less.
preach on, c. michael.
I have never bought that argument, especially given the crap that went on in Doherty being ousted. That team has serious personality conflicts and Roy’s relationship with Rashad McCants was not a good one based on what we know. Getting a title out of that team when even in the Final Four Roy is yelling at McCants to not be selfish is a great coaching job and full credit for the title is deserved.
Look at it this way. Right now all we hear about Sidney Lowe is how he needs to get his own players and then things will look up for him. Why is it when Roy goes out and takes a team he did not recruit and gets them to gel into a title team that is not celebrated as a stellar coaching job?
According to the Kansas fans, Roy gets his players too nervous, which is why they missed all those free throws against Syracuse and fell so far behind against Maryland.
Comparing success is always interesting. I think Roy, on average, almost certainly has been the most successful coach at UNC ever, in terms of his results since he has been there, and perhaps surprisingly, Bill Self has been more successful at Kansas than Williams was.
I don’t think Kansas really had much of a chance to win the title in 1991 or 1993, to be honest. It did take Williams ten years to get back to the Final Four at Kansas after losing to Dean Smith in 1993.
I am not sure that Carolina fans were much more patient with Dean Smith, who went nine years between 1982 and 1991 without a Final Four. There were actually calls for Dean to step down early in the 1997 season.
Of course, a lot of success is just random when talking about going to the Final Four. The 1991 Heels were far from one of UNC’s better teams and Roy’s 1991 and 1993 Jayhawks were not all that great either.
Dean had three great teams that did not make the Final Four. You had the 1976 Heels, who went 11-1 in conference and the 1984 and 1987 Heels who both went 14-0 in conference. The 1991 and 1995 Heels were probably his least distinguished Final Four squads.
This sort of talk always gets me thinking about winning games versus winning titles. I’m probably a minority, but I think that from a purist standpoint winning a regular season title means more than a tourney title. I’m not saying that I don’t like winning tournaments, but we all know that the best team doesn’t always win them. If you win the ACC regular season, you’ve done something and have shown that you can win big ballgames over a longer time frame. If you win the ACC tournament, you’ve played 2 good/decent teams and beaten them on a neutral court in a couple of days. Same with the NCAA’s, except maybe you’ve beaten 4 good teams spread over a couple of weeks.
Again, don’t misconstrue what I’m saying here, I want to win everything. I just hate how so many folks measure success based on tournament titles than on successful seasons.
Of course, that being said, you can always tell the great teams/coaches when they do everything.
To me, the definition of a great season has always been a Regular Season ACC Title and a trip to the Final 4. Anything beyond that is gravy, and also the reason I get over losses in the ACCT and FF pretty quickly.
Losses in the Elite 8, however, usually lead to something getting broken…
I think you are absolutely right, HeelYeah, especially since 1974. You also hit the mark on the format, which is essentially unheard of in all other circumstances and often involved playing three games in two and a half days.
Prior to the rule change in the NCAA in 1974 that allowed more than one team per conference to go to the NCAA tourney, the best team in the ACC during the regular season usually won the ACC tourney, and virtually always, either the first or the second place team during the ACC regular season won the tourney.
Once expansion took place, upsets such as the 1976 Cavaliers or the 1980 Blue Devils, started becoming much more common.