Roy Williams, UNC never tire of beating NC State

Roy Williams can vividly recall a far different time – a time when the fiercest rivalry in the ACC was not North Carolina-Duke but instead North Carolina and “North Carolina State,” as Williams so often calls N.C. State.

This was back in the 1980s, when Williams was a young UNC assistant coach under Dean Smith, and it was that way for decades before, too, with the Wolfpack’s supremacy during the some of the ACC’s earliest years inspiring UNC’s success that followed. That success, at least, has endured.

But what of the Wolfpack? Long gone are the days when N.C. State competed at a national level, and 30 long years have passed since the Wolfpack won its most recent ACC tournament championship. And yet to Williams, the UNC coach, N.C. State in some ways remains frozen in time, competitive as it ever was.

When Williams first began working for Smith, the ACC’s premier rivalry was, for a time, UNC-Virginia. And then, Williams said, “it was us and State, then it was us and Duke.”

“And Duke has maintained it ever since,” Williams said. “But those rivalries of us against North Carolina State and against Virginia and against Duke in those years, was vicious. And again, I don’t try to figure out what the other team’s problems are and try to solve them – I’ve got enough problems of my own kind of thing.

“But those were great rivalries during those time periods.”

The North Carolina-North Carolina State rivalry, as Williams would put it, still means something to Williams, and it undoubtedly means something to N.C. State, and its supporters. But it has become a rivalry so one-sided that it strains the definition of the word.

The Tar Heels and Wolfpack on Wednesday play again, for the 244th time. And like so many other times in recent seasons, they meet at an intersection heading in opposite directions: UNC toward another high seed in the NCAA tournament; N.C. State toward a merciful ending, whenever it might come, to what has been an especially dismal season.

As wide as the gap is between these programs, though, and as much as both have changed over the years, one thing hasn’t: Williams’ appreciation for defeating N.C. State. It’s a passion he passes down to his players, who appear to take similar pride in playing against the Wolfpack.

The last time these teams played, on Jan. 8, UNC’s 107-56 victory was its largest in any ACC game, ever. The 51-point margin of victory was the Tar Heels’ second-largest against the Wolfpack, only behind a 52-point victory at the venerable Bynum Gym in 1921.

The ripples of UNC’s victory last month still reverberate. For N.C. State it was a season-defining defeat, a foreshadowing of misery to come. For UNC it was a glimpse of what could be possible. Now, entering Wednesday, it has created a question, too.

“That’s the biggest thing that I’ve been thinking about,” UNC junior point guard Joel Berry said on Tuesday, “is how we’re going to come out and play after beating them by 51 points here. … We can’t just go out there and just think they’re going to lie down like they laid down the first time.”

Williams on Tuesday sounded almost bashful when he spoke of what happened the last time these teams played. He said “everything went our way early” and that “the game got out of hand.” Then again, though, what happened last month wasn’t especially out of the ordinary.

The final margin was, but not the result. In his years as a head coach, Williams is 31-3 against the Wolfpack. That record includes the five games he won at Kansas, and so he’s 26-3 against N.C. State since he became UNC’s head coach in 2003.

Does it ever get boring, the routine dominance? Would all of the success against N.C. State be more worthwhile if these victories didn’t come as easily as they did? Williams bristled at the thought that wins against the Wolfpack had come easily.

“I’m not saying it’s easy, guys, because they’ve beaten us,” he said.

But only three times in Williams’ 14 seasons as UNC’s head coach.

“I don’t care,” Williams said, reminded again of how rarely he has lost against he Wolfpack. “If anybody beats me once, I remember that. That’s not going to help us one bit going in there tomorrow night. And if anything, it makes them more enthused.

“If somebody else says it’s been easy than they haven’t been sitting where the hell I’ve been sitting.”

For these games Williams sits in a place where it’s always 1974 again, or maybe 1983 – a place where N.C. State is capable of winning a national championship, where the Wolfpack is as formidable as it always has been. In reality, UNC is 45-14 against N.C. State since the start of the 1989-90 season.

In Williams’ world, though, he doesn’t need any reminders of what was. Even his players “can just tell,” Berry said, when the Tar Heels are preparing to play against the Wolfpack. Williams’ body language gives it away.

“You can tell in his demeanor and how he carries himself when we play against N.C. State, or Duke,” Berry said. “He’s very passionate about it, and you can just tell by the way he just walks around and the way practice is and how he’s talking to guys.

“It means a little bit more than just a regular ACC game.”

Williams played the role of the diplomat on Tuesday. He said the things any coach would be expected to say the day before playing against a neighboring school. He made the point, more than once, that N.C. State recently did something UNC failed to do: The Wolfpack won at Duke.

“I assure you, they’re not taking North Carolina State lightly,” Williams said of his players. “Period. The end.”

N.C. State’s victory at Duke, on Jan. 23, is also the Wolfpack’s most recent victory. N.C. State has lost five consecutive games since, including the 30-point defeat on Saturday at Wake Forest.

As bad as that loss was for the Wolfpack, it was still 21 points better than the 51-point defeat it endured against UNC in the Smith Center last month. Williams smiled when he thought about the atmosphere waiting for him at N.C. State’s PNC Arena on Wednesday night.

“I think they’ll be a little enthused,” he said wryly. “They look at us and think we can right a lot of bad nights and make some bad things not nearly as bad.”

Indeed, N.C. State can restore some sense of lost pride with a victory, as improbable as it appears. And yet Williams is familiar with a time when much more than pride was at stake when these teams played, a time when victories against the Wolfpack didn’t come quite as regularly.

And so he continues to savor these wins. As often as they come now, the feeling never grows old.

This story was originally published February 14, 2017 at 5:37 PM with the headline "Roy Williams, UNC never tire of beating NC State."