UNC hoops: Tar Heels motivated by last season’s failures
North Carolina’s Roy Williams recalled a recent practice when, on consecutive possessions, someone missed a box out. He immediately became enraged, powered by the flashbacks of losing games last season because of that exact reason.
As the Tar Heels near the completion of their first week of men’s basketball practice, the failures of last season are never too far behind. UNC’s 14-19 record was the first time in Williams’ 32 years combined as a head coach at Kansas and Carolina that he’s ever had a losing season.
“I don’t walk out in practice and say, ‘Okay guys, we stunk last year so let’s get better today,’” Williams told reporters on the team’s media day video call. “That’s not what happens. But if we have the same type of behavior that hurt us last year, you’re darn right, I’m going to bring it up to them. And if I see them when they’re 78 years old, I may still remind them of one of those box outs they missed.”
Junior swingman Leaky Black said the players really don’t need the reminders from the coaching staff. They remember plenty of last year’s disappointments on their own.
There was the Clemson game where Williams forgot to tell them to foul before Aamir Sims made a game-tying 3-pointer and the Tigers won for the first time ever in Chapel Hill, in overtime. The Boston College game where Cole Anthony was left taking a desperation 3-pointer because they failed to execute a play in the final seconds. And of course, there was the home collapse to Duke when Tre Jones perfectly missed a free throw and collected his own rebound to force overtime and Wendell Moore Jr., won it for the Blue Devils with a putback at the buzzer.
“We all still feel everything we felt from last year: every loss, buzzer beater, whatever the case may be, we still feel it to this day,” Black said. “Even if we have a great practice, we still feel the pain. So I feel like we’re just gonna take that fire into every game and make sure we don’t have a season like we did.”
The Heels have a revamped roster that resembles little to the makeup of last year’s team. Anthony (NBA draft) and Brandon Robinson (graduation) are the only two major contributors they lost. But also gone are reserves Jeremiah Francis (New Mexico) and Brandon Huffman (Jacksonville State), who both transferred.
Replacing them are a freshman class considered by most recruiting analysts as one of the top three in the nation. Point guard Caleb Love and forward Day’Ron Sharpe headline the group of newcomers. Puff Johnson, the younger brother of former Heel Cameron Johnson, along with R.J. Davis and Kerwin Walton look to bolster the backcourt. Walker Kessler, a 7-foot-1 center, will add to a deep frontcourt that returns starters Garrison Brooks and Armando Bacot.
The emergence of Brooks as a scorer is arguably the best thing to come out of last season for Carolina. The senior forward is the leading scorer returning at 16.8 points and also led the team with 8.5 rebounds last season. As a sophomore, he only scored in double figures 12 times. As a junior, he scored more than 20 points 13 times including a career-high 35 against Georgia Tech.
“My confidence has grown and I think I’m a better player from last year,” Brooks told reporters on the call.
Though Williams still has many questions about how the pandemic will impact the season — including whether or not fans will be in arenas — there’s no doubt how it has already effected the preseason. Conditioning has been tweaked to where most of the running the team did was outdoors. The players can’t be in the locker room at the same time. The bench will be extended and spaced out.
Williams usually would get a scouting report of sorts from the many former players who would come back to Chapel Hill to train and play in pickup games. Williams and the coaching staff are not allowed to watch those games, but he would ask those former players what they thought of the newcomers. Williams didn’t have that chance this offseason because there were no games.
The COVID-19 pandemic made sure no team in the nation celebrated a title when it abruptly ended the season without a single shining moment from the NCAA Tournament. Senior guard Andrew Platek has seen enough from the newcomers to believe the Heels should be back competing for their chance to cut down some nets.
“Me and G(arrison) are taking this especially hard as senior leaders to try and right the ship and show how it should be done,” Platek said. “We’ve done this the right way, my freshman and sophomore year, we’ve won a lot and we want to get back to those winning ways for sure.”
As if last season never happened.