Tar Heel Fan

Pretty much. 

Adam Lucas picked up a few choice quotes from Marcus Ginyard yesterday. I am speculating that Ginyard must have received some blessing from Roy Williams to let it all hang out.  This is where I miss Danny Freakin’ Green since his quotes would have been far more entertaining.  Then again, if this team had Danny Freakin’ Green, they would not be 16-15 and not just because of Green’s on the court awesomeness. Anyway, I am not a big believer in coincidences so you can begin drawing up the conspiracy theories on Ginyard letting it drop that UNC got throttled by 30 in the preseason scrimmage versus Vanderbilt mainly because no one gave a crap while Roy is talking about player’s not being committed to the instruction they received. And for those who have wondered about one of those vaunted “players only meetings”  to cure what ailed them? They had one then and apparently it did not matter. SMH

Two weeks after media day, Williams’s team had a closed scrimmage against an outside opponent. They were clearly outplayed, leading to a players-only meeting when the team returned to Chapel Hill.

“That scrimmage was terrible,” Marcus Ginyard said. “That was the whole season right there in that scrimmage. It was exactly the way this whole year has gone down. We were playing a good team and we weren’t ready to play when we got there. We got our butt kicked the very first time we stepped on the court together.”

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“We were like, `There is no way we can get beat by 30 points the very first time we’re playing,’” he said. “How are we not super-pumped to be playing? As soon as we got back we had a meeting in the locker room. We said, `This is how it’s supposed to go down. We have to play better than this and more together than this.’ Even more indicative of the year, nothing really changed after that.”

On one hand, Roy says the players are not committed to doing the things they are instructed to do during games.  Ginyard is saying they lacked fire, never changed attitudes following an embarrassing scrimmage loss and lacked any cohesion as a team.

With that kind of crap going on, it makes you wonder how they made it to 16-15.

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Roy Williams:

“I haven’t talked to them since the game. I’m not saying they’ve got to grow to 6-11 from 6-1 or that they’ve got to start shooting left-handed instead of right-handed, but if I’m screaming at a guy to get back in defensive balance and I said that on Oct. 15, that’s long enough. You need to change. You need to do it. If I’m saying, ‘Get to the board,’ and you’re a 3-4-5 – on Oct. 15 we said that 3-4-5 need to go the board every time – I don’t need to yell that anymore. You need to change.

“It’s like as a kid when you’re starting to put your finger into a [light] socket and Mom or Dad says, ‘No,’ and slaps your hand, at some point you’ve got to decide to stop putting your finger into the socket. Mommy and Daddy don’t need to say no anymore. You need to decide to stop doing it yourself. That’s exactly what I was talking about. If I’m over there yelling, ‘Get a hand up!’ and I was saying that Oct. 15, then I’m the dumb one because I’m still yelling the same thing.”

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” It’s frustrating, there’s no question about that, but that’s also laying the blame. And the blame’s on all of us; it’s not just the kids. But I am tired. I’m tired of saying the same thing over and over and over. If you get into this University, you’re fairly intelligent, because I got a degree from here. At some point you’ve got to change. That’s education. You have got to change your behavior.”

Jackie Manuel’s Posse

I don’t think Roy has done a fantastic job with this team but I’ll happily support the kind of mistakes he has made this season. To me, Roy saw an 8-8 ACC season coming from the very beginning of practice. He pushed this team to be better than that and instead things spiraled out of control. The buttons he pushed were all wrong. He kept trying to put someone else in…someone who was very good at basketball in…and that player was not on the bench. Suddenly, this was a team that could not create good shots. This is a team full of players trying to do things they had never done before. Every single player who got minutes was being asked do take a huge step up from last season and most of them were unable to make that step. We see this team at times look like they have never ever played the game of basketball before. The rotation probably should have been set by December. John Henson and Leslie McDonald should have played more than they did. They both make tons of errors but who on this team doesn’t? The Wear twins got way too many minutes. I’m sure this could go on all day but it is easy to see that Roy kept tinkering because he was trying to make this team excellent. That is all he has known and he was not about to stop trying.  Unfortunately even Roy Williams, savior of North Carolina basketball, can not turn water into wine. “But he brought in the water” says Dook asshat. Fair enough, I suppose. Pardon me if I give Roy Williams a pass, considering 4 of last years starting 5 are making money playing basketball this season. He signed those guys too. Maybe I’d rather have John Wall than David Wear but maybe I wouldn’t.

I’m going to stop here but my point to all this rambling is simple. Taking a longer view of things helps me see that things could be a whole lot worse. In fact, things are pretty rad.  In some ways this is just like any other season. We play a game on a Thursday in March that we must win to keep playing (competitive basketball). If we lose ‘will he stay or go’ questions will begin. Dook will flame out in the first few rounds. Jon Scheyer will cry. Some team will upset Kentucky. It will get warm. Harrison Barnes will show up.

I’m going to smile and try to enjoy whatever we have left of the defending champs. Join me?

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