Tar Heel Fan

ACC Now has audio of Roy discussing what he was thinking/feeling during the final 32 seconds of the UNC victory of Georgetown in the 1982 NCAA Championship.  The striking thing about his story is the detail he remembers from that proving that (1) he is just a freaking brillant guy when it comes to basketball and (2) he has a great memory.  Here is a transcript from Inside Carolina.

I tell you a funny story, I’ve told you many, many times. It’s not funny, it’s amazing. I think it was 32 seconds to play. We called a time-out. The guys coming over to our bench, the look on their face shocked me no end. There was never one time that season that I didn’t we were the best team ever. There was never one team that season I didn’t think we were going to win the whole ball of wax. There was not one time during the Final Four that I had he ever thought about that we could possibly lose. When those guys came over to the bench, the look on their face just shocked me because I saw a negative look. We kneeled down in front of the bench like coaches do, and Coach Smith said, ‘we’re in great shape.’ He said, ‘I’d much rather be in our shoes than theirs.’ We are exactly where we want to be.

I don’t mind telling you, I believed everything the man says, but this is gospel now. I sort of turned my head a little bit and pretended I was coughing because I wanted to sneak a peek at the clock because I thought we were 1 down. The way Coach Smith is talking, he’s talking like we’re in great shape. I didn’t necessarily feel that way. So I was pretending I was coughing, and looked, it said ‘Georgetown 62, North Carolina 61.’ Coach just continued on. He said, this is exactly where we want to be. We want to determine the outcome of this game. We’re in great shape. We’re gonna run lineup, I don’t think they’ll be pressing. We’ll get it in. Run two game, look for the lob, they’ll probably cover that. So if we don’t have that, just penetrate and we’ll go on the back side. If we get the shot, we’ll go ahead and take the shot. Sam, you continue, when you go for the lob, you continue and you get weak side board coverage. James, you’ll have the middle board coverage. Even if we miss the shot, we’ll get the rebound. And we’ll put it back in there. And even if something weird happens and they happen to get the rebound, we’ll foul them and there’s no way they’re gonna make a free throw in this situation.

I felt a lot better, you know. In the face, every one of our players, the look on their face was so much different. The guys were leaving the huddle. Coach patted Michael on the back, said if you get the shot, knock it in. So right there is when it happened, we ran 2, we looked for the lob, they covered it, Sam kept going, he got weak side. We penetrated the ball through to Michael. Sam was on the weak side board coverage, James had the middle board coverage. Michael knocked it in. The Lord told Freddy to throw it to James, so that was it. That’s all I can say.

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