North Carolina Coach Roy Williams took part in the weekly ACC video conference late Monday morning to field several questions about his team and to get his thoughts on college basketball during the ongoing COVID crisis.
Here are a few notes and quotes from what Williams had to say:
*Freshman Kerwin Walton has started the last two games and over his last four games he’s 10-for-15 from 3-point range, including hitting three versus Kentucky, three at Georgia Tech and four this past weekend in a win over Notre Dame. Williams wants Walton to shoot because he’s the best perimeter shooter on the team.
“You know, Jamal Wilkes, Bob McAdoo, Terry Brown, the best 3-point shooter I ever coached at Kansas, they all had different techniques, but you’ve got to finish with a great follow-through with your hand straight forward toward the rim, (and) shooting fingers in the middle of the target.
“But how you get to that point, it’s sort of like Jim Furyk’s golf seeing, there’s different ways to get to that point. But if you don’t have a solid, solid technique that keeps you away from mistakes, then you better shoot a million of them. And I think that Kerwin has shot a million of them and will shoot another million the next week probably.
“He does have the great follow-through, so you’ve got to perfect your own way of shooting.”
Walton was the last member of the class of 2020 to commit and sign with the Tar Heels, doing so last spring. Did Williams expect this from Walton so soon into his freshman season?
“Well, I knew that last year we were really shorthanded on the number of people that could put the ball in the basket, so that’s what we talked to Kerwin about and told him if he got there and did the job defensively and kept trying to get better defensively that it would more than likely work out that he would get a lot of playing time. And that’s the way it’s worked out.”
*Freshman Day’Ron Sharpe is coming off his best game as a Tar Heel, as he scored 25 points and grabbed nine rebounds in the win over the Fighting Irish. Sharpe was 9-for-19 from the field, though Williams wants him to shoot a higher percentage. Nonetheless, the coach is pleased with Sharpe’s progress thus far.
“He's been phenomenal in our practices,” Williams said. “And even early on in the fall when we were practicing, and we had Tyler Zeller and Tyler Hansbrough and Theo (Pinson) and Cam (Johnson) and Coby (White) – that was the five guys on the blue team one day – and they were all tremendously impressed with Day’Ron. I think getting him to this level is just a testament of how hard he’s continued to work.
“We’d like for him to be able to work even harder on a more consistent basis and at a higher level, but he was dominating to say the least in the game on Saturday… He makes things happen, and normally makes good things happen in a good sense for North Carolina."
*The Tar Heels faced Notre Dame instead of Syracuse this past weekend, which was originally on the schedule. The Orange had to postpone, and since the Irish’ game versus Pittsburgh was also postponed because of COVID protocols hitting the Panthers, the ACC moved the Irish to Chapel Hill and the game happened.
None of this makes Williams comfortable, though. He gave his thoughts about COVID and college basketball now that he’s nearly six weeks into the season.
“I think we needed to play games,” Williams said. “We’re in a situation in our country where cases are going up dramatically. I’m concerned each and every morning when I get up to see if we’re going to have the opponent we thought we were going to have…
“We need to get some games under our belt and do as many things as we can.”
Williams said he called Notre Dame Coach Mike Brey last week and asked if he saw any advantages or disadvantages for either team in playing the game on such short notice. Brey immediately said he wanted to play.
“For me, it was no advantage, no disadvantage either way,” Williams said. “We agreed and we thought we should go ahead and try to play.”
*Williams said he “hasn’t been comfortable for a single moment” with anything during this COVID process and teams playing, but he also said, “I think it’s the right thing to do as long as we keep our eyes and ears open and use our brain.”
Williams continued:
“I’m more concerned about these next three weeks than any time this season because of the gatherings of Christmas and New Year’s and the likelihood of more of these cases continuing to come,” he said. “So, I’m scared to death.”
The NCAA earlier Monday announced its plans for centralizing the NCAA Tournament in Indianapolis. Does Williams believe that’s a good move?
“Probably so,” he said. “The more you can limit travel, contact with more people – if you play at eight different sites… you have a greater margin of coming in contact with more people than you do if you have it all in the same city.
“Indianapolis has the hotel space, the gymnasium space, and everything that I think that we need. So, it doesn’t bother me, and in fact I think that it’s a good plan.”
Williams also said maybe the season should have been played in the spring and there should be "May Madness" instead of March madness.
