Fueled By The Sting, Heels Begin Quest For A Title

CHAPEL HILL – Houston still stings in Chapel Hill. It stings a lot.

North Carolina basketball coach Roy Williams has only seen the final, fatal, play from the Tar Heels’ 77-74 last-second loss to Villanova in the NCAA title game, and it wasn’t really by choice, either.

“I have not watched the game – I may never,” Williams said Tuesday at the Smith Center. “I did watch the last play because (ESPN) Sportscenter did some special on it, and he came down and made it about 6 out of 10 times.

“I was pleased at that moment with how we guarded it. We needed to be a little more involved, all five guys, but sometimes you just have to congratulate the other team.”

The coach has led teams to national title game losses in 1991 and 2003, as well, and he’s never seen one second of those defeats, both of which took place when he was the head man at Kansas. The pain is so deep he just hasn’t been able to bring himself to watch. The same goes for 2016 with that one exception.

While some players watched it and some have not, what happened April 4 in Houston remains ingrained in this group. They can’t run from it, so they might as well embrace what can aid them moving forward.

You might call it fuel.

“I told them in the locker room, ‘Lets use this as fuel to work harder in the offseason, lets use this as fuel to motivate, use this as fuel to put in that extra time, to know that we were that close, but we didn’t get what we wanted,’” Williams said, noting he will use it and other forms of psychological motivation if necessary.

“I’m sure I’ll use it sometimes; I’ve already used it one time this year, I said, ‘Hey guys, Coach (Rick) Pitino’s comment about Larry Bird and Kevin McHale not walking in that locker room,’ I told them, ‘Guys, Brice was the best rebounder in the ACC, does anybody see Brice out here?’ So, I’ve used some references like that, but it’s more to focus to build on what we’re doing.”

However Williams wants to articulate it, the players are listening, though it's not like the coach has a hard sales pitch.

"Last year was great motivation for us, seeing Brice fall short of the national title still hurts me," senior Kennedy Meeks said. "That was my goal in the off-season to do that much more to make sure we can get the job done. We have the parts we just got to put it all together work as a team, and then everything else will work itself out."

The Tar Heels went 33-7 last season and achieved all but one of their goals: They won the ACC regular season title; the ACC Tournament championship; Got to the Final Four and to the national championship game. They were a shot or two from achieving all of their goals.

Gone from that group, however, are the team’s two best players and their heart and soul. Marcus Paige was the program’s engine for the last four years, and his double-pump 3-pointer with 3 seconds left that tied the national title game was a metaphor for all of the things he encompassed as a leader, grinder and big-minute performer.

Brice Johnson had one of the best senior years of any Tar Heel in decades. He was so good he has the highest single-game point total in the ACC last season, the highest single-game rebound total, and the highest single-game blocked shot total.

He infused the Heels so many times, that element as much as his production will be extremely difficult to replace.

But this year’s team returns the next best seven players from last season’s squad, and three of them – Joel Berry, Justin Jackson and Isaiah Hicks - are capable of exploding onto the scene. Perhaps the Tar Heel furthest ahead in terms of importance and developing into the team’s leader is Berry, a junior point guard who was second on the team last season in scoring at 12.8 point, led the team with 151 assists and led the team shooting 38.1 percent from 3-point range.

Berry scored 20 points in the national title game hitting all 4 of his 3s, and Williams is looking at the Florida native to do some big things this season.

Interestingly, both of Williams’ two national championship teams had experienced junior points guards in Raymond Felton and Ty Lawson that grew their games tremendously from their sophomore to junior seasons. Berry is a junior looking to do the same.

“I think Joel’s just got to keep doing what he’s doing right now,” the Hall of Fame coach said. “He’s been more aggressive, which I want him to do because he shoots the ball so well. And I think that’s where you’ll see him - wasn’t he our leading 3-point shooter last year – I still want him to do that again, too.”

Berry knows what he must do.

"I need to be a leader for this team being the point guard," he said. "The guys are looking for me to be more vocal as a talker on the court this year."

Jackson says he doesn’t remember being inconsistent the last two seasons, as his focus is straight ahead. Hicks learned watching Johnson take a giant step to the next level, acknowledging his attitude triggered his on-court growth.

There are many other aspects to this team that must come together for them to reach the final Monday night of the season, something Williams has told them is very much a reality. Even without Paige and Johnson, there’s plenty of everything, as long as the Heels stay healthy, to make that push once again.