CHAPEL HILL – Roy Williams was in a pretty good mood Tuesday afternoon at the Smith Center.
The North Carolina basketball coach is fairly pleased with his team’s 8-1 start, how his perimeter guys are defending, that the rebounding is coming along though he remains quite worried about it, and while he says the freshmen bigs are a long way from where the team needs, he has seen some positives there, too.
Williams met with the media Tuesday in advance of Wednesday’s home game with Western Carolina, and interestingly there wasn’t one question about Luke Maye or Joel Berry. Most of the focus was on the freshmen interior players, Theo Pinson’s defense and shooting, Kenny Williams' overall performance to date and the health of Seventh Woods and Cam Johnson.
Here are a few snippets of what the Hall of Fame coach had to say:
*Sophomore guard Seventh Woods has missed the last two games dealing with plantar fasciitis in his right foot, and it appears Woods will be out longer than originally planned. On Friday, THI learned he would miss the next three games, which includes two games (at Davidson, versus Tulane) already played, and Wednesday’s meeting with WCU before the Heels are off for 11 days. That would have given Woods nearly three weeks of rest on his foot before returning for the Tennessee game on Dec. 17.
However, Roy Williams said Tuesday Woods is out indefinitely, and there’s no timeline for his return.
“We get more information every day, we’re checking with people, but he’s going to be out for a while,” the coach said. “We don’t know how long. They’re still checking with another person, too, but I really don’t know. I just know he’s going to be out for a while.”
Woods was wearing a boot this past Friday and Sunday during UNC’s games, and is expected to keep it on for the foreseeable future.
*Cam Johnson tore the meniscus in his knee on Nov. 13, and at this time there was no specific update on his progress.
“The whole time frame is they were going to take a much closer look at it at four weeks,” Williams said.
Williams said he didn’t know of a specific game planned for Johnson’s return, though the word previously has been the ACC opener versus Wake Forest on Dec. 30.
“I have no idea,” said Williams, who wasn’t joking when he said he didn’t even know when the Wake game is. He usually doesn’t worry about anything more than the next game and sometimes the one after that.
*Given that UNC has been without Johnson, the Tar Heels are 8-1, and Williams, whose standards are always very high, is somewhat pleased.
“Yeah, I think so,” Williams replied when asked if he feels good about the start. “And probably the way to put it is ‘feel good.’ Everybody wants more – we’d like to have played better against Michigan State, there’s no question there – but (former UCLA) Coach (John) Wooden told me me time that he took his schedule and marked down each game he thought they’d win or lose, put it in an envelope and put it in his desk drawer. And then after the season was over, he’d get it out and see how close he came, and I said, ‘Gosh, Coach, I can’t do that.’
“He said, ‘What do you mean you can’t do that?’ And I said, “I cannot look down that schedule and try to figure out – so I really have never done it… I really haven’t, but if you’d said 8-1, I’d say, ‘that’s pretty good.’
Williams noted that Johnson was playing very well in the pre-season before his injury.
“There was one week he didn’t miss a shot the whole week,” Williams recalled. “He went another practice where he didn’t make one – I like the week’s plan as opposed to the daily. We’d love to get him back out there.”
*In UNC’s eight victories, the Tar Heels are plus-15.9 in rebounding versus their opponents, but sticking out like a sore thumb remains the loss to Michigan State, in which Carolina was outrebounded 52-36.
So are the Heels rebounding about as Williams expected at this juncture?
“No, because I was worried and am worried a great deal about our rebounding,” Williams replied. “I go back to Michigan State, they got us 52-36. We’ve had some big numbers a couple of times ourselves, too, but Michigan State, we’ve got to be able to rebound against those kind of people, because that’s who we play in our league.
“Rebounding and the defensive end of the floor are still my biggest concerns.”
Williams said before the season that for the Heels to be what he wants as a collective rebounding team he needed the perimeter guys to chip in more. In particular, he noted Kenny Williams Theo Pinson. Are they rebounding at a level Williams wants?
“Sometimes,” the coach replied. “One game he had 8 rebounds, Theo still hasn’t rebounded like I want him to rebound because I think he has a nose for the ball and do it even better. Cam, before he got hurt, I was pushing Cam to do it. BRob (Brandon Robinson) had 6 maybe in the (Arkansas) game.
“The perimeter players know they’ve got to help us a heck of a lot more.”
*A primary concern defensively remains along the interior where the three freshmen big men play. An emphasis on defending the ball on the perimeter has been greater to disrupt flow and movement, which enables opposing bigs to get better looks more often. In fact, Tulane Coach Mike Dunleavy said the Heels are dropping their guards more into the paint to help out than they did a year ago. Clearly, there’s some compensating going on.
“They’re scaring the dickens out of me, because every time the other guys gets the ball he winks at them, does a little shimmy and lays it up,” Williams said about his bigs’ defensively. “I’m worried to death how the post players in our league can really score. And we’ve got to get Sterling (Manley) and Garrison (Brooks), Luke (Maye) to a certain extent also, because he’s guarding them, too.
“But, Huff (Brandon Huffman) and those guys have got to get better guarding the ball… You’ve got to be able to guard a guy in the post.”
Williams noted that Brooks did a better job of denying his man the ball in the post in Sunday’s win over Tulane and Friday’s victory at Davidson.
