CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina basketball coach Roy Williams met with the media Thursday in advance of Saturday’s renewal of arguably the greatest rivalry in American sports as Duke visits the Smith Center for a 6 pm tip.
Here are a few notes and quotes from what Williams had to say:
*The Tar Heels lost by a point at home to Boston College last Saturday and had the ball with 40 seconds left and an opportunity to make it a one-possession game Monday night at Florida State, but fell short.
If Williams were to make a list of the things his team could have done better in order to win both games, what would be the first item listed?
“Not giving up second shot opportunities at really tough moments because it was game changing, particularly the Boston College game,” Williams said. “Everybody can always say free throws in either game but we’ve been an average to good rebounding team, our numbers look better than we really are.
“But I think the second shot opportunities when you get a stop, BC I think it was three times. And you can always say ‘don’t turn it over on the inbounds pass’ or ‘make free throws’ but that would be the first thing that I would pick.”
*Typically, UNC and Duke are in the top 10, or close to it in down years for the programs, and there’s plenty on the line when they play from ACC jockeying to playing for high NCAA seeds and maybe even close to home to start the big dance. But UNC’s struggles make things quite different this year. It’s still Duke-Carolina, does it carry the same celebration of the game and sport it usually is?
“It’s a celebration I’m still alive, I guess, I don’t know if my team will celebrate that,” Williams replied. “Joel Berry’s going to be here, we’re going to honor his jersey for being… the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four… So that part hopefully will be a nice celebration for him and his family at halftime.
“But, what we’re doing, and I think every team that goes through tough times – I’ve just been very fortunate I haven’t had to do it often – is try to work everyday and see if you can get better and get a little better in one area, get a little better in another area; put your finger in the dike and try to find another place to put the other one, too.”
*Brandon Robinson missed the Florida State game Monday night and will not play versus Duke on Saturday. In fact, he is likely out longer than that. Williams offered the latest on the Tar Heels’ shooting guard.
“He’s still in a boot, he’s still on crutches, so the answer is yes,” Williams said, referring to Robinson missing Saturday’s game. “But I don’t know, and I’ll use your words, I don’t know what ‘for some time’ would be. They said two to four weeks.”
*With Robinson out Saturday and Sterling Manley out for the season, only three available Tar Heels have played in a Duke-UNC game: Garrison Brooks has logged 120 minutes in six games the last two seasons; Andrew Platek has played 15 minutes seeing action in three of six contests; and Brandon Huffman has played four minutes in three games.
Does Williams plan on spending much time trying to get his players to understand the different in energy, intensity and atmosphere when these rivals meet, or is it something they need to figure out on their own once they get on the court?
“I can say anything I want to say but, until you’ve done it, you haven’t experienced it, you don’t know what I’m talking about…,” Williams said. “But, to answer your question, I’m not going to talk about it a lot, their teammates will talk about it, everybody else will talk about it and, again I know it sounds corny, it’s the only way I know how to do things, we’re just trying to get better in every phase of the game every day.
“Keep trying and keep trying and keep trying and hopefully the clock won’t run out on the year before we start playing better basketball.”
Note: Grad transfer Justin Pierce played 10 minutes as a freshman in 2017 when William & Mary visited Duke, but that, of course, wasn’t close to the same kind of intensity he will experience Saturday.
