CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina basketball Coach Roy Williams met with the media Tuesday at the Smith Center to discuss his team’s recent four-game road trip to the West Coast and to look ahead to Wednesday’s home game versus Michigan in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge.
Here are some snippets from what Williams had to say:
*The Tar Heels were off Monday after arriving back home at 6:30 in the morning, and by the time Williams’ press conference began at 2 pm Tuesday, neither he or the team had seen film yet of Michigan nor had they held a practice. That came after the presser.
*Williams’ plan was to get on the team hard in practice, also noting that Dean Smith used to sometimes not say anything or much at all to his team in the locker room following a defeat, but Williams chose Sunday night to “rip them,” he said.
*The Hall of Fame coach said the team played without confidence against Michigan State, and asked whether they went into the game that way or if it was a result born out of how the game played out, he replied, “I have no idea, I really don’t. We went into Georgia Tech last year, and I thought that was as bad as any team I’ve ever had play.
“We set some records in this one. We’ve been playing basketball a long time around here, Jiminy Christmas. We missed dead layups, we missed four layups when there was nobody challenging the shot."
*Carolina played four games on the trip, winning three of the games, which were comfortable wins at Stanford and over Portland and Arkansas in the PK80. Does the way the team played Sunday overshadow the whole trip, of what else did he like about how the Heels played out west?
“No, it’s in my mind right now because it’s the most recent,” Williams replied. “It was a good trip – it was one day too long, should have come home a day earlier. At Stanford, first true road game, we came out with some intensity and our attention to detail was good and we were confident.
“Next game against Portland was a workmanlike effort, next one against Arkansas was really a good game for us. We were challenged in a much different way than we’d been challenged all year (and) we handled that.
“So the whole trip, as we got different looks, different things that we were faced with we did some good things. And I like the Arkansas game because we were challenged twice by them. They’re pretty good, they turn around and win the next game by (35 over UConn). So we faced some adversity and we handled it. We got a lot more out of that than we lost in this one game.”
*Sophomore guard Seventh Woods has been in a walking boot the last couple of days dealing with a flare up of plantar fasciitis, which is the same thing that affected Marcus Paige a lot during his junior season. Woods’ availability for Wednesday is unknown at this time.
