CHAPEL HILL – Midwest Region top seed North Carolina will face No. 5 seed Auburn in the Sweet 16 on Friday night, but before the Tar Heels leave for Kansas City, head coach Roy Williams met with the media Tuesday afternoon at the Smith Center.
Williams discussed the health of sophomore big man Garrison Brooks, who was clobbered in the mouth during Sunday’s win over Washington and required stitches as well as senior guard Kenny Williams, who strained a hamstring versus the Huskies.
Carolina’s coach also hit on a variety of other topics, including freshman forward Nassir Little’s continued growth, Coby White’s whole game, Auburn’s pace and that it likes to shoot 3-pointers in transition, going back to the KC area, which is located just a couple of hours from Lawrence, KS, where Williams coached for 15 years, plus much more.
*Regarding Brooks and Williams, we reported HERE what the head coach had to say.
*Williams was the head coach at Kansas for 15 years and now the Tar Heels will play in Kansas City, which is in Missouri but is just several miles from the Kansas state line and about two hours from Lawrence, which is where KU is located.
Note that Kansas was the No. 4 seed in the region and would have faced the Tar Heels on Friday but lost to Auburn, so UNC will instead take on the Tigers.
“I don’t get back there a lot,” Williams said. “The first 10 or 12 years I went once and that was to go help my daughter when she moved back here. It wasn’t any reason, I wasn’t hiding out or staying away from it.
“I still have great friends there that we talk a lot. I went back for the Allen Fieldhouse 60th birthday party – it was sensational, the people were fantastic. But to be in college basketball, it’s pretty time consuming doing a lot of different things.”
Williams said he meets up with his old Kansas buddies every spring and fall for golf outings.
“It’s a place that I loved for 15 years,” he said. “Allen Fieldhouse was sensational and the friends that I had are still friends.”
Is Williams glad his team doesn’t have to deal with playing Kansas in KC?
“Somebody said “are you glad you’re not playing Kansas?’ I said, ‘Really?’ I mean, do you want to play somebody in their backyard? If it was us going to Lexington (KY), I’d rather us be playing Slippery Rock than Kentucky.
“If they’re not playing us I pull for them and we go from there.”
*Nassir Little said after Sunday’s game that one of the biggest adjustments he had to make this season was learning how to come of the bench. In high school, he would warm up, get a good sweat going and then get right into the game. At UNC, he’d warmup and then sit while the sweat dried some, and it took time for him to learn how to get more involved in the game before entering the game.
Williams said he’s seen that as well from Little.
“He’s adapted to that role and he’s also studying the game more instead of just sitting over there waiting to go in. He’s a very intelligent young man, he really is, and now he’s sitting there watching the game from a little bit different perspective than he was when he first got here.
“With the knowledge that he has and the amount of information he can get from watching the game now, I think he’s using that. But again, I think he was really coming before he got hurt (Feb. 11 versus Virginia) and that set him back. And now I think he’s starting to come again, and Columbus, Ohio, should be one of his favorite places because he played his tail off up there.”
*Auburn loves to shoot 3-pointers and it does so pretty well. The Tigers shoot threes 49.4 percent of the time and have converted 37.8 percent on the season. Overall, while UNC has made a school-record 305 shots from 3-point range, Auburn has hit 115 more.
“Just think about this, 305 threes ties our school record for makes in a season, that’s pretty impressive,” Williams said. “They’ve made 421, so our 305 is not quite as impressive.
“They’re probably the hottest team in the country right now and shooting the ball in the basket, making threes.”
