CHAPEL HILL – North Carolina basketball coach Roy Williams said Friday he thinks players should be able to respectfully have a few words with officials during games, and that sometimes it’s better than him or other coaches yelling unplesantries at the referees from a distance.

Williams was referring to the situation that occurred during Wednesday night’s one-point loss at Florida State, in which veteran official Ted Valentine turned his back to Tar Heels’ senior guard Joel Berry after a call that went against UNC that Berry wanted to quickly discuss.

The video of what transpired quickly became national news crossing into mainstream sports and not just college basketball. The video is posted below Williams’ comments in case you have not seen it.

So THI asked Williams during his press conference Friday at the Smith Center in advance of Saturday’s game at No. 8 Virginia what he thought about players being able to talk to refs during dead balls and how they should be treated.

Here is Williams’ response:

“It looked bad. I did not see him turn his back on Joel, I saw Joel set the ball down, I told Joel, and Joel has already said this, go over and say ‘Mr. Ref, I set the ball down and it was not intended to be any disrespect.’ At that time when I told him that, I hadn’t seen what had happened before, and that wasn’t right, either. We released a statement about it.

“People make mistakes. I can’t remember, I’ve had like 19 technicals in 30 years, and four of them I didn’t deserve at all, I wasn’t even mad at the official, but it looked bad enough.

“It didn’t look good. I don’t think the intention was there for it to look as bad as it did look. But to answer your question, I think players should be able to go and say something to an official. I do that a lot of the time, instead of me standing over there screaming at a guy, ‘Hey, will you watch this, will you watch this? Hey, hey, I’m talking to you you dumb bumb,’

“I think it’s a little more peasant to say, ‘Marcus, go over there and tell the ref to please watch their doing whatever.’ I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, (and) 99 percent of the time I think the officials handle it well, and they’d probably rather that happen instead of me calling them a dumb dumb from 40 feet away.

“It’s unfortunate it happened, it looks bad, it’s unfortunate, but it’s what it is, and both of those guys are competitors and will both go on and be fine.”

Williams is asked about the situation at the 16-minute mark.