Roy, Dean are pictures in contrast
By Jerry Ratcliffe / Daily Progress sports editor
January 23, 2004

Scattershooting around the ACC, while wondering what Dean Smith does with all his free time these days ...
Tar Heel fans loved the fact that Smith’s protégé, Roy Williams, has taken over the Carolina program. But Williams and Smith are different personalities.
Smith never took off his sports coat during games, but during last weekend’s win over visiting Connecticut, Williams took off his jacket and threw it 15 feet down the UNC bench. In an earlier game against Georgia Tech, Williams was so upset that he slammed his first against the scorer’s table.
Hey, the Tar Heels won both games.
There’s another difference, too. Smith never cursed. Williams on the other hand, has let fly some profanities, something that UConn coach Jim Calhoun poked fun of Williams for prior to last weekend’s game. Calhoun has taken pride in his personal potty mouth over the years.
Williams said that one critic has asked him to stop saying the word ‘crap’ so often.
Pete Gillen would like nothing better than to make Williams have a crappy, fist-pounding, coat-throwing day on Saturday when the Cavaliers travel to the Smith Center.

Road woes
While Florida State figured out how to win a big game at home last night against UNC, the Seminoles continue to struggle on the ACC road.
Losing at Virginia earlier this week marked 18 straight league road losses for FSU, worse than the Cavs’ road record over the same stretch. But Coach Leonard Hamilton said that doesn’t shake him.
“I think the worst thing you do is try to get all bent up and talk about it and make a big deal of it,” Hamilton said. “The main thing is we haven’t been good enough to win on the road. It’s not any secret. You have to be mentally tough, you’ve got to be efficient, you’ve got to be fundamentally sound.”
Reversible Jackets
Georgia Tech could hardly buy an ACC road win last season, but the Yellow Jackets have solved the problem this year.
Last season Tech dropped their first 10 road games before winning two of their final three, including a win at UVa. This season, the Jackets won at Wake Forest and won tough games at Ohio State and scored neutral-site wins over Connecticut and Texas Tech.
“Last year we played well on the road and lost games late,” said Tech coach Paul Hewitt. “Inexperience and poor coaching really cost us last year. But I feel good about this group.”
Tech’s only two losses this season have come on the road at North Carolina and Georgia. Wake’s home loss to the Jackets snapped a 24-game home winning streak for the Deacs and made Skip Prosser’s team 1-3 against ranked teams so far this season.

Quote of the Week
After having his double-figure scoring streak snapped against Duke recently, N.C. State junior Julius Hodge was asked if the Cameron Crazies distracted him from playing his best.
Answered Hodge: “I’m not going to let a kid with a 4.5 GPA, acne and bad breath determine how I play on the court.”

Football recruiting. New Jersey star receiver Dwayne Jarrett said that while he enjoyed his recent visit to Ohio State, the Buckeyes rank behind Virginia and Southern Cal on his favorites list.
Geography could be the key here as the Cavaliers attempt to land Jarrett, ranked the No. 2 athlete in the nation by Rivals and the No. 5 overall prospect in the nation by SuperPrep. The speedy 6-5 wideout said that USC has a slight lead over UVa, but that he wants his family to be able to see him play.
Hmmm, it’s a long ride to LaLa Land.

Gold List. So far, 26 of the top 32 state high school senior football prospects on our Gold List have committed to Division I-A programs.
Two of the top five, 10 of the top 15 and 19 of the top 25 are committed.
The breakdown goes like this: Virginia 7, Virginia Tech 7, UNC 2, Maryland 2, West Virginia 2, Syracuse 2, Clemson 1, Pitt 1, South Carolina 1 and Temple 1.
Perhaps the biggest boo boo in compiling the state’s Top 50 prospects was ranking Fork Union’s Ryan Shuman No. 40. Obviously, Shuman, the son of coach John Shuman, should have been ranked higher.

Committed. Maryland coach Ralph Friedgen, who reportedly has only two scholarships left before the Feb. 4 national signing date, was asked about how firm commitments really are from prospects.
“I try to tell them, ‘How would you feel if I changed my mind?’ I have to make sure they’re making a commitment and not a reservation. They tell you they’re coming, so you hold a spot for him while he looks around. I have to really trust a kid to do that. I tell them, ‘If you’re looking, I’m looking.’ I’ve been burned by that before.”

Bowden vs. Bowden. This time son, Tommy, won out in the recruiting war over father, Bobby.
In a tug-of-war between Tommy’s Clemson program and Bobby’s Florida State machine, Jacksonville’s Mike McIntosh, ranked the No. 13 wide receiver in the country by Rivals, chose the Tigers.
As soon as Bobby heard that McIntosh appeared headed for Clemson, he visited the prospect at his high school in Jacksonville.
“If Bobby Bowden wants somebody in Florida, he just shows up,” said McIntosh’s coach Fred Culver. “Usually that’s all it takes. You don’t say no to Bobby Bowden. But Mike looked him right in the eye and in a respectful way said, ‘I want to go play for your son, Tommy.’”
Culver added, “Florida State ain’t giving up. They called all day today. They’re mad.”

Free throws ... UVa cornerback recruit Philip Brown, who played last season at Hargrave, is 5-foot-11, but recorded a 36-inch vertical leap at the school’s combine, while turning in a pair of really fast 40 times in the Tigers’ gym: 4.37 and 4.35. ...So far the reaction around Washington, D.C., has been mixed on the new nickname for the red-shirted 4,000 Maryland students who ring the court at Comcast Center. The name? “The Red Army,” which can’t sit well with those in the nation’s capital that relate it to communism. ... Clemson guard Julian Betko, who left the team in December because of a lack of playing time, has transferred to Butler.
... Tigers coach Oliver Purnell said in an average season, he would have six set plays to run ball screens, but that this year with freshman point guard Vernon Hamilton (of Richmond) running the offense, Clemson has only three. The Tigers ran about 15 set plays in its recent 70-possession game against FSU.

 

Getting to 12-4 the hard way
Westfield AD comfortable with UVa approach
By DOUG DOUGHTY
Exclusive to roanoke.com by 5 p.m. Thursdays

I think I've figured out why Virginia men's basketball coach Pete Gillen uses his timeouts so foolishly.
Why hold onto your timeouts when you never play any close games?

Virginia's 12 victories all have come by eight points or more. The Cavaliers' four losses all have been by 15 points or more.

In reality, few of Virginia's victories have been lopsided. If they had, maybe walk-on Billy Glading would have played in the first 16 games.

(You'd think, if they were down by 22 points, they might have let Glading play the last 30 seconds against Duke. The guy was the MVP at the 2003 ACC men's lacrosse tournament. He doesn't have to be doing this.).

Virginia has won three games — against Loyola Marymount, Iowa State and Florida State — in which it trailed in the second half. In a fourth, the Cavaliers were tied with Minnesota.

The Cavaliers have been atrocious in each of their losses, which explains why I could be walking to the press room Tuesday night and be told by a well-connected contributor, "I think they'll let him finish out the year."

At 12-4, gee, do you think so?

I think if you had told Virginia fans at the start of the year that the Cavaliers would have been 12-4 after 16 games, some of them might have replied, "Hmmm, not bad."

It wouldn't be bad if the Cavaliers had fought Duke to the wire or battled N.C. State for more than 20 minutes or hadn't collapsed after grabbing a 15-11 lead in the first 3:50 at Georgia Tech.

Even when the Cavaliers held off Florida State and Clemson this week for must wins at home, it came in excruciating fashion.

Joe Vaughn, a Roanoker and UVa alumnus, said that watching the Virginia-Clemson game on televison Tuesday night "was like watching two 80-year-olds have sex."

The first half of the UVa-Clemson was gruesome, as was the first half of the UVa-Florida State game.

ONE OF MY chief criticisms of Gillen's timeouts is that, invariably, the Cavaliers do something stupid after time resumes.

That wasn't the case Tuesday, when Gillen called a timeout — his last timeout — with 3:09 remaining and six seconds on the shot clock. I don't think the Cavaliers wanted J.R. Reynolds to take a 25-foot 3-pointer, but they did settle on Reynolds as the guy to take a shot and even set a screen so he could get the ball.

My favorite recent example of a Gillen timeout was when T.J. Bannister was trying to get the ball in-bounds at Georgia Tech and called a timeout to avoid a five-second call. Then, as soon as the Cavaliers came out of the timeout, they threw away the inbounds pass.

Regarding Gillen's timeout against Clemson, what happens if the Cavaliers have trouble in-bounding the ball at the end of the game? If they're out of timeouts, as they frequently are, they're out of luck.

THE TIMEOUTS make me shake my head, but not as much as the Cavaliers' unwillingness to follow their shots. Isn't that one of the first things coaches teach, from biddie ball on up?

When things got desperate Tuesday, Devin Smith and Gary Forbes followed their own misses and UVa came up with the ball in both instances, but, all too often, the Cavaliers launch 3-pointers and stand and admire their efforts, no matter how off-target they may be.

LISTENING TO THE media banter prior to Gillen's teleconference Thursday, I somehow was reminded of Jeff White's former favorite player, J.C. Mathis, now at Michigan. In calling up the Michigan stats, I saw where Mathis is playing 19.5 minutes per game for a 10-5 Wolverines squad and is the team's second-leading rebounder at 5.3. Mathis is shooting only 31.3 percent (10-for-32) from the free-throw line.

From White: "As much as I didn't enjoy watching him play, if somebody had just sat him down and told him, 'just rebound, set picks and play defense,' he could have helped them."

ANOTHER EX-CAVALIER post man, Ted Jeffries, was at University Hall recently as a first-year member of the William and Mary staff and expressed appreciation at being listed among UVa's best all-time left-handers in this column last year. Jeffries mentioned specifically that he was pleased to be ahead of Mathis on that list.

"Mathis wasn't left-handed," I had to tell Jeffries, unaware of Mathis' signature left-handed runner down the lane. "He just thought he was."

THAT REMINDS ME of one of Terry Holland's favorite players of UVa vintage, Nick Vander Laan, who is the object of this week's poll: Who was a better player, Nick Vander Laan or Colin Ducharme? Not who had a better UVa career. Who was a better player?

THE FRUSTRATION EVIDENT on thesabre.com following the announcement that Greenville, N.C., running back Andre Brown had committed to North Carolina State only reinforced one of my firmest beliefs about recruiting.

If you count heavily on out-of-state recruits, you're going to be disappointed on occasion because very few of those kids grew up wanting to go to Virginia. That's why, in my opinion, you can't ever spend too much time recruiting your own state.

I suspect that Al Groh's staff works harder than most and that's how the Cavaliers end up high on a lot of players' lists, but, in the end, it's hard for an Andre Brown to resist the in-state lure. Heck, Brown visited North Carolina last weekend after never expressing much interest in the Tar Heels.

VIRGINIA HAD QUARTERBACKS Scott Deke and Sean Glennon in camp last summer and felt that Deke was better. They got an early commitment from Deke, a Pacific Palisades, Calif., product who had an outstanding senior year, but how does that play out in the long run.

Will Glennon's commitment to Virginia Tech help the Hokies with Glennon's teammate, Westfield High School wide receiver Eddie Royal, and what about Westfield sophomore running back Evan Royster in two years?

How does Westfield coach Tom Verbanic, one of a handful of UVa alumni coaching in the state, feel about it? The Westfield athletic director, former Lake Braddock football coach Francis Dall, is another UVa grad.

If you've got Deke and Glennon in camp and judge Deke to be better, I don't know how you can offer Glennon and not Deke. If it's me, you be as up front as possible and work like the devil to cultivate those ties.

"I think they've done that," Dall said Thursday, "but, I'm prejudiced. Coach Groh recruited me. I think they do it the right way. Some schools offer four kids and take the first to commit. To me, that's too much like a used-car salesman.

"At the time they made the decision, Sean was still in a cast. I don't want to speak for coach Groh, but you don't want to be signing kids blindly when you've only got 85 scholarships."

ONE MORE THOUGHT: When you've already taken commitments from three 2,000 rushers, one of them ought to be able to help at tailback.
 

North Carolina's fool's gold turns into real winner for Florida State
By RANDY BEARD
Tallahassee Democrat

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Fifteen minutes into Thursday's game, no one would have blamed Dick Vitale if he had decided to spend the rest of the night signing and selling more books on the concourse level of the Civic Center.

Seventh-ranked North Carolina had jumped out to a 42-18 lead over Florida State, and nothing these Seminoles had done during the first 21 days of January would have given anyone any indication that they still had a shot at beating the Tar Heels (11-4, 1-3 Atlantic Coast Conference) at that point.

Someone forgot to tell Tim Pickett, though.

The FSU senior guard said he could tell by looking in the eyes of his teammates that they weren't ready to cry UNC-LE, either.

"I just tried to keep everyone energized on defense," Pickett said after the Seminoles put together what amounted to a 34-point turnaround to claim a 90-81 victory over the Tar Heels.

This is why you have to love college basketball.

It's also why ESPN's legendary college basketball analyst titled his fourth book, "Dick Vitale's Living a Dream: Reflections on 25 Years Sitting in the Best Seat in the House."

His latest seat was center court at the Civic Center. But frankly, it really didn't matter where you were sitting Thursday night. Every view in the joint could be considered the best seat in the house - and that included the standing-room only student section behind press row.

Athletic drama like this doesn't come around often.

If Vitale has a fifth book in him, the Seminoles may have just written the foreword for him. Comebacks like this are why Vitale keeps coming back for more, baby.

FSU coach Leonard Hamilton can't recall any of his teams ever rallying from a hole as large as 18 points in the second half to beat a team the quality of North Carolina.

Hamilton said that during one of the timeouts late in the second half, as he was trying to get his players to regain their focus, he told them: "Now we are going to find out what college basketball is all about. We can't be a team that is affected by adversity. We have to accept that challenge and grow from it."

That growth spurt began in modest enough fashion. After North Carolina threatened to break the game open and send a near sellout crowd home early with a 21-0 run, the Seminoles (13-5, 2-3) gained confidence by outscoring UNC 22-13 the rest of the half.

That at least got them to within striking range, trailing only 49-35.

It also gave UNC coach Roy Williams his first hint of trouble.

UNC made only 3 of 8 shots in the final five minutes of the first half, while FSU was closing with 8 of 10 accuracy. But what concerned Williams more is the fact that his players had so much early success shooting the ball - particularly from behind the arc - that they forgot to do anything else.

"It was Fool's Gold early in the game," Williams said. "We were making all the jump shots and everybody was thinking it was going to be easy."

Even Hamilton had to be concerned by the early pace of the game. The helter-skelter rush up and down the court wasn't conducive to success for his players, either.

Not when they came into the game 0-4 in `04, and were beginning to look like a team that was attempting to put a square peg through a round hole.

The offense finally kicked in through Pickett's perseverance. He led the resurgence with 20 of his points in the second half and overtime. He had half of the Seminoles' dozen points in the extra session.

Hamilton said that the dire circumstances may have finally jump-started Pickett's jump shot.

"Sometimes when you've lost four in a row, your back is against the wall, you're down 24 . . . Sometimes . . . (he laughed) . . . you have to do something," Hamilton said.

"Our backs were against the wall and it relaxed him a little bit. He wasn't so much concerned about the shots he was missing."

Just as importantly were all the shots the Tar Heels missed in overtime.

They were 0 for 7 before Rashad McCants - who finished with 26 points - hit a 3-pointer with 23 seconds remaining.

"Everything that could go bad, went bad," Williams said.
 

The good and bad of picking ESPN's anniversary team
By AL FEATHERSTON : The Herald-Sun
afeatherston@heraldsun.com
Jan 22, 2004 : 11:38 pm ET

ESPN announced its ACC Silver Anniversary basketball team Wednesday night at halftime of the Duke-Maryland game.

As one of the seven voters responsible for the team, I feel the need to explain, defend and maybe apologize for the outcome. Not that a team made up of Ralph Sampson, Christian Laettner, Len Bias, Michael Jordan and Mark Price is anything to be ashamed of. All five were great ACC players.

But the best five of the last 25 years? Maybe ... maybe not.

Let me start by saying our task was impossible. Since ESPN began broadcasting in 1979 (the cutoff for the team), 14 different ACC players have been honored 18 times as national player of the year -- and 11 of those awards were consensus. Ten other players were consensus first-team All-Americans.

That's 24 players who could make a strong claim for consideration for the team based on their impact on the national scene. And even that list doesn't include such ACC stalwarts as Rodney Monroe, Vince Carter, Dennis Scott, Vinny Del Negro, Mike Dunleavy, Buck Williams, Brad Daugherty, John Salley, Tom Gugliotta, Rodney Rogers ... or Mark Price (more on that later).

Wow ... that's a lot of talent to fit into five spots.

ESPN's guidelines actually helped pare the list. First, the team was limited to players who played in the 1978-79 season or later. So, no David Thompson or Phil Ford. Second, players were to be judged solely on the basis of their college careers.

Third, we were required to vote by position, which set up an impossible choice at center between Ralph Sampson and Tim Duncan.

Choosing between them was a bear. Sampson was a three-time consensus national player of the year. Duncan was two-time consensus first-team All-American and swept the 1997 player of the year awards. Statistically, they were almost dead even. Duncan's teams had more success in the ACC Tournament, winning two titles. Sampson's Cavs reached the Final Four once, something Duncan never did, although each ended his career with seven NCAA Tournament wins.

Tough call, right?

Personally, I voted for Duncan because, having covered both players, I thought Sampson had an unfortunate habit of disappearing at crunch time. But I can't argue with the voters who selected Sampson.

The choice of two forwards was a lot simpler, if you accept that Christian Laettner was a forward and not a center. While it's hard to define positions in Mike Krzyzewski's system, Laettner was almost certainly Duke's starting center in 1991 and 1992, when he led the Blue Devils to the only back-to-back national titles in ACC history. Luckily, he just as clearly played forward in 1990, so there's some wiggle room there.

If you accept Laettner as a forward, then you must acknowledge that the 1992 national player of the year simply was the most important NCAA Tournament performer the ACC has ever produced.

Len Bias also was an easy pick. Although he never claimed national player of the year honors, he was a consensus first-team All-American and a two-time ACC player of the year -- at a time when the league may have been better than it ever was.

Now to the backcourt ... and the real controversy.

Michael Jordan may be the hardest player to talk about in ACC history. His three years at North Carolina are so overshadowed by his phenomenal NBA career that everybody has trouble defining his place in ACC history.

Jordan was a great college player -- starting as a freshman when he hit the final shot to beat Georgetown in the 1982 title game; continuing his sophomore season when he was a consensus first-team All-American; and culminating in 1984 when the junior Jordan led UNC to a No. 1 ranking and swept every national player of the year award.

Was he the best player in ACC history? No -- that's David Thompson. I'm not even sure Jordan is in my personal top five. But was he one of the two best guards in the last 25 years? No question.

My only problem with the team selected by ESPN was the inclusion of Price, a fine player at Georgia Tech in the mid-1980s but not even the best guard in his era.

How can I say that? Because there was a guard in Price's same recruiting class who was better -- Duke's Johnny Dawkins.

Both Price and Dawkins went into the league together and played the same four years against the same competition. Both came in with other fine players, but both were the centerpiece for teams that would win the ACC title and make deep NCAA runs. Both started out as point guards but moved to the wing -- both were better scorers than distributors.

That said, Dawkins was narrowly better.

He scored more, shot better, rebounded better, passed out more assists and was a better defender. He had a 6-5 edge in head-to-head matchups. Both Dawkins and Price won 30 ACC regular-season games, but Dawkins gets a 36-35 edge if you also count ACC Tournament games. Both won six NCAA Tournament games, but Duke made a better run in 1986, reaching the national title game ... Price never played in the Final Four.

The real kicker is the national awards. Price never was consensus first-team All-American. In fact, he never made first team on a recognized All-American team.

On the other hand, Dawkins was consensus first-team All-America in both 1985 and '86. He was also the Naismith's national player of the year in 1986.

Now, I'm not saying that Dawkins should have been the second guard on ESPN's Silver Anniversary team -- only that it's ridiculous that he was beaten out by Price. Personally, I voted for Bobby Hurley, a first-team All-American in 1993, the Final Four MVP in 1992, the NCAA's all-time assist leader and a point guard who quarterbacked his team to three straight NCAA title games and two national titles.

Oh well, something else to argue about.