After finally getting the monkey off his back by winning his first national title last year, the question was what North Carolina head coach Roy Williams could possibly do for an encore this season.
How about having his young team go ape-wild in the ACC?
With the top seven scorers off last year's National Championship squad gone, North Carolina was picked by many experts to finish in the bottom half of the ACC and to spend much of its March in the NIT. But Williams has led his freshman-laden team into the ACC Tournament as the second seed, having won seven straight games.
Despite all the doubt from outside sources, the attitude from within the program was much different all along.
"Don't count this team out next year," Raymond Felton said last April as he declared for the NBA Draft. "This coach over here just won the National Championship. He can coach. They will be prepared."
Juniors Felton, Sean May and Rashad McCants, along with freshman Marvin Williams, left early for the NBA. All four were taken in the first 14 picks of the draft June 28.
The exodus left the Tar Heels with senior David Noel, who averaged just 3.9 points per game last season, and junior Reyshawn Terry as the returning leaders. They were joined by a talented incoming class.
Although no one besides Noel had played more than seven minutes per game last season, Williams warned his players from the start that he would not let them use their lack of experience as a crutch.
"I told them I was not into moral victories and I was not into using as an excuse how young you are," Williams said. "And they haven't. They have tried to be the absolute best they can be and they have competed their tails off."
The young Tar Heels have responded by posting a 21-6 record this year, climbing to No. 10 in the most recent AP poll and knocking off then-No. 1 Duke in Cameron Indoor Stadium March 4. Williams' coaching job with this surprising team has placed him as a favorite for his fifth National Coach of the Year award.
Despite all the obstacles, this season was not even the most challenging in Williams' three-year tenure at UNC, he said.
Williams' first year in Chapel Hill was difficult for him both because of the work that went into changing the culture of a talented team, and the emotion that went into his decision to leave Kansas, where he had been head coach for 15 seasons.
The 55-year old coach inherited a team that had a strong rising sophomore class but had been labeled as soft and selfish the year before as it went 19-16 under then-head coach Matt Doherty.
"When I got here, I think the attitude was affected by human nature," Williams said. "When things aren't going well, you try to find some way that you can have some success. And sometimes in basketball that's bad because you start thinking about individual success."
The Tar Heels went 19-11 in Williams' initial campaign as he tried to instill his team and defensive philosophies. Williams, who had served as an assistant coach at North Carolina for 10 years under Dean Smith, often said during the 2003-2004 season that he was frustrated with the progress, but the Tar Heels made the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2001.
"It wasn't an easy year, but that doesn't mean the kids were bad kids," Williams said. "I was proud that we won 19 games and we went to the tournament and nobody had ever been to the tournament."
The labors of Williams' first year truly paid off the next season, as North Carolina tallied a 33-4 record and captured the program's fourth National Championship. The title was the first for Williams in his fifth Final Four. The UNC alumnus' system had fully caught on, as the Tar Heels averaged 88 points per game and held their opponents to just 40 percent shooting.
Despite the success with the players he inherited from Doherty, Williams said this season has been easier because his younger players are his own recruits. The talented freshman class includes point guard Bobby Frasor and All-ACC first teamer Tyler Hansbrough, the Tar Heels' leading scorer and rebounder.
"When young kids come in and we have gone through the recruiting process, I've been in these kids homes, I've told them my vision of what I want this to be, told them what I thought they could accomplish," Williams said. "When you don't recruit the kids, you don't have that foundation, and with this group I did have that foundation."
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