WRAL Sports Fan

North Carolina

Williams makes changes to give UNC a jump

By David Reynolds

Jan 16, 2009

Chapel Hill, N.C. — With more than 20 seasons worth of experience as the head coach of a college program, Roy Williams has a pretty good idea by now what he wants his players to do on the court.

But after watching his team stumble early in conference play, Williams knew he had to make some changes to give his team a spark.

Take Thursday night’s game at Virginia. When North Carolina ran its out-of-bounds plays under the basket, it wasn’t Ty Lawson throwing the ball inbounds. That responsibility instead fell to Danny Green and Will Graves.

“First time in 21 years anyone other than the point guard has taken the ball out for me,” Williams said in a news conference Friday. “First time in 21 years.”

And that’s just the one of several new experiments with which Williams has been tinkering.

Zone defense, seldom used this season by UNC, appeared during the Wake Forest game. Fewer “scramble” defenses to put pressure on ball handlers have been called to limit the number of wide-open shots. Even the regularity of breaking down game film shifted.

“We had a two-hour film session, which I haven’t had since I’ve been here,” Lawson said.

But all of those changes just might be trumped by a defensive makeover that Williams said most haven’t noticed.

“We made a huge change defensively the last two weeks and I guarantee no one of you would know what I was talking about, but it’s something that’s big for our team.”

When asked to explain some of the defensive changes, Williams simply said, “I don’t have time.”

Lawson, who took a lot of criticism for his play against Wake Forest and Boston College, said his coach’s changes have helped so far in breaking UNC’s mini-slump and gave a clue to what UNC’s defensive switch emphasized.

“We talked about shooting percentages and taking better shots – not taking shots with a hand in our face. And on defense, just helping all the way in, not just sticking your hand in there,” he said. “Against Wake Forest we just gave up open shots, we didn’t make them make an extra pass to make a shot.”

But don’t mistake Williams’ adjustments as panic moves. He said he’s making the moves to relieve some of the pressure and stress his players are feeling from their national title expectations. He wants them to know the sky’s not falling from a few losses and that they can rebound if they keep working hard.

“It doesn’t do any good to say, ‘It’s not my fault, it’s (the players) fault.’ That’s a bunch of garbage, you’ve still got to coach the kids,” he said. “Sometimes just changing something that has absolutely no bearing whatsoever makes them feel better.”

Some other notes from Friday’s news conference:

• Williams said there is no major damage to forward Tyler Hansbrough’s elbow and that he will play through the discomfort the next few. Hansbrough had an X-ray on it Friday morning.
• Williams said Marcus Ginyard (foot) will continue to be held out of practice until at least Wednesday.