JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Roy Williams is not a silly man. Or at least it wouldn’t appear that way to anyone who has ever watched a North Carolina basketball game.
But after the Tar Heels beat Arkansas 87-78 on Saturday to advance to the Sweet 16 after opening-weekend exits in each of the last two NCAA tournaments, the often ornery Carolina coach apparently let his guard down and conducted himself very much like a man who was not the Roy Williams we all think we know.
“I probably acted sillier in the locker room after this game than I have in quite a while,” the 64-year-old in the plaid jacket admitted after watching his team top the fifth-seeded Razorbacks behind 20 second-half points from Marcus Paige and 14 from freshman Justin Jackson. “I'm going to try to enjoy the dickens out of this one for a while tonight.”
Of course, if you’re looking for more detail than that, you won’t be getting it. Because, again: Roy Williams is not a silly man, and his players know better than to divulge any more information that might suggest that he is. Plus, by now, Williams is almost assuredly done enjoying the dickens out of the win and back to being regular Roy, anyway.
However, should UNC find a way past Wisconsin on Thursday in LA, Williams might consider it yet another reason to slip on his dancing pants — or do whatever it is he did that necessitated a gag order on the locker room — because a win would put the Heels back in the Elite Eight for the first time since 2012.
Such a figure may not sound remarkable to most programs around the country, but UNC is not most programs. Since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, the Tar Heels have gone three consecutive seasons without reaching the Elite Eight only once (a four-year stretch from 2001 to 2004 that included Williams’ first season in Chapel Hill).
Furthermore, the team’s current five-year slide without a Final Four is the school’s longest drought since an eight-year absence following Carolina’s NCAA title in 1982, a span that still included eight Sweet 16s and four Elite Eights.
“Our fans expect us to have a No. 1 seed overall every single year,” said Paige, the Heels’ junior point guard and the team leader in scoring, assists and steals. “Unfortunately, it didn't happen for us this year, but we understand the moment, and you've got to win six games. Once you're slotted in the tournament and you're in position, it's up for grabs. And we knew that we had the talent, we had the capability. We just have to buy in and do what we're told.”
Winning is so woven into the fabric of North Carolina basketball that people simply don’t know how to react when the Tar Heels are just pretty good or even really good, so discovering that UNC seems to finally have its groove back after an agonizingly long departure from national prominence is certainly cause for celebration.
Still, Williams is realistic enough to know that his club’s recent “rough patch” (the Tar Heels were an 8-seed in 2013 and a 6-seed last year and lost Round of 32 games to Kansas and Iowa State, respectively) has not been as bad as it’s been made out to be.
“Let's not have a misconception. These kids have had a pretty doggone good run for the last three years,” Williams said. “We've won 25, 24, and 26 (games), and … a lot of teams would like that.
“We have had some problems. We've lost some games that we wanted to win, there's no question … but these guys — we had some injuries, and we had to go small one year. We played four guards and still won 25 (in 2012-13). I feel really good about what these kids have accomplished, I really do.”
And when Williams looks at the roster he has right now, he sees a team that is capable of being even better than it was over the weekend in Florida.
“I feel really good about what these kids have done this year in a really difficult league,” Williams said. “Somebody said the only team we lost to that wasn't playing was Pitt. Everybody else was still playing. And we played 19 games against teams in the tournament. We played 10 games against the top four seeds.”
Now it’s just a matter of seeing if Carolina is up to its most important test yet.
Saturday’s win gave Williams 750 for his career. It also tied him with the late Dean Smith with 65 career victories in the NCAA tournament, and adding one or two more to the ledger this week would only stand to lift Williams’ spirits even more after a tough season both on and away from the court.
“Losing Coach Smith, losing Ted Seagroves, my big-time buddy, and Stuart Scott, the stuff that we've had going on — Mitch Kupchak's daughter — it's been a hard year, it really has,” Williams said.
“Basketball is a game. It's entertainment for everybody in the crowd. My wife gets really upset with me when I say it's my life, but other than my family, it is my life. It's been some rocky times, and I told the kids this week, the only difference between stepping stones and stumbling blocks is how you look at them. The things I've had personally have been really, really difficult, but I've loved coaching my team. I've loved coaching this team.”
With that in mind, it’s no wonder Williams let loose and cut a rug in the locker room on Saturday. Unless he didn’t. Honestly, we’ll never know for sure, because, again: Roy Williams is not a silly man.
“It would be the most embarrassing thing of my life probably, so I'll just leave it like that,” Williams said. “I hope the cameras weren't all over the locker room, let's put it that way.”
You can follow Sam Gardner on Twitter or email him at samgardnerfox@gmail.com.
