UNC Basketball: Roy Williams wants no comparisons to Duke
UNC head coach Roy Williams doesn’t want any comparisons to Duke
The North Carolina Tar Heels moved to 2-0 on the season as they beat Chattnooga at home on Sunday.
But following the game, the conversation steered towards the Tar Heels rivals just down the road.
Head coach Roy Williams was asked in his postgame press conference about being compared to a recent Duke team that won it all. The question was in regards to Nate Britt playing the role of Quinn Cook on Duke’s 2015 National Championship team.
Williams wasn’t having any of it, especially after a game in which Britt started in.
Here’s how Williams opened his response via the News & Observer:
“You know, I assure you that nobody has more respect for Duke and their program than I do, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to pattern what we’re doing after them. So let’s get that straight right now.
That Duke team was pretty damn good and had four Freshman that played a valuable role in their title. They also had the senior Cook, juniors Marshall Plumlee and Amile Jefferson.
Cook was a guard that gave Duke another scoring option as he proved to be valuable down the stretch.
Britt is a senior guard on a Tar Heels team that is pretty deep. But it’s not Britt’s offense that will wow you, instead it’s his defense.
For Williams, the thing that stands out the most about his senior guard is his leadership as he used team outings as a good example:
“But they’ve been fantastic. I don’t know if anybody’s ever done a better job coaching than Mike. But we don’t talk about things like that. But the difference is Quinn was a big-time scorer and an emotional leader, and a good defender. And Nate so far hasn’t got the scoring, but guys do trust Nate.
“And I think if Nate says, ‘Let’s go to so-and-so restaurant,’ the guys would just say, ‘OK.’ Because they trust him. But no, I may compare him to teams that I’ve coached. But I’m not comparing to not only Duke, I’m not comparing them to Slippery Rock or anybody else. That’s not in my DNA to.”
Williams has a point. He wants this Tar Heels team to be themselves and not be compared to any other teams in the country. Hence the Slippery Rock mention.
This is a Tar Heels team that is coming off a National Championship appearance and lost three key seniors. They lost scorers Marcus Paige and Brice Johnson.
This is also a team that is extremely deep and one of the deepest teams Roy has had at UNC.
It’s still early in the season but this was already one of those Roy moments we are going to look back on and enjoy.
Now how many more of those will we get?
More from Keeping It Heel
This article originally appeared on 
