Will UNC Tar Heels Roy Williams Never Get Any Respect? - Reprise

The one thing Roy Williams has worked on this year above everything else is character. Not just bad free throws, silly turnovers, and selfish play. But team character. Something that Duke has seemed to have more of recently given the two game losing streak at home UNC's Tar Heels had suffered on its home court to those Devils.

But then came February 20, 2014. And it all seemed to make sense. The time UNC had taken. The hard work. And the crowd had all come to play. And the result was a true beat-down. Not from what one writer said after the Pittsburgh game, the first game from which Carolina won after trailing at half-time. But from an eleven point deficit during the second half. Just when it was time to collapse.

Giving credit where credit is due, unlike Coach K will ever do, this was classic Roy Williams. He disrupted the disrupting. He took Coach K's "brilliant" orders to his stars to drive on UNC and meshed it into his second half plans to use a 1-3-1 defense. And it worked like a charm. As did the repeated switching of defenses.

So many say that defense wins championships it is truly old hat. And yet, with Carolina disrespected in every way possible, unranked, given a strength-of-schedule rating as recently as last week in the 50s, ranked that low by those who should know better, having its losses to minor players treated as more significant than those wins against the first four in the pre-season AP rankings, Carolina punched Duke in the nose more than any Duke player has intentionally punched, elbowed and otherwise hit Carolina players.

About a year ago, I published an article with almost the same title. During a poll that many thought worthy of publishing, apparently many coaches made Roy Williams the most over-rated coach in college basketball. What? How is that? Well, they claimed he should have done more with the talent he had.

Over the next year, Jay Williams, perhaps the most anti-Williams sports commentator ever, reared his ugly head. Now, along with Jay Bilas (can't ESPN hire anyone not from Duke whose name is not Jay?), Duke has a one-two punch unlike any other school in the nation. (True, when the Big East reigned over college basketball, announcer prejudice was everywhere. After all, East Coast does mean New York, doesn't it?)

But Jay Williams has such a bias, he found during one game UNC won during this latest eight game streak not one Carolina player playing properly. Each time up or down the court, they were doing something to be criticized.

A not so subtle way for Jay Williams to attack Roy Williams. If I were Roy, I would refuse to talk with Jay Williams. But of course, Roy is not. Among others, he is a Carolina gentleman. But I digress.

Last night, Duke played UNC and, for all to see, superior acting stuck up Coach K was there to show how his great ranked team was going to demolish UNC.

While at least one line had UNC getting two points, the truth is that even those of us who are die-hard Carolina basketball fans had little or no belief that Carolina would win this game. But they did, 74-66.

And the typical Coach K excuse emerged immediately after the game with a bit more of a twist. He blamed "it," which resulted in Carolina winning a game they should not have won.

Too bad that Duke did not have "it." Yes, how better to cast an aspersion on the brilliant coaching job Coach K faced after half-time. How many ways has Coach K dissed Roy Williams? No doubt he and his henchmen were behind at least some of the "over-rated" vote against Roy.

The work against Roy Williams continued out of its typical source. As he tells it, the problem was not the sensational job UNC and it coach did against him, but:

"We looked tired," Krzyzewski said. "We didn't have life ... and that, to me, is the disappointing thing. I'm not afraid to lose and respect people who beat us. But I would've liked to have done more tonight in the second half. So I'm walking out of here frustrated -- not with the loss but with the fact that we didn't ante up the way we should've."

Yes, they were tired, one of the excuses he and his former players had given out earlier in the week on the air. And he did not respect the people who beat them, i.e., Carolina. He said so above, saying he is not afraid to respect "people." After all, he can respect them when they win. But here, Carolina did not win. Duke lost. And he cannot ever respect Roy Williams.

We had one of the most recent ESPN articles saying essentially that Roy Williams has only coached offense during his entire tenure at UNC. This guy is supposed to know basketball? But again, I digress.

Now we have a very important event for those teams Carolina has beaten. Michigan State on its home court at ESPN's and the polls' most favored basketball conference these days. Louisville on a neutral court. Duke on Carolina's court. And Kentucky.

That event is that, despite its perennial placement with the hardest road to the finals because of the nonsense in seeding that happens every year, UNC is on its way to see one or more of them again. Maybe Duke in the ACC tournament as well.

And if they do, watch out. Even without its own home court (Coach K's other diss was of course that it had nothing to do with the Carolina crowd who supported their team unlike any time in the past ten years), Carolina can beat you.

And the message? That the commentators, voters and whoever else influence the NCAA tournament (some even claimed last week they did not know if Carolina would make the tournament) can shove it.

This team of far lesser talent, that lost their main scorer and had less to work with earlier this year than they do now, have a great coach who has molded them into a team.

And they will beat you.

Maybe Carolina will not make the Final Four. But Jay Bilas, who is generally quite neutral, said last night that he would not be surprised if they make it there.

I favor his view. Not just because I am a Carolina fan. Because the facts speak for themselves.

The Know Nothing, Say Nothing, Manage Nothing US Government

Although we have many examples of President Obama knowing nothing, today's announcement by staunch spy manager and supporter Diane Feinstein that she knew nothing about the spying on world leaders conducted under her supervision brings home the fancy politics of "know nothing." When everything else fails, do not take the Fifth. Take the "know nothing" defense, with a bit of "say nothing" and "manage nothing" thrown in when necessary.

The Obama Administration and its admirers have taken this art well-beyond anything the American public has seen before. Not only is it "know nothing," it is also manage nothing. Have a bill? As Representative Pelosi said in connection with the Affordable Care Act, wait to read it until after it is passed, the ultimate in "know nothing" self-defense.

There is every reason to believe that each of these players, from President Obama to Senator Feinstein to James Clapper not only should have known what was going on but did. Why would any sentient voter in the US believe that a trapping system that catches foreign communications would not trap those with foreign government officials?

Whether they truly knew nothing is beyond the point. The point is that they should have known much more than something. And that government at any level is committed not to keep its actions from us or just lie, as has happened from the Affordable Care Act to Benghazi, from Executive Privilege to keeping us safe.

Whether this concept had its roots in the Know Nothing party, a group that was supposed to announce "I know nothing" if asked anything about what was going on, is uncertain and probably worthy of a much larger work. Still, as we know, we will know nothing because everyone involved, judges who cannot even keep a record, our president, Congressional members and staff elevated to the position of "know something," and of course our spies, are required by law to say they cannot tell us what they know. We now have laws that enforce "know nothing."

And we are told that knowing nothing, saying nothing, and even managing nothing makes sense in the absence of public discovery of what is going on.

In the middle of this, we have some apparently strange bedfellows. Rand and Ron Paul, Judge Napolitano, and Congressman John Conyers. According to Conyers: 

"It's my fear that we are on the verge of becoming a surveillance state, collecting billions of electronic records on law-abiding Americans every single day." A few hours after Conyers spoke, Republican Rand Paul, a Tea Party favorite and lifelong fan of the libertarian philosopher Ayn Rand, announced he was filing a lawsuit against the NSA for abuse of power.

Why is this utter irresponsibility ignored by everyone of influence? Does the public really want this? Can Rand Paul win his lawsuit against President Obama's spy apparatus?

Few issues are more important to liberty than to keep the government from unconstitutional intrusions into our lives. Let's hope these and many others manage to change our spying landscape. After all, just how long can a few unsupported claims that the information somehow "helped" capture five or fewer "terrorists" keep our country spending trillions on keeping it safe, invade everyone's privacy, and kill whomever our president wants, because of "safeguards" that turn out to have those managing our "programs" claim they knew nothing? We can hope that even the conservative members of the US Supreme Court will have trouble with that one. 

Will Roy Williams Never Get Respect from His Peers?

Roy Williams still in his prime. (AP Photo)

As we know, Roy Williams, the head coach of the Tar Heels, suffered during a vote that dealt with the "most overrated" coaches. He headed the list. In my book, this means that Roy Williams has been more maligned by his peers than any other sports personality in college basketball history.

I know. Hyperbole may get some attention but the cognoscenti automatically reject this as not worth reading.

Perhaps you would like to take on some notorious college coaches like Bobby Knight, Bruce Pearl and Jim Calhoun and claim they did not deserve their bad raps.

But shocking as it may be, none of these personalities ever suffered very much from their peers despite their real and alleged misdeeds.

So when I read that The University of North Carolina received commitments from two of the top five star 2014 high school basketball recruits yesterday, all I could do is think about Roy Williams' peers. Groaning and complaining some more about how bad a coach he is, and how he only wins because of the talent he gets.

Roy Williams has had little to say about this notorious and undeserved ranking by his peers. But it must hurt deeply. What we want most is respect from our peers. Not undeserved criticism.

So what does "Ol' Roy," a denigrating term used by sports reporters even when he was young, do this year? Accomplish one of the greatest coaching jobs of his or any other coaching career.

Losing four starters to the NBA surely would be a problem for most coaches. But the polls, including one whose voters are only his peers, said he had a top 10 team at the beginning of the 2012-13 season. Why? Because in their view he had top 10 talent?

If you watched any of the creamings UNC's Tar Heels have suffered this year at the hands of Indiana and other teams, you would have said "nonsense" and moved on. The "talent" was not what it could have been for this Hall of Fame coach.

So how is it that Roy Williams stands at the top of the ACC standings and is still able to recruit? Is it only because he is one of the great coaches. Faulted by me and others for being a bad bench coach due to second halves, he has proved us wrong largely because he clearly was not getting his best from his players at the end of the games and he has fallen short in comebacks of greater than 20 points.

Has he underachieved because he is nowhere near the place where the pollsters put his team at the beginning of the year or was his team overrated?

A bit of both. His talent was far from where it should have been at the beginning of the year and his team was overrated. Yet, as one watches the Miracle on Sipper Bowles Drive, we have to believe that these Heels were improving all the time.

Now we have the four guard lineup that will get the Heels a seeding lower than it should, teams that will be tough during the tournament since this tournament is wide open, and another chance for Roy Williams to shine.

Once the Heels beat Maryland, certainly not a given, another classic Blues fight is brewing at the Dean Smith Center, although the return of dark blue Duke's Ryan Kelly has made this game entirely different from the last one.

Can Carolina's blue beat Duke with their revived lineup as short and funny as it is at the moment? Or will Williams be forced to go big?

Not likely. This game will be won or lost on fast breaks, assists (the Tar Heels are number 2 in the country), turnovers and the ungodly shooting of Kelly at the three point circle.

The bet here is that even if Williams wins, he will not get much praise. With Miami's regular season win all but tied up, only the first round bye likely already obtained matters.

But don't bet against Roy and the Tar Heels next week.

Note: The AP has eight teams with seven or more losses in the Top 25. If it were not for the over-rated Big Ten, the ACC would have more. Look for this conference to do its usual swoon in the NCAA. Basketball polls mean nothing if you are in the tournament, especially this year.