Bright Futures

You hate to end the season the way it did for our team, but when you think about it, only one team is happy when the season is over.

Everyone knows we were caught short in some areas with the guys leaving early last year, and what you want your team to do every season is improve as it goes along. I think we did that and I’ve said before this may have been Coach Williams’ and his staff’s best coaching job.

We caught Kansas when they were tight in the first half and if a few more of our shots went down we could have been ahead by much more than nine points. If so, that would have made it hard for Kansas to win, no matter how well they played in the second half. But it wasn’t to be, and now with one and a half “bad games” behind them Kansas could be dangerous for the rest of the tournament.

Winning 25 games was pretty amazing, when you consider how unsure we looked in December and January. When we went small, the game was in the hands of the shooters and we won a lot of contests by shooting the ball really well. But, as they say, if you live by it you may die by it someday.

It gives us great momentum going into next season, especially if everyone comes back. I agree with Coach Williams, that Reggie, James Michael and P.J. will all be in the NBA someday, but we don’t know exactly when. If the guaranteed money is there, it becomes a tough choice, but as a Carolina fan I hope they all come back for one more season and help us have a great year, which in turn will help their draft status.

We’ll have more size coming in next season and with the big guys returning I think we’ve probably seen the end of small ball except in certain match-up situations. Coach Smith used to say the biggest improvement comes between your freshman and sophomore years, after having one season to learn what playing college basketball is all about. So I look for Brice and Joel and J.P. to improve over the summer, and Marcus to keep getting better as he did all season. He’s going to be one great point guard for Carolina, I’m sure of that.

Now, I guess we can just sit back and enjoy the tournament. There are some great teams left, like Louisville and Indiana and, of course, Duke and Miami. How about Florida Gulf Coast? That’s a great story about Andy Enfield getting into coaching in an unusual way. He had always been involved in basketball, but before taking his first coaching job he had already sold his company for a hundred million dollars.

I heard that he told the school he wanted to make a nice donation, and they asked what they could do for him in return.

And he said, “I’d like to coach your basketball team!”

Phil Ford was a three-time All-American at UNC, 1978 ACC Player of the Year, NBA Rookie of the Year, an NBA all-star, and was recently inducted into the College Basketball Hall of Fame.

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