OK Roy, this is getting ridiculous
Posted: Friday, November 13, 2009 2:47 PM
Filed Under:
Coaches, Big East, Recruiting
Roy Williams likes to say his name doesn’t belong in the same sentence as Dean Smith. When North Carolina won its fifth NCAA tournament last spring – its second under Williams, matching Smith’s total – he continually deflected attention from himself to his school and his players.
“Roy Williams is not that good,” he said last April. “But Ole Roy has got some big-time players and that’s what it takes.”
Well, chalk up another big-time player. Another title may follow.
Jeff Roberson/AP |
Roy Williams has already won two NCAA tournament titles. Can another be right behind?
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Harrison Barnes – perhaps the nation’s No. 1 recruit – committed to North Carolina on Friday. "He's the most complete offensive player in the country,” says Paul Biancardi, Scouts Inc.'s national recruiting director.
That gives the Tar Heels two of the Top 10 prospects and three of the top 32 in the class of 2010, according to Rivals.com.
It’s generally acknowledged that places like UNC don’t rebuild after winning a championship, they reload. But this is getting ridiculous.
Ever since 2005’s recruiting class that featured Tyler Hansbrough, Danny Green, Marcus Ginyard and Bobby Frasor, Williams has snagged at least one five-star prospect and at least two four-star players every year except 2007. And that was only because Ole Roy didn’t have any available scholarships.
To call North Carolina’s annual recruiting hauls an embarrassment of riches would be too easy. This is more like John Rockefeller assembling building a bigger, more powerful oil monopoly year after year.
Of course, there are reasons Williams can secure classes like this.
North Carolina’s always attracted star players, both in-state and out. As one of the game’s premier programs – and with an alum like Michael Jordan – it’s the type of place that recruits itself. The school gets plenty of TV time and, perhaps most importantly, is almost always in the national title hunt.
But with places like Kentucky, Kansas, UCLA and Tobacco Road rival Duke steeping up their recruiting efforts the last few years, Williams has had to do the same.
He’s always been a year-round recruiter. Yet despite hitting an age (58) when some coaches shift into neutral and coast (hey, he’s got those two titles), he’s still at it. Check out this exchange Williams had with SI.com’s Grant Wahl.
SI.com: I will never forget riding back overnight on the Kansas team bus from Stillwater, Okla., to Lawrence, Kan., for an SI story back in 2002, and you stopped in Wichita to hop on a plane for California to recruit during a crazy stretch in your schedule.
Williams: I still do some of those things. I have several of my coaching buddies say that I do more recruiting during the season than any other head coach around. But what I do is when we give our team the day off from practice --NCAA rules state you have to have one day off each week -- that enables me to go somewhere and see a game or a practice. I'm still doing that. I think a couple years ago every single day off that we gave our kids after practice started, I went somewhere recruiting-wise. Or tried to go. A couple times I had weather complications getting there.
Williams isn’t the only coach putting in those kinds of recruiting hours. But few can match the players he’s nabbed between 2005 and 2009. All of these were rated as five- or four-star recruits: Hansbrough, Green, Ginyard, Frasor, Brandan Wright, Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington, Alex Stepheson, Deon Thompson, Ed Davis, Larry Drew II, Tyler Zeller, John Henson, Leslie McDonald, Dexter Strickland, David Wear and Travis Wear.
That’s two varsity teams worth of top-flight players. (To say nothing of Roy's luck when it comes to those players staying. Wright left after his freshman season and Stepeson transfered. Five of them stayed four years, Lawson and Ellington, three. That's not normal for that type of talent.)
Now it’s two five star guys in Barnes (a 6-7 swingman) and Reggie Bullock (6-5 shooting guard) and a four-star prospect in 6-3 point guard Kendall Marshall.
Reload? Yeah, with a machine gun.
Follow me on Twitter (@BeyndArcMMiller) and get more college basketball news at NBCSports.com.
