Tick Tick Tick…The Time Is Now

The last shot. It's one of the molecular chains in the DNA of college basketball. It's Lorenzo Charles' catch-and-release to give NC State the 1983 title, Christian Laettner's turnaround jumper against Kentucky in 1992, Matt Sylvester's three to ruin Illinois' perfect season just the other day. It's also a way to describe the final exam for a team in need of redemption. That's why we've highlighted the Tar Heels in our Tourney preview: they have the talent to win it all, but they're under the intense pressure of history (ancient and recent), and time is running out. In our Clockers package, we tell you which men and women to look for in the waning seconds. And finally, we profile a couple of players who've already made the most of their last shot.

They're college kids, and that needs to be understood up front. It's a fact that gets bypassed sometimes, amid the intensity of the cameras and the severity of the critics and the insincerity of the money-grubbers. They're college kids, and the coach knows that means one thing: they can still enjoy being stupid.

The point was made on a December afternoon, in the middle of a clump of holiday games and savage practices. The North Carolina Tar Heels had a camp to run, with 250 elementaryschoolers bouncing around the Dean Dome like crickets in a jar. The players didn't want to practice after the camp, and neither did the coach, really. He wouldn't tell them that, but it was the truth. Everyone can use a day off once in a while. So Roy Williams gathered his team before the crickets arrived.

"You've got to do three things and we won't practice," he told them. "Number one, you've got to do a great job with the camp. Number two, after it's over, you've all got to make 12 of 16 free throws. Three, you've got to sing a song about how much you love your coaches."

Williams is proud to be corny in a world of cool. Of course, he's corny in a corncob-pipe-and-Zegna-suit kind of way, which means the corniness is always shielding something smarter and smoother underneath. It's a trait that seems exclusive to bigtime college coaches, this ability to blur the borders at the union of corniness and suave. Williams is the master, but this particular stunt had the potential to backfire. First of all, it assumed an emotion-love-that Williams couldn't be sure existed. Second, in his words, "It was the silliest assignment I've ever given a team."

The camp went well and the free throws went well. Back in the locker room, with their coaches awaiting the true test, the Tar Heels huddled and talked, finally agreeing on a composition they hoped would earn them a free afternoon. They were serious about it, unaware that the exercise had more to do with their coach's strange alchemy than a day without practice.

When they broke the huddle, junior forward David Noel assumed the role of lead vocalist. His teammates gathered around him, drumming on chairs to create a crude approximation of the lead-in to Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger," the '80s anthem that has entered the consciousness of today's college students through a Starbucks commercial.

Noel looked out at his coaches, leaned into an imaginary microphone and belted …

Roy!

Roy, Roy, ROY!

It went on and on, funnier by the verse, with the players ad-libbing lyrics about their eagerness to do anything but practice. Noel added a moonwalk that would have ripped Survivor's spandex. The whole scene gave the coach chills, right from the moment he heard Noel let loose with the first "Roy."

A year ago, this wouldn't have happened. A year ago, these guys were too consumed with themselves, too eager to bask in their own self-created glory, too content to shrug off losses, too willing to nod across the room when asked to assess blame. Sixteen guys, sixteen agendas. Last year they probably would have just practiced, screw the singing. Now here they were being stupid, gloriously stupid, and they were doing it together. The coach was doubled over laughing, but the more he laughed, the more he thought he just might cry.

You see, he looked at the group singing in front of him, and he knew it meant one thing: this team has a chance.

IT'S REMARKABLE how blunt they are. "Teamwork was a hard sell for this group," says junior center Sean May. "When you give an 18-year-old kid the spotlight, he's going to do some crazy things. We were selfish. This time around, everyone is losing himself in the team."

Nobody ever questioned the talent in Chapel Hill. The desire? Yes. The intensity? Yes. The heart? Definitely. But the talent … well, the talent was unquestioned, abundant, perhaps bordering on the obscene. Three years ago, Matt Doherty brought in a trio of high school All-Americas: May, point guard Raymond Felton and wing Rashad McCants. It was one of Carolina's best classes ever, capable of restoring a proud tradition besmirched by an eightwin season in 2001-02. A national title, or two, seemed tantalizingly possible.

But after May, Felton and McCants finished their freshman season with a 19—16 record, Doherty was forced to resign. Tar Heel Nation buzzed that the same kids the coach had sweet-talked onto campus were the ones who had run him off. It was ugly. It was public. The way the players handled it is the first example May cites when he talks about the "crazy things" an entitled 18-year-old can do. As McCants says, "That was not a happy time."

Williams, whose Kansas squad had lost to Syracuse in the national title game, took over at his alma mater in April 2003, still seeking his first ring. What he got was the most frustrating season of his career. The Heels were selfish, "uncoachable" (his word) and finished a symbolically half-assed 8—8 in the ACC on their way to falling in the second round of the NCAA Tourney last spring.

This season, something changed. The team closed ranks, adopting an all-business attitude while tuning out all outside opinion and influence. Not coincidentally, potential has stepped up to meet reality. Carolina won the ACC regular-season title and routinely sledgehammered opponents with the kind of fast-break offense and pressure defense that send teams packing in March. Never mind their premature exit from the conference tournament. The Heels enter the Dance with expectations they're determined to meet. But as title-talk swirls around them, one question remains: can they keep their togetherness together long enough to win six straight when it matters most?

Or, as May asks, "Is this our last shot?" He thinks for a few moments before answering. Forward Jawad Williams is a senior; McCants and Felton might leave early for the NBA. "It might not be our last shot," May says, "but it might be our best."

Look at UNC's talent, and try to explain how any other team-yes, even compulsively pass-happy Illinois-should be favored to win it all. There's Felton, the one-man fast break and 44% shooter from the arc; McCants, the reformed malcontent who ranks among the most electric scorers in the nation; May, the 6'9" center with the 7'2" wingspan and a body that clears horizontally like a grader; Jawad Williams, the Bible-toting, inside-out threat and calming influence; senior Jackie Manuel, the defensive specialist; and freshman Marvin Williams, the sixth man everyone says could be scoring 20 a game anywhere else in the country.

It's a testament to the team's new maturity that five Heels average in double figures. Before the season, Coach Williams outlined his expectations for each player. He told May he wanted the same production as last year, but in fewer minutes. "It sounded unfair at first, I admit it," May says. And yet his numbers (16.5 ppg, 10.7 rpg, both tops on UNC) are slightly up, while his minutes are down from 28 to 26 a game. "Everyone wants to score 20; that hasn't changed," McCants says. "But when you've got a team that lets you pass and get to the same place, why not? That feels just as good."

So how did this happen? How did they learn to share the ball, and the glory? How did they go from "too cool," as May says, to "almost too unselfish," as the coach says?

First off, here's how they didn't go about it. There was no mysticism, no reconnection with the inner child. There's nothing more boring than the New Age concept of team-building, with its images of corporate obstacle courses and blindfolded trust walks. That's not why anybody watches sports, and Roy Williams seems to grasp this instinctively. "We thought about doing some team-building stuff," he says dismissively, looking like the question owes him money. "Then we decided that teams come together by working hard."

A dose of humiliation doesn't hurt, either. Last August, several ex-Heels visiting Chapel Hill decided to have a talk with the current group. Antawn Jamison, Vince Carter, Jerry Stackhouse, George Lynch and Shammond Williams delivered an unsparing message, a hoops version of Scared Straight!: we're tired of watching you guys waste your talent and soil the Tar Heel name with your underachieving selfishness. "They told us they were still with us," says Jawad Williams. "But they made it clear they were sick of watching us play the way we were playing."

Point taken. These Heels aren't all best friends, and they don't pretend to be, but they got tighter as they ran roughshod over the ACC this winter.

Sometimes bonds strengthen from simple adhesive: a newly installed locker-room PS2, for instance, has increased the amount of time the players spend goofing around after workouts. Proximity also matters; everyone but McCants and junior center Damion Grant lives in the same apartment complex. "I don't think many college teams are as close as people might think," McCants says. "But this year we spend more time together."

Coach Williams initiated another major theme of his rehabilitation plan-unity through adversitywith a hellish conditioning week to start off fall practice. The on-court running drills were so hard, it bordered on sadistic. "Guys were literally helping each other run," Noel says. As Williams explains it, "I wanted them to come together, and I knew there were some times when they walked out of practice united in their anger at me. I was fine with that."

He saw that his plan was really taking hold during a chat with his prize freshman one day. Marvin Williams had arrived on campus destined to take minutes away from the returning big men. But when the coach asked who was helping him adjust to college life, Marvin answered, "Jawad and Sean," naming the two guys whose playing time was most affected by his presence.

May, by all accounts, is the team's conscience. The polished son of former Indiana All-America Scott May, Sean was the one who marched into the locker room after Carolina's season-opening loss to Santa Clara-played to the strains of the Chapel Hill Choir's "Here We Go Again"-and admonished the squad: "Nobody said we were going undefeated, but we've got to get it together and stay together." Then McCants reminded them, "We can't have any of these feelings again. We can't spend the season saying, 'I should have played better.' "

The Tar Heels won their next 14, and 19 of 20, before losing a showdown at Duke by one point. In that game, UNC had the ball at the end, but the play broke down and Felton picked up his dribble above the circle, even though he had a lane to the hoop. Afterward, everybody lined up to take the blame. Jawad Williams faulted himself, but McCants begged to differ. "I didn't show up tonight," Rashad told his teammates. (He ended up missing the next four games because of an intestinal disorder, before returning for the ACC tourney. His mother attributed his condition to stress caused by her battle with breast cancer.)

The day after the Duke loss, Roy Williams addressed his team. "You've all heard your classmates and everyone else say it was Raymond's fault that he didn't penetrate to the basket," he said. "But was it the fault of the Blue [scout] team for not doing a very good job of running the other team's offense in practice? We say everybody needs to share the ball and rebound, so is it the White [starting] team's fault? Or is it the coaches' fault for not calling the right plays?" Williams paused. "You know what? It's everybody's fault. It's us. When people say all these great things about us, it's us. So let's have the negative things be about us too. And let's go to Connecticut and play our tails off."

Four days later, the Tar Heels beat the Huskies, 77-70. Felton had 16 points and 10 assists.

THERE'S A man sitting next to the press table at the Dean Dome, and he's disgusted. He's wearing khakis, a Carolina blue button-down shirt and a bow tie. He's keeping track of a mid-February game with a series of pencil markings in the notebook in his lap. UNC leads Virginia by 15 six minutes into the second half, and it's simply not enough. "We're playing these guys even in the second half," he hollers, seemingly to himself. "That's ridiculous."

From the moment McCants, May and Felton stepped foot on campus, every Tar Heel has heard and read one thing: you can't lose. What nobody told them, though, was the other side of the equation: you can't win, either.

"We were so highly touted, people thought we couldn't lose," May says, shrugging. "Well, it took a little longer for us to buy into the program."

If they do win, it's simply a foregone conclusion. "With all that talent … " the refrain goes. If they win, but not by enough, if they don't inflict the type of carnage the man in the bow tie prefers, doubts arise. And if they lose, if they finish their season before April 4 in St. Louis, there will be no escape. That kind of proposition breeds insularity, the kind of us-vs.-them mentality the Tar Heels have displayed all season.

Their postgame interviews take on a surreal quality, with the local media attempting to discuss individual performances and getting rebuffed every step of the way. "We're just trying to do what it takes to win a championship," McCants said after the 24-point win over Virginia. "You guys keep asking about me, but it's not about me."

It turns out the appropriate pronouns are all plural. Us. Them. We. As May says, "It is us against the world."

They challenged themselves to play together and prove everybody wrong. Of course, by proving everybody wrong and winning the national title, they'll be proving everybody right, too.

Can't lose.

Can't win.

No matter. Everyone has crosses to bear, but winners derive strength from theirs. These Heels have found motivation from corniness, humiliation and the prying eyes of a cynical world. Those elements created a chemical compound that has them believing anything is possible. And if everything holds, who knows …

Corny might even become cool.

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