Nov. 15, 2009
By Adam Lucas
Marcus Ginyard has talked his way through many difficult situations during his five-year Carolina career. Through all of them, he's been remarkably consistent.
Unlike some of his teammates, basketball is not his life. Sure, he loves the game. No one would put in the time spent by a Carolina basketball player if he didn't love it. But he loves other things, too--his car, a good tune on the iPod, hanging out with his mom, finding something new to experience on campus. That sense of the world makes him the go-to player in the Tar Heel locker room for a quote with some perspective.
That's why it was startling to encounter him gloomy after Sunday's 88-77 win over Valparaiso. There were clues that Roy Williams might be abrupt in his postgame press conference. After watching his team occasionally struggle against the Valpo zone and commit too many careless turnovers, he'd been so miffed in the final media timeout that he finally turned the huddle over to Steve Robinson.
"I said before the season started that some days we're going to be pretty good and some days we're going to be pretty ugly," Williams said. "And today was one of those days, I thought we were pretty ugly."
Parents will understand this: there are some days your kids get into the exact same mischief they did the day before, but for some reason it irks you more on one particular day. That's what Sunday felt like, and Williams was visibly going through a quiet burn on the sidelines.
So the plan was to get into the Carolina locker room and get some veteran perspective from Ginyard. He'd have a funny story about he learned a similar lesson with his freshman teammates in 2006, or how the young guys had now officially been indoctrinated into the reality of expectations at North Carolina.
Instead, here's a partial reproduction of some of his thoughts:
"No disrespect to Valpo but they're not as talented as we are. To see them in the game the way they were, that should never happen."
Is that part of being a young team?
"It doesn't have to be."
Why did you feel the team was flat?
"I don't know."
Does solving the intensity problem come from the players or from the coaches?
"It needs to come from us, but I don't know..."
Why are you taking it so personally?
"It was a bad performance. I don't know how else to say it without getting too wired up. It was a bad performance for everybody. The lack of effort and lack of focus, especially from myself, is something that can't happen."
Just as a reminder, this is after a game Carolina led by 24 points midway through the second half, although that lead eventually dissolved to an 11-point victory. And yes, Ginyard did commit an uncharacteristic five turnovers, tied for the second-most in his Tar Heel career. But still, his silence was jarring. This is someone who never gives one-sentence answers. This is someone who, even when he was on the verge of shutting down his senior season because of a foot injury--which meant watching his teammates, classmates and housemates go on to win a national championship with him wearing a suit--was philosophical about what his injury meant and how he would handle it.
He's encountered plenty of adversity in his Carolina career. It was unexpected to see him be the most outwardly disappointed after a double-digit November win over a nonconference foe. It's instructive that his frustration was not with physical errors, but with a lack of focus. Missed shots or bad passes happen. Emotional shortcomings shouldn't.
Presumably, that's the weight of being a senior. Ginyard feels responsible for not just his five turnovers, but also for the team's other nine miscues and every other weakness that didn't show up on the stat sheet. The freshmen are still so young that they don't even know what they don't know yet.
They'll find out starting Thursday, when the first stage of a wicked pre-Christmas schedule begins in New York City. Williams said his team has "no chance" to beat Ohio State with a repeat performance from Sunday. And without hearing his coach's take, Ginyard's experience already suggested a similar outcome.
"We can't carry over this lackadaisical attitude to New York," he said, "or we're going to have a nasty time up there."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of five books on Carolina basketball, including the just-released book on the 2009 national title, One Fantastic Ride. Get real-time UNC sports updates from the THM staff on Twitter.
