June 14, 2004

University of North Carolina head men's basketball coach Roy Williams met with the media on Monday morning at the Smith Center to discuss the offseason and the upcoming summer Olympic Games.

Question: When will you be leaving for your Olympic responsibilities, and how long with that take?

Roy Williams: "The first six days of July I'll try to grab some vacation time, and then July 7 I go to Indianapolis, where we're having a Division I coaches meeting before the recruiting period starts on the 8th. From the 8th through the 17th I'll be recruiting and I'll speak and the North Carolina high school coaches clinic on the 19th. I hope to go to Lawrence (Kan.) and help pack up my daughter to move back to North Carolina. On the night of the 21st I get out to [Las] Vegas for the largest conglomeration of high school tournaments in history, about 5,000 high school kids and three tournaments going on at the same time. I do that on the 22nd, 23rd and 24th, and then on the 25th we assemble in Florida with the players and coaches [of the Olympic team] coming in for about seven days of practice. We go to Cologne, Germany, for an exhibition there, then go to Bosnia and Serbia for exhibitions there and then go to Istanbul, Turkey. We get into Athens on the 16th of August, or thereabouts. I think I get back here on August 30."

Q: Do you have concerns about security in Athens?

RW: "I have concerns, but we will be probably the most protected, most aware group that's at the Olympics. Yes, I am concerned. I think everyone is. But we can't let that dictate what we do with our lives each and every day. I get concerned when I get on I-40 to drive to the airport but I still have to do it."

Q: Could you address how good the ACC was last year and what you expect from the league this coming year?

RW: "I think last year it was fantastic. I thought we were the strongest league in the country. I think we had a great, great year for the league. The people who sit up there at the league office have to feel very good about what the league accomplished. When you do those kind of things, with two teams in the Final Four and throughout the season the kind of performances that everyone put on, it's something you have to be proud of. At the same time, you spend a lot of time beating up on each other, so there are going to be some losses that somebody might not have in another league. I think it'll be the same thing this year. We've taken some hits with four or five youngsters that we thought were going to be with us not being with us. I still think we'll be right there at the top of college basketball again. You can legitimately say that seven or eight teams will have a chance to win it. The interest with the new teams coming in will be important for everyone as well."

Q: Are the early departures more numerous this year and have they changed the way you recruit?

RW: "The early departures get all the attention, but when North Carolina and Duke play people are still going to show up regardless of who's in the uniform. We have to understand, the name on the front of the jersey is still the most important thing in college basketball. It has changed the way I've recruited for the past four or five years, probably. It's changed it more drastically in the last year or so. Right now, if a youngster is in the top 10 and I have to look up at him at all, I'd probably make the decision not to recruit him unless I have a special 'in' like I've been recruiting him for a long time. Guys I can look eyeball-to-eyeball with, those guys don't leave early. The NBA is drafting on potential with the taller guys. I don't think it's the greatest thing in the world for the game, but I don't think it's going to kill college basketball, either."

Q: How has the loss of two of your four recruits for next season affected things?

RW: "Well, it's made us look at more numbers this spring for the next recruiting class. I still feel really good about the two youngsters we have because they're outstanding youngsters and can help our team. There's no question we need more depth, and having all four would've helped our depth and given us more talent."

Q: When you look at a recruit, do you look for certain types of players or traits in players?

RW: "I don't think I can give you one answer because it's like putting together a puzzle. You look at your team and decide what you don't have and try to fill those holes first. How you fill those holes [is the question]. I'd love to go into schools and say, 'Give me your good citizenship award-winner and your valedictorian,' but the fact of the matter is that if I did that, there'd be somebody else up here next year [as head coach]. We have to look for talent first. I look in three areas - talent first, character immediately afterwards and then academics. If I had a guy who's a great, great player and a good student but a pain in the rear end, I wouldn't want to coach him. I'd want somebody else to coach him. It has to be talent, character and academics. You can fall a little deficient in one area, talent or academics, but I don't want you to fall deficient in the character side of it. Once you get past that, then we're recruiting for need based on position. If we have five point guards on the roster, I'm not going to recruit another point guard."

Q: A lot of guys going early talk about that June 17 deadline and the possibility of coming back [to college]. But realistically, though, once they're gone are they usually gone?

RW: "They're usually gone. And the other thing is at that date, the college has no change of replacing them. You can replace them with a body, but you're not going to replace them with anybody with much talent because all the decisions have been made by that point. You can't reach back into that pool and get somebody else because that pool is usually empty by that time. It would have to be something unusual for a youngster to come out and then jump back in. Jason Gardner of Arizona is one example of a guy who went up to Chicago [at the pre-draft camp] and wasn't happy with how he played so he came back to college. The guys who are going to be picked in the top 20, they don't usually come back."

Q: In the days of the early entrant, how excited are you to have a team with three seniors and six juniors?

RW: "If they're good, it really is nice. It doesn't help if you have six walk-ons coming back. Luckily, our guys are good. I think you don't see it very often anymore, but it's important. My last two years at Kansas with Nick [Collison] and Kirk [Hinrich] staying four years and Drew [Gooden] staying for his junior year, we went to two straight Final Fours. Talent is the first thing that gets you that kind of success, but if you have experienced talent it's really good. And the kids have to get better individually. All the guys we get from high school have holes in their games and you get better the more you play. Even our players now, every player we have has significant holes. Every year you get better by making your weaknesses stronger."

Q: What are some of those holes for the guys returning to next season's team?

RW: "You don't have to be a nuclear physicist to figure out that we have to guard people better, so everybody's got to work on guarding the basketball better. We want Raymond [Felton]'s shot to go in more. Nobody wants that more than Raymond does. We want Sean [May] to have more stamina to be able to play longer and to make more of his shots. We'd like Jackie [Manuel] to be able to do all of the things he did last year and hopefully be more confident with his shot and have more of those go in. We need Jawad [Williams] to be more of an inside presence and be able to score inside and be a better rebounder. We need Melvin [Scott] to be a better ball-handler, and I could go on down the line. What I do every spring is get with the players and give them three or four things that they really need to work on."

Q: How big of an advantage will it be to have so much of your team back, guys who've played together for two or three seasons?

RW: "I hope it will be a positive. It wasn't that much of a positive [last year] because we had such a big change in style last year [from the previous year]. Hopefully with the same voice saying the same kind of things to them again, it will be easier. They'll be more familiar with what we're trying to do, not just familiar with their teammates."

Q: What needs to be done for this team to get better defensively?

RW: "I think it's a lot more that needs to be done here and there. The kids want to guard, but it's hard work, it really is. It's got to be a huge emphasis for them. It's something we bought into well at times last year, but at times I didn't do a good enough job of making them buy into it. We've got to find better ways to coach it and practice it, too. We've got to get better."