THE CHAMPIONSHIP TEAMS BASKETBALL PERSPECTIVE
Starters from Roy Williams’ Three NCAA Title Teams Talk About Their Experiences
Sean May, Tyler Hansbrough & Kennedy Meeks
This story appeared in the June 2017 issue of Born & Bred magazine.
by Adam Lucas
ADAM LUCAS: When did it first sink in, if it has, that you won a national title?
TYLER HANSBROUGH: For me, it was as soon as we won it. Kennedy (Meeks) and I were both seniors, so it was the best way to go out and end our college careers.
SEAN MAY: I distinctly remember the plane ride home from St. Louis. It was a two-hour ride, and everyone was constantly talking about what had happened during the game and after the game. From a coaching perspective with this year’s team, it’s weird because it still hasn’t sunk in. We talked about it just the other day— can you believe we shot so poorly and still won it? I’m constantly thinking about how we were able to pull that off.
KENNEDY MEEKS: It hasn’t sunk in yet. Maybe I’m still in shock. I felt like we had so much going on this season, and trying to bounce back from last year, that for it to all come to an end seems kind of surreal. It’s definitely exciting that we won, but as far as it sinking in, that hasn’t happened yet.
Next
AL: What would you two tell Kennedy about what he’s accomplished?
TH: Before the season, I wasn’t sure they had a chance. It turned out to be my favorite group to watch since I left Carolina. The thing I liked about them is how they stuck together. It was one of the toughest teams, and played with some of the best spirit, of any Carolina team I’ve seen. Everyone was pulling for each other and on the same page. And because of that, people will be coming up to them for years and telling them where they were or what they were doing when they won the title. I still look at the Franklin Street photos from 2009. I have them around my house. Every time you come to Chapel Hill, someone will remind you of what you did in 2017.
SM: The thing you don’t realize until years later is how much Carolina basketball means to so many people for so many reasons. As you move through life, people will want to share that with you or how they watched you as a kid and you were their favorite player. That one moment of accomplishing a championship means so much to people. Twelve years from now, they will be talking to you about getting 14 rebounds in the Final Four against Oregon or about your blocked shot against Gonzaga. I know that because they’re still talking about what we did 12 years ago, and that’s when you start to realize how much this means to people.
AL: When did you think the 2017 team had it in them to be this good?
SM: When we beat Florida State we knew we could beat a really talented team. But when we lost to Duke in the ACC Tournament, Coach Williams asked me what I thought and I said, “The crazy thing is these guys are good enough to win it, but I don’t know if they believe they’re good enough to win it.” But all of a sudden, some of those areas where we weren’t putting things together started to click. We didn’t play well in the tournament offensively. But at the end of several games, our defense was as good as we needed it to be when we needed it to be there. We weren’t a great defensive team, but we were great defensively when we needed to play. That’s when I started to feel confident about anyone we played against. I felt we were the one team that could match up with anyone.
Good Insight
AL: What enabled each of these teams to perform so well defensively in March and April?
TH: With our team, I never thought much about us defensively. We had so many weapons and were so powerful offensively. From watching this year’s team play, they were so much bigger than most teams they played. They could outrebound them and give them problems inside. They could pound teams inside and beat them up on the offensive boards.
KM: We had a fear of losing again. We had that in the back of our minds. Coach stayed on us about being a good defensive team, and kept telling us no team had won a championship without being good defensively. At the end of the season, that was our biggest motivating factor. get to the end of the season, your focus becomes greater and the mistakes start to dwindle. You might have a bunch of missed box outs in February, but in March you don’t see that as much. Especially with older groups, when you have a bunch of juniors and seniors and they’re getting towards the end, they subconsciously hone in on those little mistakes and that enables them to be better defensively.
AL: All your teams had key upperclassmen. What role does that play?
SM: All our teams had upperclassmen who had been through it. Tyler’s team had gone to the Final Four already, so the stage wasn’t a big deal. For us, it was a little different. We’d never had success in the tournament. But we were older, so we could handle it better. To me, that’s the key correlation to all three teams.
TH: In San Antonio we basically got our tails kicked. We still had that hunger in us. If you’ve never been to a Final Four, the excitement of getting there can leave you satisfied. Losing in 2008 drove us to get better, and when we got to the Final Four in Detroit, we were like, “Let’s finish this thing out.”
Furthermore
AL: Head to head, in the prime of these teams, who wins?
SM: There’s no question Kennedy’s team would finish third.
KM: Timeout. We wouldn’t be last.
SM: What’s crazy is that there are so many similarities. Joel Berry and Ty Lawson and Raymond Felton are three really good point guards. They each had a big guy. Head to head, on any given night, you never know. I always tell people Tyler would’ve gotten 28, but I would’ve gotten 28 myself too. They’re all great teams. Tyler’s team probably had the most firepower.
KM: Yes, whew. They were stacked.
TH: We had so many weapons and people forget that Tyler Zeller was hurt most of that year. But what I like is that all these teams had guys who stepped up and had big games in the tournament when it might not be expected. We had Deon Thompson. Luke Maye stepped up for this year’s team. I really enjoyed that.
KM: I will say that we had the best bench out of the three. Nate Britt could come in and have a great defensive game, Kenny Williams could knock down some big-time shots, and everyone saw what Luke could do. We would’ve had an edge there.
SM: You have to remember: we had the number-two overall pick coming off the bench. I’m just putting that out there. One thing people forget with the 2017 team is we never really got to see them with everyone healthy. That’s the scary part.
Moreover
AL: When someone says something to you about your championship season, what comes to mind?
KM: I think about the losses. I really feel like we could’ve won those games. With the exception of Indiana, where we didn’t play like ourselves and it was a very hostile crowd, I think we could’ve won all the games we lost.
SM: The friendships. So many people still come up to me and talk about our team and how much fun we looked like we were having. That’s because we were. It was never about you. It was about us or the next guy or what you could do to help the next guy. Like I told this year’s team, it’s different when you win it. Last year’s team is close and will always be close. But this group will be on another level. Kennedy will have guys in his wedding from this team and guys who are the godfather of his kids from this team. There’s a closeness that comes from finishing what you set out to do.
TH: For me it was the friendships and bonds. But it was also that my senior year was kind of exhausting. I was coming off a shin injury and trying to get healthy. I came back in shape, but not in great playing shape. Trying to get back while managing that injury was exhausting, but capping it off with the championship was the very best way to go out.
AL: What’s the difference between a really good team and a championship team?
KM: Not caring about who does what. With good teams, you have some guys who just want to score or get assists. With this team, we didn’t depend solely on any one person, but we understood who should be in those positions. That pulled us through in a lot of games.
SM: While you’re involved in it, you never really know what the missing piece might be. In my sophomore year, Coach Williams’ first year back here, we thought we were really good but we really weren’t. But if you bring in one or two guys who might fill that void of what you’re missing—it could be effort, intensity, energy or anything—that can get you over the hump. Being older and more experienced helps, but so does making those one or two tweaks. With this year’s team, it was a little more depth, size and energy to go with a little more experience from having been through last year.
TH: Our senior year, we were always trying to see what we could do to get better to win a championship. After a loss, we’d have one of our best practices of the year. We weren’t satisfied, no matter what part of the season it was. It wasn’t necessarily personnel. It was seeing what we could do better to compete or win.
In Addition
AL: What’s something Coach Williams said during your championship season that sticks out to you?
SM: Coach Williams says it all the time: “It’s amazing what can be accomplished when no one cares who gets the credit.” Our first year with him, we just heard him say it. But the next year, we really listened to it. I can’t recall a time his second year when a guy was picking up a stat sheet to see how many shots he got.
TH: My senior year, Coach Williams probably yelled at me more than he did combined in my freshman, sophomore and junior years. You could definitely tell he was really wanting to push us.
KM: It would probably be after conditioning when he told us we were still good enough to go back and win it and be the last team standing. That gives you confidence as a player. In the back of your mind, you were still thinking, “What if we go back and lose again?” Hearing him say we were good enough to win it meant he believed in what we could accomplish.
AL: How has Coach Williams changed over the course of these three titles?
SM: He’s similar. Sometimes I have to remind the current guys that he has yelled at me, too. But he’s also different, and I think he’s more soft when it comes to the current guys. I’ll sit on the sidelines sometimes and think, “There’s no way he’s not going to put them on the line for that.” Maybe he’s matured, or maybe he’s tired of yelling about the same things. But I know for sure he was softer on Kennedy’s team than he was on my team.
KM: I think he was probably less hard on us as seniors than he was as freshmen. My freshman year, we had so much going on, and we didn’t get away with anything on or off the court. That wasn’t the case this year, and there was also a fatigue issue where he didn’t want anyone to get hurt.
TH: When I go watch his practices, I think it’s amazing how anyone who played for Coach Williams, even at Kansas, can come in and practice and not miss a beat. He still has that same fire. When he gets into a game and gets emotional, you want that from your coach because they are into it as much as you are.
AL: Even though college basketball has changed from 2005 to 2009 to 2017, why is he still successful doing it his way?
SM: You have to look at who he is to his core. For him, it’s about the people. It’s not about one individual who is bigger than the program. No matter what, he’s never going to commit to one guy and put him above the program. That’s what has allowed him to have longevity. And also, at his core, he’s a teacher. He teaches the game in a time when a lot of coaches try to explain the game, not teach it. That allows guys to come in and learn and have great success.
TH: Sean said it right, he’s a teacher. Why would he change what he’s doing? He’s had so much success for so long. In college basketball right now, everybody is trying cutesy outfits or hemorrhaging three-pointers, and Coach Williams is having success with the same type of basketball he’s always taught. There’s no reason for him to change. When you watch his practices, they are probably the most organized practices in all of sports. Teams and players get better in his practices.
KM: Over the years, you gravitate towards his work ethic. He puts so much into basketball. He won’t retire anytime soon, because he won’t know what to do.
AL: When he first came back, he talked a lot about Kirk Hinrich and Nick Collison. Do you find that he’s now talking about each of you?
KM: He talks about Tyler every single day. He talks about how hard he worked and how we should match his intensity. That’s a pretty hard thing to do. Tyler is one of the most intense players ever. He definitely talks about previous teams. He’s told us about how Raymond (Felton) wouldn’t take limited reps because he wanted to be in every part of practice.
SM: You’re right, he did talk about Nick with the post players and Kirk with the guards. We never understood it until Nick and Kirk came and worked out with us. I couldn’t believe how hard Nick went. That’s when you understood why he talked about them. That’s when I understood why Nick was the National Player of the Year. It’s a level of respect they have earned. And when I left, I was proud, because I felt like now he would have to talk about me. And when Sterling Manley and Brandon Huffman are here, he’s going to talk about Kennedy and his 14 rebounds in the Final Four, just like this year he talked about Brice Johnson and his 23 rebounds against Florida State or his five blocked shots against Providence.
In Conclusion
AL: What does it mean to you—or what will it mean—to be able to look up and see a championship banner in the Smith Center rafters that belongs to you?
TH: I work out at the Smith Center in the summer and I look at it all the time. It’s the most limited section in the rafters. I love seeing it up there.
SM: When you come into the building, there’s really only one way in, through the tunnel, and you have to look up there and see it. Those are great teams and now you’re part of it. You set a goal that’s the goal of every team that plays here, and to finally cut down those nets and complete that task, it builds you up as a man and as an individual but also as a team. And for the younger guys, it’s big because when you call a foul in pickup, there are no questions asked.
TH: I can’t imagine what those foul calls are going to be like in pickup with these guys (nods at Kennedy). Bannerless, they were bad. With a banner, I can’t imagine what this is going to be like.
KM: Wow (laughs). I actually thought about having that championship banner during the season more than I’ve thought about it since we won it. But I know it’s going to be such a big-time moment to see it up there.
AL: Carolina is in the unique place where winning separates the program from the vast majority of other basketball programs in the country. There are a very, very few other programs that have won at the level Carolina has won. What separates Carolina from those programs?
KM: There’s not another program like this school where you can call anyone who came through here, and they are ready to help you. We always stick together. No matter what you need, there’s someone who came through the program who can help.
SM: It’s the people involved. Not just with the basketball, but with the University. It’s a family like no other. I hadn’t seen George Lynch in three years and never played with him, and we picked back up in Phoenix like we always do. I didn’t play with Brendan Haywood and he is one of the closest friends I’ve ever had. Other programs don’t have that type of connection.
TH: Sean said it right. When I first got into the NBA, I lined up next to Vince Carter, had never met him, and he started talking to me. We had that connection because we played here. I ran into Michael Jordan in the hallway after we played the Hornets, and we had that connection. Rasheed Wallace talked to me when we played the Celtics, because we had that connection. It’s a family. The network of people and of players available to you is unbelievable.
AL: Lots of places try, but why can’t anyone else replicate that?
SM: It’s easy to say. It’s a lot harder to get people to come back. Time is the most valuable thing you have, and people want to give it back to the program here. Alums come back because we want the next group to be successful. That started years ago with Coach Smith. The greatest person to ever play the game went to this school. He’s still not bigger than the program. Carolina has never let one set of people or one team be bigger than the program. That’s why 60 former players come in and have dinner together before the Oregon game at the Final Four. You can’t mimic those things. It can only be built over decades of people giving time and energy to the program.