Congratulations to UNC and particularly Roy Williams for winning the school's
fourth title and his first. It was a great performance by a team which, at
the end of the tournament, was one of UNC's more memorable groups. It's not up
there with the Jordan-Worthy-Perkins team, and it wasn't as tight as the
Montross-Phelps-Lynch team, but it was a spectacularly gifted group which had to
learn to play together, and they certainly did do that.
It was pretty clear early on, even before UNC ran off a sustained lead, that
these teams were on two different planes talent wise. Illinois was
valiant, and they showed enormous heart in coming back several times, but they
just couldn't answer UNC's talent, and in particular, Sean May ran wild, as he
has done during much of his junior year.
For UNC, after the celebration, the question becomes who will stay?
Raymond Felton is certainly in a great position for the draft, as is Rashad
McCants. Marvin Williams has been called a potential first pick overall,
and that's hard to top. Sean May, despite his great year, has had his
athleticism questioned and has generally been regarded as a lower first round
draft pick.
And obviously Jawad Williams can't come back. Nor, for that matter, can
Jackie Manuel or Melvin Scott. For those three, this must be an incredibly
sweet accomplishment, coming from 8-20 their freshman year.
In a worst-case scenario, UNC loses six of their top seven players and has a
big whole to climb out of all over again.
But that's for later, and they won't end up 8-20 again.
We've been around long enough to simultaneously embrace our role in the
rivalry and to also accept that a lot of good guys play in Chapel Hill,
too. Over the years, we've come to great admire people like George Lynch,
Sean May and others. For people like that, and for a lot of our UNC friends, we're happy. And we look forward to next season, and starting the whole thing over again.
Let's crank it back up!