Williams finally gets a 'yes'
It’s funny how things can change with one simple “yes.”
Just ask Roy Williams. Up until last week, the North Carolina coach was having a rough go of it on the recruiting trail.
Despite all his legwork, all the road trips and all the hand-written letters, Williams was feeling like Flavor Flav trying to find a wife. No luck anywhere.
OK, maybe it hasn’t been that bad this offseason. But Williams certainly was finishing second an awful lot, losing out to Michigan State on elite forward Delvon Roe in April, dropping a battle with Louisville for center Samardo Samuel in June and stepping aside earlier this month when Al-Farouq Aminu chose Wake Forest over UNC.
It was a string of “No thank yous” from elite prospects that had the Hall of Fame coach reeling.
“I can write a kid three to five handwritten notes a week plus what my assistants are doing with mail and calls and everything else, and if you finish second it means that you’ve spent a lot of time and a lot of money (with no return),” Williams said. “That upsets you and it hurts you.”
Then, barely an hour after delivering those solemn words last week, Williams finally finished first. The long-awaited “yes” came Wednesday from Ed Davis, a 6-foot-8, 215-pound forward from Benedictine High School in Virginia, who chose the Tar Heels over Virginia.
That “yes” provided Williams with a second player in his Class of 2008 recruiting class. With Davis, ranked No. 8 in the class by Prepstars.com, joining Larry Drew (No. 27), the “yes” finally gives UNC some solid talent to build on in a recruiting class that may double before it’s all said and done.
Assuming Davis and Drew both sign national letters-of-intent in November, UNC still has room to fill one more open scholarship for 2008-09. Williams, though, is expected to try and land two more recruits under the assumption that current Tar Heels Tyler Hansbrough, Tywon Lawson and possibly Wayne Ellington could bolt for the NBA after next season.
At the moment, two players who have registered on the Tar Heels’ radar are Iman Shumpert, a guard out of Oak Park, Ill., ranked 11th in the class by Prep Stars; and Tyler Zeller (No. 10), an athletic 6-11 center from Indiana. Forward Wesley Witherspoon, ranked No. 62, has also been getting attention from Williams and his staff this month.
Rob Harrington, a recruiting analyst for Prep Stars, thinks Shumpert might be the most logical and most attainable target for UNC to hound. The 6-4 guard has a sweet shooting stroke and would help provide the Tar Heels with some valuable wing scoring.
Davis, meanwhile, should provide the Tar Heels with a long and athletic body in the frontcourt. The rising senior is widely considered a good rebounder who gets a lot of clean-up hoops around the basket. If there is a weakness to his game, it’s his shaky jump shot.
“His shot has a little bit of a side rotation on it. It’s flat,” said Brick Oettinger, the talent evaluator for the Prep Stars Recruiting Handbook. “That certainly needs revamping. But, boy, if he works hard on that, wow. If he becomes a skilled jump shooter from about 15 feet, he’s going to be extremely dangerous because he’s so quick inside and has such great instincts and hands.”
Still, don’t expect Williams to be throwing any parties about his recent recruiting progress. The Tar Heels coach, never a huge fan of the process, knows that college results are difficult to forecast, no matter how highly a prospect may be ranked.
“Recruiting is like farming,” Williams said. “All you do every day, you pull the weeds, put the water in there, try to keep the sun too much, too little, whatever it is. And you don’t have any idea until the crops come in whether you did worth a darn or not.”
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