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Former Tar Heel and 2005 National Champion Jawad Williams is one of my favorite followers on Twitter. Every now and then he’ll decide to drop something in the form of a new children’s book, his thoughts on basketball as a whole, or he’ll go out of his way and deliver a blog post to us so that we may read his reflections in long form. Yesterday, the weapon of choice for Williams blessed us all with a blog post discussing the difference between this summer and last summer’s COVID-dominated offseason, and what he thought of some of the current players.
Before discussing what he had to say, I strongly advise you to read his post. by clicking here, then return to this article.
Now that we’re all (hopefully) caught up, something Williams touched on in his blog post was something we’ve long suspected to be part of the problem for the 2020-21 season, but it’s really hard to pin down. signal in a tangible way. . He discussed not being able to help the active roster during the summer due to COVID restrictions, and he even referred to specific players by name. It would have been amazing for him to have got his hands on the Greats and Leaky Black to help them elevate their games, but the name that stood out in a big way that he mentioned was the former Tar Heel and the recent Walker Kessler transfer.
Jawad Williams is one of the many great men who are more than qualified to help someone like Kessler get out of the gate with full blast early in the season, and help him pursue his goals of being a talented stretch four / five in Roy Williams’ system. More importantly, maybe things would have been a bit different after the season when it came to Kessler’s decisions to stay or leave had he had time with former players like Williams, whom the conversations wore. about basketball or just about life in general. In just about any sport, the pandemic has been a really tough thing to navigate, but maybe nothing has been hit as hard as college sports. For a program like Carolina, it’s very beneficial, and I would say absolutely necessary, that current players can interact with former players. It’s not only important when it comes to maintaining that family-like atmosphere that the program has done a great job creating, but many of these former players know what it takes to be successful at the pros. Knowing that the current squad have worked with players like Jawad Williams, Marcus Paige and Theo Pinson (who are all Final Four / National Championship players) already makes me a lot more optimistic about how this season is going. will take place.
Towards the end of his blog post, Williams discussed which player stood out for him in pickup games. The names he mentioned were Brady Manek, Justin McKoy and Dontrez Styles. As for Manek, he was particularly impressed with his shooting ability and also his athleticism. I’ve been able to watch a movie about Manek the last few days, and I think what’s going to be really interesting is seeing how Davis decides to use him on the perimeter. A lot of the highlights I was able to see involved him setting up tall ball screens, going behind the arc, and defending him slumping through three-point shots to beat them. fences of opponents. According to Williams, Manek’s game seems to be pretty deep so I have a feeling he could be one of the more interesting players to watch as the coming season progresses.
It was also very exciting to read that McKoy and Styles stand out in the pickup games. Williams compared McKoy to Cam Johnson, which is amazing to hear as there wasn’t much information about McKoy’s play during his time at UVA. Over his two years at the UVA, he logged 313 minutes of total playing time, which to give you an idea of ​​how little that is, Caleb Love played 774 minutes last season alone.
Finally, Williams called Styles a “dog†in his assessment of the first-year forward and believes he could end up being a top player. It still has to be wondered where Styles would rank early in his Carolina career if the pandemic hadn’t ruined spring / summer basketball last year, but there’s a good chance some fans are looking at his ranking at its face value rather than looking at the amount of potential of that child. THB’s Doug Valentine just did a player preview for Styles, so if you haven’t checked it out, I highly recommend it. There’s something to be excited about not only the styles, but D’Marco Dunn and the transfers to come too.
Knowing that things have returned to normal at Chapel Hill when it comes to the dynamics of the Carolina family is the best news we could have received in 2021. Former players like Jawad Williams and many others are doing the work of the Lord when it comes to not only building relationships with youngsters, but helping them achieve their ultimate goal of making a Final Four appearance and hopefully competing for a national championship. What do you think of Williams’ blog post? Also, what expectations do you all have for this coming season? let us know in the comments below.
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