Can the Tar Heels pull it off?
The fate of North Carolina basketball and coach Roy Williams go hand in hand. Both in recent history have had teams that were destined to cut down the nets, only to suffer agonizing defeat by mysterious ways. In more blunt terms, they choked. Roy Williams and UNC both shook the stigma of choking in 2005 when they got the Siemens Trophy, but we can recall plenty of times when they didn’t close the deal. Remember the Tar Heel teams of ’94, ’95, ’97, and ’98? Or even two Roy Willams’ teams at Kansas, namely, the ’97 team thought to be one of the greatest ever featuring Raef Lafrentz, Scott Pollard, Paul Pierce, and Jacque Vaughn, upset in the Sweet 16 by eventual champs Arizona? How about the ’98 team minus Vaughn, with an embarrassing loss to Rhode Island in the second round? And ’02 and ’03 teams had championship dreams only to falter in the Final Four to Maryland and the final against Syracuse. Nonetheless, the Heels are stacked from top to bottom, with veterans Tyler Hansborough, Ty L
