Jacobs: 2005 Champions Set High Standard at UNC

We tend to forget the prowess of North Carolina’s 2005 national championship squad. That is a mistake when measuring teams. Most pale by comparison.

Perhaps the 2005 Tar Heels fail to get their due in popular estimation because they were anything but a season-long juggernaut. UNC was an evolving club that lost its opener on the road, fell out of the top 10, and never ranked first in the Associated Press poll, fighting uphill all year long.

Perhaps we forget how good UNC was in 2005 because, seemingly in a flash, four starters from that squad were gone. Nearly as soon as the crown was secured, three juniors and a freshman – Raymond Felton, Sean May, and Rashad McCants, along with Marvin Williams – announced a jump to the NBA. All were among the first 14 selections in the draft.

Or perhaps memory fades because North Carolina’s most recent NCAA title came in Roy Williams’ second year at Chapel Hill, with a core of players recruited by Matt Doherty, his fired predecessor. Then, too, the team’s achievement was accompanied by a prominent personal subplot, represented as vindication for Williams, a Hall of Fame coach who flirted with ultimate success several times at Kansas, only to fall short.

Forgotten or not, Carolina’s fourth and most recent NCAA champions set a high standard.

This year’s UNC squad, or anyone else’s, must go a long way to match the versatility, balance, depth, and toughness of a 33-4 unit that never lost two in a row and ended the 2005 season with victories in 14 of its final 15 contests. The last four wins came against ranked teams, culminating with a 75-70 defeat of No. 1 Illinois.

Williams was asked recently what characteristics marked the best squads of his head coaching career, which began at Lawrence, Kan, in 1988-89. He immediately harkened to that ’05 group.

“Talent is the first thing,” said Williams, in his fifth season at his alma mater. Then, as most championship coaches will, he focused on defense. “The best teams I’ve ever been around always really didn’t just want to outscore the other team; they wanted to outscore the other team but they wanted to stop the other team.

“The 2005 team, down the stretch, really started taking a great deal of pride in the field-goal percentage of the other team,” he continued. “The ’97-98 team at Kansas, 2002, 2003, they really wanted to stop other people. I think that’s an important part of it. And the unselfishness too.”

The Jayhawks were top-ranked entering the NCAAs in ’98 and 2002, and reached the Final Four in 2002 and 2003.

The ’05 national champs led the ACC in field-goal percentage defense at 40.1 percent, best of Williams’ tenure at Chapel Hill. Gaining in prowess as the season wore on, as Williams recalled, UNC held opponents to .393 shooting during a six-game run to the NCAA title, .361 shooting in the Final Four. The Heels also led the ACC with nearly 10 steals per game, best of Williams’ first four North Carolina squads.

Offensively, the 2005 team was efficient, explosive, and multifaceted.

Five players averaged in double figures. UNC outscored opponents by 17.8 points, tops under Williams and best in the ACC since 2002. North Carolina made 49.9 percent of its shots from the floor and 72.5 from the line; both marks are highs under Williams. Only eight of 33 wins came by fewer than 10 points.

May was the ACC’s most polished post player. McCants was a much-feared shooter. Felton set a pounding tempo. Forwards Jawad and Marvin Williams provided punch inside and out. Jackie Manuel, a starter in every game, and reserve David Noel, a junior with strong leadership skills, were superior individual defenders.

In all, six members of that squad went on to play in the NBA.

May (17.5) and shooting guard McCants (16.0) were among the ACC’s top 10 scorers in 2005. Felton was the league’s premier playmaker, leading in assists (6.9 per game) and 3-point accuracy (.440 on 159 attempts). Felton also ranked third in assist-turnover ratio (1.93:1) and fourth in steals.

May, the Most Outstanding Player in the 2005 Final Four, averaged a double-double on the year. He finished second in the ACC in rebound average (10.7) and offensive rebounds, and third in scoring and field goal accuracy (.567).

Both May and Felton made first team all-conference. They remain the only pair of UNC players on the first team since 1998, when Antawn Jamison and Vince Carter were similarly honored.

As for the sort of team play and unselfishness coveted by Roy Williams, consider that Marvin Williams, the 2005 ACC rookie of the year and the second player chosen in the subsequent NBA draft, did not start a game the entire season. Meanwhile senior forward Jawad Williams and wings Manuel and Melvin Scott took a back seat to younger players, blending seamlessly into a formidable whole.

Overall, the Heels of three seasons ago were a veteran unit, toughened by uncommon and sometimes bitter experience. The seniors were tempered by the humiliation of an 8-20 freshman year. Among the regulars, all but Marvin Williams and Quentin Thomas had endured the transition in coaching regimes, no easy task.

They were, in short, worthy champions produced by a proud program, setting a standard difficult for the current coalescing North Carolina squad to match.