The summer recruiting period in men’s basketball, which grows ever shorter, ended this year on July 30. On August 1 North Carolina head coach Roy Williams and wife Wanda left for London. Then, with daughter Kimberly, son Scott, and his wife, Katie, in tow, they flew on to Johannesburg, South Africa, to go on safari.

Original plans called for a foray into Zimbabwe, and a visit to Victoria Falls on Zimbabwe’s northern border with Zambia. But that aspect of the journey was eliminated. As the U.S. State Department warns on its web site, “Because the political situation in Zimbabwe remains fluid and subject to change at a moment’s notice, American citizens should carefully evaluate the need to travel to Zimbabwe at this time.”

So the Williams clan stuck to South Africa for a big game hunt of an unfamiliar variety. “It’s probably going to be a poor man’s evaluation of a safari, but I think we’re going to have some fun,” Roy Williams said of the firearms-free trip.

The UNC coach has kept a low profile since several sour notes sounded at the end of a 2008 season in which the Tar Heels were 36-3, most wins in school history, and finished atop the AP poll.

The Heels got smoked early by Kansas in the Final Four, and never recovered. Two days later, during the NCAA title game, Williams caused a stir by wearing a Jayhawk sticker on his shirt, reaffirming his affection for a school that employed him for 15 years and had three of his former players on the basketball staff. Then came controversy over an organized pickup game involving the UNC squad and presidential candidate Barack Obama, and a protracted flirtation with the NBA by players Wayne Ellington, Danny Green, and Ty Lawson.

Before he took his traditional August recess, Williams addressed several of these topics, and looked ahead in a telephone interview. Questions are paraphrased for purposes of clarity and/or brevity.

Looking back, from preseason onward last year’s team overtly aimed to go a step farther than the 2007 squad. It appeared the team reached the Final Four and in some sense was satisfied. This year your team is certain to be a heavy favorite to win the national championship. Given that expectations will be so high, does that take some pressure off the team in setting goals, as anything short of a title will be considered a disappointment?

First, I don’t know it’s ever an advantage for everybody to think you have to win… When I was here with coach Smith, I will never forget that in ’81, we talked about we wanted to be there on the final night when they threw the ball up, playing for the national championship. Well, we were, but Indiana beat us. So the next year we talked about being the final team standing. We won the national championship.

With this bunch, we didn’t talk about just making the Final Four. But I think that our kids came so close the year before, and in coming so close and losing the lead at the end against Georgetown, and then having a shot chance to win it and missing that shot, that everybody said, ‘God, you guys were so close to the Final Four, you were so close to the Final Four.’

Well, and this year we made it. I don’t think we were satisfied, but I think we were more casual when we went out into the game than Kansas was. Kansas was fired up immediately. Kansas was more intense immediately. We went out on the court and it was like we were looking around at the crowd: ‘Dang, we’re here, we’re at the Final Four.’ Well, that would have been OK to have that attitude if Kansas hadn’t been so intent on hitting us right between the eyes.

I hear boxers talk about it all the time, or did when I followed boxing a little bit, when you get hit by a big punch it takes you awhile to let your head clear. Well, we got hit by that big punch, and by the time we got our second wind, or our head cleared, or whatever cliché you want to use, we were down (by) 28.

So I don’t necessarily think we were so satisfied to be there as I think it was we got there and we were awed by the Final Four. I think that this year we’re going to talk about being the best team we can possibly be, and that’s the same thing we talked about last year. We’re going to talk about, let’s have our own dreams and goals and not be concerned about everybody else’s expectations. Because, you’ve heard me say this, expectations are from somebody else and they don’t even have anything invested in it.

So we’ve tried to talk in terms of dreams and goals. I don’t mind being expected to be good. I’ve never minded that. I’ve never wanted to be, to have the scenario where somebody said, ‘Well, they’re not going to be very good.’ I’ve never wanted that, I promise you.

Even in 2006, which may have been the most fun year I’ve ever had in coaching, I didn’t want people, for Sports Illustrated to not pick us to make the tournament. But I think that that was one year that the kids sort of took it as a challenge and responded fantastically, particularly when it was such a young group.

But I like being expected to be good.

What can you tell us about the freshmen who are most likely to contribute in 2008-09?

I think Tyler (Zeller) is the best runner and the best shooter of the two big guys, and yet Ed (Davis) is the best rebounder defensively. In five and a half weeks of summer school Ed gained 15 pounds. Larry Drew is the quarterback, a true point guard that tries to get people better. It’s going to be interesting to see how they react when it gets to be competitive in practice.

I know we’re going to make the fall conditioning program the toughest it’s ever been. I know that I’m going to have a shorter fuse with anything casual than I’ve ever been. I think that’s required because we have some high goals, high dreams, and so I’m going to address those right from the start.

And this team now, better than any team I’ve ever had, understands. They all laugh, in a nice way, I don’t think it’s bad, they just laugh when I say, ‘Let’s not go out there and tiptoe through the tulips. Let’s go out there and plant our feet and be ready to make a stand.’

That was the biggest example of any game I’ve ever coached in my life, that we went out there against Kansas sort of tiptoeing through the tulips. So, for me, I’m just going to make (it) that we’re going to set the standard right from the very first. I’m not trying to act like it’s no more Mr. Nice Guy, that’s not what I’m saying. But it is going to be a very definite, serious approach. Nothing casual.

The casual play that we had early in the Kansas game was a shock to me. The games up to that game, we had stepped out and played from the first moment, and our preparation for the Kansas game was just like those other games. I don’t have any idea what caused it, but I know we have to learn from it.

Dean Smith had difficulty blending a highly-rated freshman class (Jeff McInnis, Jerry Stackhouse, and Rasheed Wallace) with a veteran unit that had won the 1993 national championship. The ’94 Tar Heels never jelled, and didn’t get past the second round of the NCAAs. Now you return all five starters from a Final Four squad, including three who nearly left for the NBA, and add one of the best recruiting classes in the country. How do you avoid ego problems when you have so many talented players and not enough playing time?

We won’t have that. It’s just very simple. If you have the casual play, you will have the casual seat on the bench.

I have concern about it, but it’s concern about trying to get them minutes which I hope they deserve. It’s not get them minutes of what they want. I have some concern about it. I think any coach would.

(I was shocked that all three guys came back. If you had asked me three weeks before the decision date, I thought the odds were much greater that all three would go than that all three would come back. Then, at the end, I don’t mind telling you, I didn’t care. I was just so tired of it. I just wanted it to be over with. And the fact of the matter is, they made decisions to come back and I’m happy to coach them because I enjoy the kids.)

It’s a concern, but I don’t lay awake at night worrying about that part of it. I lay awake at night worrying about, OK, are we going to be able to stop somebody defensively? Are we doing to be able to create a faster tempo? Are we going to be able to play at the speed that I want to play? But I don’t worry at all about the players’ psyche. We have tremendously high-character kids, so they’ve got to figure out how to handle that part themselves.

What kind of season do you foresee for the ACC? Last year, for the second time in three seasons, the league got only 4 of 12 teams in the NCAA tournament. Some critics say the level of talent is down, the level of coaching is down, the ACC is Duke and North Carolina and a bunch of lesser lights.

I think the whole league from top to bottom does have marvelous coaches. There’s no question that what Duke and North Carolina have done, and what Duke and North Carolina have achieved, does stand out.

I’m sitting here right now and I’m thinking Wake Forest has a chance to be tremendous, five starters back. Virginia Tech has a chance to be tremendous, four starters back.

I went through the list the other day, two of the 12 teams in our league have two starters back. The other 10 have three starters back. I think the league is going to do better. The league will be even more of a dogfight. The home court advantage in the league is so tremendous. So I think the league is going to be better, I think the league is going to be stronger from top to bottom.

I think there will be more parity in the league. North Carolina State finished (tied for last.) If they get good point guard play, they’ve got the same team that made a great run at the end of the season two years ago and made it all the way to the championship game.

You’ve got a team like Clemson. We played Clemson three games last year and we won all three games. A different play here and there, they could have won all three games.

A reason often cited for the ACC’s recent decline in NCAA participation is the effect of an unbalanced league schedule caused by expansion to 12 members. Do you see a solution in going to more conference games during the regular season?

In a perfect world, I’d like to play a round robin schedule, there’s no question about that. But we don’t have a perfect world. We have a scenario where if you play 22 conference games, then we’re not going to play Kentucky, we’re not going to play Michigan State, we’re not going to play Arizona, we’re not going to play Connecticut. You just can’t beat your kids up that many times.

There’s no question that, if it was a perfect world, I would much rather play a complete round robin schedule. But we don’t have that scenario. If we ever get to that, I think you’ll see we’ll lose a lot of the great national games that we have right now.