
{"id":15196,"date":"2011-01-13T10:01:40","date_gmt":"2011-01-13T15:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=15196"},"modified":"2011-01-13T10:01:41","modified_gmt":"2011-01-13T15:01:41","slug":"what-exactly-is-an-%e2%80%98ugly%e2%80%99-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2011\/01\/13\/what-exactly-is-an-%e2%80%98ugly%e2%80%99-win\/","title":{"rendered":"What exactly is an \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcugly\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 win?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2011\/01\/13\/what-exactly-is-an-%e2%80%98ugly%e2%80%99-win\/landreth-mug-10\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-15197\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/landreth-mug.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"landreth-mug\" width=\"100\" height=\"134\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-15197\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/landreth-mug.jpg 100w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/landreth-mug-84x113.jpg 84w, https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/landreth-mug-59x80.jpg 59w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 100px) 100vw, 100px\" \/><\/a><br \/>\n<strong>By Eddy Landreth<br \/>\n<\/strong><em>Staff Writer<br \/>\n<\/em><br \/>\nEven its hall-of-fame head coach referred to Carolina\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 62-56 victory at Virginia on Saturday as an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ugly win.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>While Roy Williams has probably forgotten more basketball than I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll ever know, I vehemently disagree with him about that statement.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, if the Tar Heels score fewer than 90 points it takes some of the luster off the game for Williams. He spends a good portion of every game waving his arms in an effort to get his point guard, whoever that may be, to get the ball up the court faster. The sooner UNC can retrieve the ball at the opponent\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s basket (for Williams, preferably after a missed shot) and race to the other end to score, all the better, as far as Williams is concerned.<\/p>\n<p>Certainly there is a beauty to watching Williams\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 version of Carolina basketball when it is in high gear. Former point guard Ty Lawson could crush a team\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s confidence by scoring a couple of seconds after an opponent had worked so hard for its two points.<\/p>\n<p>But there was a beauty about Saturday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s victory that Williams would love to see his team replicate in tonight\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 9 p.m. game against Virginia Tech at the Smith Center. And that aesthetic is all about resolve and toughness, a will to win that simply did not exist with the 2010 team, at least not until it found itself playing in the postseason NIT rather than the NCAA Tournament.<\/p>\n<p>There is nothing unique about having to scratch and claw to win a game at Virginia. No matter how the Cavaliers play against anyone else, Carolina and Duke will have to dig deep to win in Charlottesville. Those two shades of blue inspire the other conference teams to give their finest efforts, if not always their prettiest basketball.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We fought,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Williams said. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153We had some toughness today, more toughness than I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen in a long time. This isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a cut against last year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s team, but last year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s team did not show that toughness when we got down.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Therein lays the beauty of the win at Virginia. Carolina has entertained its fans and infuriated its opponents for more than the past 50 years with its ability to find some way to win close, physical games. The games have become increasingly physical through the years; but up until last year, with the exception of a brief period at the turn of this century, there has been a remarkable consistency in the Tar Heels\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 ability to win, even when defeat appeared certain.<\/p>\n<p>The school\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sports publicity department has a chapter in its annual media guide on many of the dramatic comebacks through the years.<br \/>\nOne thread that weaves through all those games is toughness. The toughness is as much, or more, mental than it is physical. Tyler Hansbrough and Sean May epitomized the physical toughness with their consistency against the pounding opponents would dish out every night. But Wayne Ellington\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s three-pointer at the buzzer to beat Clemson in Littlejohn Coliseum in overtime in 2009 is an example of the mental toughness.<\/p>\n<p>There are many ingredients that go into being Duke or Carolina. Those traits are quite rare, which is why these two stand out so uniquely among the more than 300 Division I teams playing the game.<\/p>\n<p>In the past two seasons, UNC lost many of those qualities because so many of the players who understood them and displayed them each night left via graduation, early departure for the NBA or transferring to another school. This team has a long way to go, but victories such as the one at Virginia are how the Tar Heels can regain the consistency and confidence needed to be an elite team.<\/p>\n<p>And there was nothing ugly about that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even its hall-of-fame head coach referred to Carolina\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 62-56 victory at Virginia on Saturday as an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ugly win.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":15197,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[431],"class_list":["post-15196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15196"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15241,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15196\/revisions\/15241"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}