USA - Dad-gummit

NEW YORK (The Tuesday College Diaries) - Roy Williams has a phrase for times like these.

"Dad-gummit".

We heard it plenty during his post-game press conference last week, and it's likely his North Carolina players heard it even more in practice every day since they went down 82-69 at home to Wake Forest last Tuesday - their third loss in a row.

With an open weekend before Tuesday's meeting with in-state rivals NC State, Roy Williams promised "to coach his rear-end off" to turn around a team that is 1-3 in the early going in the ACC.

That is not where North Carolina teams are used to being, and it is not where Roy Williams is used to being.

Although as he reminded reporters, it is not completely unknown.

"I’m pretty close to being in unchartered territory," he said. "Everybody thinks Roy Williams was born with a silver spoon, but my first Kansas team lost eight games in a row and every Friday night, I had them over watching Rocky and Hoosiers, trying just to get them fired up, and made them bologna sandwiches.

"That was probably as bad as it got but this is pretty close."

Credit to Wake Forest, who shot a blistering nine-of-16 (56%) from three-point range, but North Carolina is not playing well, not playing well at all, and there were plenty of fundamental mistakes for Williams to point to in this loss, just as there had been against Clemson and Georgia Tech beforehand.

Williams was left fuming that the Demon Deacons were not asked to make contested threes.

"They were wide open," he said ruefully.

But the three-pointers were only half the story.

There was also plays like the lay-up the Tar Heels gave up with one second on the shot clock.

"You can't do that," said Williams.

"For 19 minutes and 50 seconds I thought we competed, and then after that in the second half we got a little bit of that things-aren't-going-for-us-attitude, and you can't do that. Life's not supposed to be rosy all the time."

No one in Chapel Hill should be panicking. When we wrote about North Carolina earlier this year, we said they were over-achieving with a roster totally rebuilt from last year's national title-winning team.

Now some of the growing pains are showing up.

And much as this is hurting Williams and the Heels right now, they have too much talent not to come through it.

Freshmen Travis Wear and Deon Thompson had 13 points each, a sign of the talent in development for North Carolina.

"The freshman are trying, but they haven't been through those wars yet," said Williams. "If I live long enough, maybe it will help us a couple of years down the road. But I don't know if I can live through this."

Huskies Come Roaring Back

The College Diaries curse apparently works in reverse too.

A day after last week's doom-and-gloom column on all that was going wrong for UConn, things got worse with the news that coach Jim Calhoun was taking an indefinite leave of absence for medical reasons.

Suddenly a tough meeting with No. 1 Texas looked entirely unwinnable.

So of course the Huskies played the Longhorns off the court in an 88-74 victory in Storrs under the guidance of Calhoun's deputy George Blaney.

Tar Heels fans better hope lightning strikes twice.

Quote of the Week

Wayne Chism has been a rock for Tennessee since the suspension and ultimate dismissal of star forward Tyler Smith.

Want to know how he does it?

This quote, reported by the Chattanooga Times Free Press' Wes Rucker tells you all you need to know about Chism's key routines.

Speaking after practice, Chism said: "Every second I'm talking to you is another second I'm not at Waffle House."

Smokey Roberts
FIBA