Thad's Thoughts, November 1997--InsideCarolina magazine

Bill Guthridge is a man who's always known where to draw the line.

A couple of stories come to mind to illustrate the point, drawn from the experience of growing up in the same Episcopal Church where the new head coach of the Tar Heels is an active and respected member.

The year was 1980, and Carolina had just landed a big recruiting class, including Sam Perkins, Matt Doherty, Cecil Exum, Dean Shaffer, and Timo Makkonen. The Chapel Hill Newspaper, back when they had a serious sports page, ran an article about the class, indicating that the signing of Exum might help Carolina land in the coming recruiting season what was though to be even bigger fish: a promising rising senior named Lynwood Robinson, a high school teammate of Exum, said to have serious quickness and lots of potential.

Intrigued by this story, I got the chance one Sunday that summer after the service to ask Bill Guthridge, in front of about 3 or 4 other adults, if this were true: Was Carolina going to get Lynwood? While the other adults probably wondered to themselves it if it was unusual for a ten-year old kid to have such a detailed question about the Tar Heels, Guthridge was straight up. "Sorry, Thad," came the genial reply, " we don't discuss recruiting until a player is signed." Period. End of conversation on that front!

(On the other hand I do recall one instance when Guthridge sort of broke his own rule. When Ranzino Smith was coming into his own as a junior-high and high school phenom in Chapel Hill in the early '80s, there was enormous hope and wish in town that he would make it as a Tar Heel. A church member offered his opinion to Guthridge that Smith would make a fine college player one summer day on the softball field in about 1981, and Guthridge went into the Kansas drawl, trying to end the conversation as quickly as possible while also dampening expectations. "Well," he said non-commitally, "I don't know if there's much use in today's game for a 6 foot shooting guard", causing the questioner's face to fall a little flat. Fortunately, Guthridge and Dean were able to eventually to put that 6 foot shooting guard to excellent use, to the tune of 12 points a game for the '88 ACC regular season champs.)

Story #2 on drawing the line: From the 1982-83 through the 1987-88 seasons I had the extraordinary privilege of holding down the best teenage "job" in Chapel Hill: Operating the flip-scoreboard formerly located at the end of the Tar Heel bench which was used to provide a running score for the coaches' game film. To this day I don't know exactly, or want to know, how I ended up getting in that position, though I knew it had something to do with my father's position in the UNC Administration at that time, and something to do with Guthridge.

Once a year Guthridge, at the first Blue-White game, would give us a quick once-over to make sure we knew what we were doing. (Even that wasn't necessary the last few seasons.) The only rules we had to know were to be prepared to push the scoreboard quickly out of the way if a player came crashing towards us, and to remove the scoreboard with 45 seconds left in each half so the teams could run straight off the court. (And oh yeah, throw the basketball back to the nearest player or ref if you happen to catch it.) But in any case, the flipboard and its management were clearly in Guthridge's court--he had, after all, brought the idea with him from Kansas State in 1967-68.

In 1986, the flipboard followed the team to the Smith Center, and became the subject of a couple of stories in the press, of the "throwback technology preserved in new facility" genre. In one wire story, Guthridge was asked who the people were who operated the board. He was quoted as saying, "They're just a bunch of kids who come in off the street. I don't even know who they are."

The joke is, Guthridge knew exactly who we were. But the serious point was, Guthridge shrewdly realized that if he indicated that there was any sort of process by which one might get to operate the flipboard and that information were publicized, he'd have a lot of unwanted headaches to deal with from would-be applicants (and their parents.) Once again, Guthridge knew where to draw the line on behalf of the program's best interests. (By the way, the flipboard was retired after that '87-88 season.)

As the new head coach of the Tar Heels, Guthridge will have to go about redrawing those lines, given his responsibility as THE public face of Carolina basketball. Instead of guarding inside information carefully, Guthridge's job will be to reveal enough to keep the press informed yet still keep some things under wraps. I don't think Guthridge will have any problem with that task; the North Carolina media has already learned from the open practice held October 19, in which the new head coach mocked the media by pretending to be a wartime general giving a briefing on operations, that Guthridge still enjoys a put-on.

As that slightly bizarre episode and the 1986 flipboard story indicates, Guthridge has the ultimate poker face, and likes to communicate his point via the one-liner, one-liners which have a wierd way of sticking in one's memory months and years later. (In fact, I'm slightly amazed myself as I write this how many of these I remember). To take a few examples I've been on the receiving end of over the years.

1982, Senior Day. Chris Brust has a huge game against Duke, recording two rim-rattling dunks in the second half to send the crowd into a frenzy. The next day I happen to ask Guthridge, "Who taught Brust to dunk?" The straightforward answer: "He always knew how to dunk, Thad; it was a matter of getting the opportunity."

1993, the White House. Carolina has won the national title and the team is receiving its Rose Garden plaudits from President Clinton. I express to Carolina's top assistant how much I liked this team, what a special team it was, and how I still would have considered it a special team "even if they had lost." Guthridge gave a little smirk and said, "But I bet you're glad they won." Bingo!

1997, College Park. Carolina has played brilliantly offensively to rack up its 7th straight win, 6th in the ACC. Guthridge's comment upon receiving congratulations from this slightly partisan reporter, in reference to earlier games I had covered against Massachusetts and Princeton: "Better than December, wasn't it?"

The bottom line is, I think the larger Carolina basketball-watching audience will soon find that hearing from the new head coach can be an entertaining experience, and I don't mean in the frivolous sense--Guthridge's jokes have a point. And let no one be fooled: Beneath the everyday disposition of genial irony lies a fierce competitor with unabiding loyalty to the Smith way of doing things and a no-nonsense attitude honed by years of showing up at campus classrooms to make sure the players are carrying out their educational committments.

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if Guthridge retains his modus operandi of attentive serenity along the Tar Heel bench 90% of the time this season--and at the same time challenges for the league lead in technical fouls. (Not the stupid kind at inopportune moments late in the game, but the kind intended to put a charge into your own team.) Make no mistake, Carolina will suffer from not having Smith's great basketball mind available at game time this year. But the team won't suffer from any letdown in competitive intensity or motivational leadership with Guthridge at the helm. *

Assessing the new situation as a whole, there's no reason not to expect that Carolina will not play well in '97-98, even under an extra-large microscope from the get-go. The problem I fretted about a bit this summer--"will Carolina's fairly weak home schedule in the first half of the season create a sense of complacency in the Smith Center?"-- has evaporated over night: One can expect the crowds for the first few home games to be as abuzz and as excited as what we saw during the last 7 ACC home games last year.

What Guthridge will be most frequently judged by, however, is whether Carolina can pull out the close ones. Indeed, if I had one wish for this team, it would be that they manage at some point in the first half of the season to pull out a game, Dean-style, that they could or should have lost, and thereby send a large statement--to the rest of the ACC, but also themselves--that Carolina is truly "still Carolina". Of course, it's foolish to root for close games and not blowouts in the December schedule, but one suspects that between UCLA, at Florida State, at Georgia, and at Clemson, all before January 4, the Tar Heels' and Guthridge's late-game mettle will be put to the test at least once or twice. *

One more thing should be clear from the outset: Guthridge doesn't owe Carolina fans or anybody else anything, in terms of winning championships or keeping the streaks going or total number of wins and losses. That doesn't mean one should lower expectations because Smith is gone. Indeed, the opposite problem has crossed my mind once or twice: What if Guthridge wins 2 NCAA titles in 5 years, will they start saying again that proves Dean should have won more?

But it does mean that nothing that happens on the basketball court this year or in the suceeding seasons can take away from or diminish what Guthridge has already contributed, and what he helped Dean Smith accomplish. His place in the Carolina blue pantheon is already secure; whatever Guthridge now accomplishes as the head coach is icing on the cake.

Even so, it's totally appropriate to hope that these next few years of icing taste as sweet as the 30 years of cake Guthridge helped Dean bake, drawing, in the short term, on one central ingredient: The nucleus of hungry, returning players on this year's team who will demand nothing less, and will be intent on showing the world that the meaning of a Carolina uniform will persist in the post-Smith era.