North Carolina heads north to take on BC (Jan 21, 2017)
BOSTON -- With his first 800 victories out of the way, Roy Williams goes for No. 801 when his No. 9 North Carolina Tar Heels visit Boston College on Saturday.
And the next win, whether it comes Saturday or not, will also be the next one without his friend, Barack Obama, in the White House.
In an interview just published in GQ, Williams, talking about the now-former president's basketball talents, said, "He has (some) sneaky little lefty, old-school moves. One of my players, Jack Wooten, tried to block his shot and I yelled at him. I said, 'Jack, this guy could be the President of the United States. What're you trying to do that for?!' And President Obama just picked up on it so quickly. He said, 'You see that secret service guy over there?'"
He added, "Pardon the phrase because we're talking about the President of the United States, "but my man doesn't have the greatest basketball body. Let's just be honest about this.
"One time I told him, I said, 'President Obama, you've got a job like a bad basketball coaching job. You got there in situations that were really difficult, and you got it changed and turned around.' The economy, the unemployment was like 10 percent and it's down to 4 percent. But I said, "You're probably never going to get credit for doing it." And he just laughed."
Williams, who still has his job, has the Tar Heels coming north with five straight wins, seven in the last eight games.
Monday night, the tar Heels presented Williams with win No. 800, making him the eighth coach to reach that milestone, and former UNC star Michael Jordan presented the coach with a pair of Air Jordans, tweeting: "One of a kind."
"For me the best news is I'm not dying," Williams, the second-fastest ever to 800, said in a ceremony after the win over Syracuse. "We're going to coach a few more.
"It was never a dream of mine to win 800 games. But it was a dream of mine to coach guys like this."
Saturday, UNC (17-3, 5-1 ACC) faces a Boston College team that has two conference wins, two more than it had last season. But the Eagles (9-10, 2-4) have lost two straight, at Syracuse and at home against No. 16 Virginia, and dropped four of their last five.
BC coach Jim Christian didn't think his team came out with enough intensity to have any chance of beating a ranked team.
"I didn't think that we came out to play Virginia, a ranked team, with the energy and emotion that you need to play them," Christian said.
BC sophomore Jerome Robinson, who teams with freshman Ky Bowman to form a strong 1-2 punch, has had two straight nine-point games as his scoring average has dropped under 20 a game (19.7). His 13 20-point games are the most of any player in a Power 5 conference but he is 7-for-25 from the floor, 1-for-8 from 3-point range, the past two games.
"He'll come out of it. He's a good player," Christian said.
UNC, which has defeated BC nine straight times to take a 15-5 series lead, is led by Justin Jackson, averaging 18.8 points and 5.1 rebounds per game. Joel Berry II is at 15.8 points and 4.2 assists and Kennedy Meeks 12.7 points and 9.7 rebounds per game.
