ACC coaches talk n.Y. vs. Greensboro
Leave it to Jim Boeheim to still be a story at the ACC tournament a day after Syracuse was eliminated in its opening game for the third straight year.
After top-seeded North Carolina dominated ninth-seeded Miami in the second half for a 78-53 victory in a Thursday quarterfinal, Miami coach Jim Larranaga and North Carolina coach Roy Williams spent parts of their postgame press conferences reacting to the fallout of Boeheim’s comments about Greensboro, N.C.
After the Orange’s 62-57 loss to Miami on Wednesday afternoon, Boeheim said, “There is no value playing in Greensboro, none,” in comparison to playing in places like New York, Washington or Atlanta.
For the Bronx native Larranaga, New York obviously holds a certain value.
“To me, the ACC tournament, no matter where it is played, is a tremendous event and deserves the recognition that it does get,” said Larranaga, whose Hurricanes (21-11) will now go back to Coral Gables and begin to prepare for the NCAA tournament.
“But the fact of the matter is New York City is the capital of college basketball, starting back when CCNY and LIU were winning national titles, and kids were growing up in the city and becoming All-Americans and NBA players. So to bring the ACC, the best basketball conference in the country, to the mecca of college basketball and give it the exposure that it truly deserves, I think is a great thing. Not to disparage any other city or any other location, but New York is special.”
Larranaga explained how the culture of the ACC has changed, how when he was an assistant at Virginia from 1979-86, it was an eight-team league based in the Mid-Atlantic to Southern states. With the addition of Miami, Syracuse, Notre Dame, Louisville, Pitt, Virginia Tech and Boston College, the league has grown to 15 schools spread out over one-third of the country.
“We’ve taken the creme de la creme of one league (Big East) that was highly thought of and put it with the creme de la creme of the ACC, and now we have, in my estimation, the best basketball conference in the American history of college basketball.”
Kamari Murphy, the Lincoln HS product and 6-9 redshirt senior forward whose big game helped the Hurricanes beat Syracuse on Wednesday, saw the benefits of having the tournament in his hometown through his teammates’ eyes.
“Besides the family and friends I got to see, it gave guys that have never been to New York the exposure,” he said. “Anthony Lawrence has never been to New York City. We went to the World Trade and took that tour. So it gives guys that have never been around the world that exposure… I think they should continue to (bring it back to Brooklyn).”
After praising his Carolina players such as Isaiah Hicks, who scored 19 points on 5-for-7 shooting and 9-for-9 from the line, Williams, the born and bred Tar Heel from Asheville, was a little more political than Larranaga.
“This is America. Everybody’s got the right to their opinion,” Williams said of Boeheim. “I don’t agree with that. I love moving the tournament around. I think it’s good. But the Masters was played at Augusta National. Augusta’s not a very big town. We keep taking the tournament back there. I still think it’s good for us to move around. I loved Washington, D.C., last year. New York is doing a great job. I love Greensboro.”
Beyond the business aspects of bringing the tournament here, Williams didn’t think it was as big a deal for recruiting as playing games in New York City once was.
“(Playing in New York) used to be much more so than I think it is now,” Williams said. “Now everybody’s got social media, and we don’t need The New York Times to find out what in the dickens is going on in the country. You know, our president tweets out more bulls-t than anybody I’ve ever seen. We’ve got social media.”
Roy may want to avoid reading President Trump’s Twitter feed around 6 a.m. the next few days, but we get the point.