bgorman@heraldsun.com; 419-6668
CHAPEL HILL -- During the excitement of the last 10 minutes of Sunday's game, one that went back and forth between No. 11 North Carolina and Nevada, UNC coach Roy Williams admitted he made a move on the sidelines that he probably shouldn't have.
The Tar Heels' coach had his left arm in a sling after undergoing surgery for a torn labrum in his shoulder Tuesday, and he had forgotten to take his pain pills at halftime.
But after a brief checkup from the team's head trainer and reassuring his concerned wife -- who had come down to the bench area from the stands -- Williams watched as his team withstood the Wolf Pack for a 80-73 win and his 600th career victory.
"Right now [the 600th win] doesn't feel too good, my shoulder's hurting," Williams joked after the game.
Williams, who is in his 22nd season as a head coach, becomes the 33rd coach in Division I history to reach 600 wins and is the eighth active head-coach to reach the mark. Williams is also the third fastest to reach 600, doing it in 739 games. Only Adolph Rupp (704 games) and Jerry Tarkanian (720) reached the mark quicker.
"It's a lot of great players and great assistant coaches," said Williams, who was presented with a UNC jersey that had "600" on it. "I don't think you'll ever hear Roy Williams say, 'I've won 500 or I've won 600.' ... I say, 'We won this and we won that' and that's really what I believe."
For a while in the second half, however, it looked like Williams' 600th win might have to wait another game.
The Tar Heels (6-1) were up 46-39 at halftime, but a 3-pointer by the Wolf Pack's Luke Babbitt cut the score to 56-55 with 13:30 to go. Thirty-eight seconds later Nevada (2-3) took its first lead of the second half when Armon Johnson buried a pull-up jumper.
The teams traded the lead back and forth over the next couple minutes and the score was tied 64 with 6:45 to play. But a Will Graves bucket and back-to-back 3s by Larry Drew II gave the Tar Heels some separation, and they never led by fewer than five the rest of the way.
"I don't think we've really had a game like that this season where you really have to buckle down the last couple of minutes and get stops and score," said Drew, who finished with a career-high 10 assists and added 12 points.
"It's something that we do in practice this thing called stop, score, stop. ...Coach Williams says everything that we do in practice directly translates back over into the game. The last six minutes, all that was was just stopping and scoring, stopping and scoring."
Senior Deon Thompson finished with a career-high 23 points -- 15 in the first half -- for his first back-to-back 20-point games. Sophomore Ed Davis added 16 and a career-high 15 rebounds, and senior Marcus Ginyard chipped in 10 points. Drew, Thompson, Ginyard and Davis all played at least 30 minutes as Williams made good on his promise to shorten his bench.
The Tar Heels shot 47.1 percent to the Wolf Pack's 41.3 percent, and UNC turned the ball over a season-low eight times after averaging 18.8 entering Sunday's game.
"I was really impressed with my team for the last 10 minutes of the game more than I have been at any time this year," Williams said. "Faced with adversity, things were not going our way. All of a sudden the other team has the lead. I think we got more competitive during that time, made some shots, made some defensive stops."
While the Tar Heels played with energy and emotion the last 10 minutes of the game, they appeared a step slow in the first half and turned the ball over five times. Nevada cut the lead to two just before halftime, but UNC went on a 6-0 run to close out the period.
But Ginyard said the tight contest with the Wolf Pack will only help the Tar Heels as they prepare to host No. 2 Michigan State on Tuesday and then travel to No. 5 Kentucky on Saturday.
"I think it's just great for this team to see this tonight, especially with two big-time games coming up that definitely have the potential to go down to the wire," Ginyard said. "It was good for this team to see this now and I think it'll be very helpful for us."
NOTES -- Attendance was announced at 17,321 but the arena was half-full at tipoff -- and Williams noticed.
"I wish some of our fans that weren't here tonight would get a little more passionate and get their rear ends here," Williams said. "That was discouraging at the start of the game but I love the ones that were here. The other ones I think I should take a camera shot and anybody that wasn't here tonight, stop them at the door if they try to come in for Michigan State [on Tuesday] and told them I sold their dadgum ticket."
