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Doherty will do fine
Posted: Friday July 14, 2000 09:41 AM By Grant Wahl, Sports Illustrated Without a doubt, the most remarkable thing about North Carolina's agonizing coaching search has been the difficulty UNC has had in finding anybody interested in the job. What's up with that? If I had told you three weeks ago that Bill Guthridge would resign and 1) Roy Williams wouldn't want the job; 2) Eddie Fogler wouldn't want the job; and 3) neither Larry Brown nor George Karl would want the job, you would have said I was insane. Remember, the names Jeff Lebo and Randy Wiel actually came up as candidates in the last few days. Clearly this "Let's keep it in the Carolina family" thing had gotten out of hand. How low did Carolina go to get Matt Doherty? Well, he's at best the No. 3 choice and might be as low as No. 5. But for any UNC fans who think Doherty doesn't have enough experience, keep in mind, Williams had no collegiate head coaching experience at all when he took over at Kansas, and look what he has done there. The more pertinent question about Doherty should be, "Which aspect of last season's Fighting Irish should we look at -- Doherty's impressive victories (a run to the NIT final, a win on the road at Ohio State and a sweep of Connecticut) or his perplexing defeats (a home loss to Providence and a 25-point L to Rutgers)?" My gut is that you should focus on the wins, because they show that Doherty's teams have no fear of anybody, which is a reflection of the coach. So are those losses, of course, but coaches go through a learning process, too, one which will be greatly accelerated for Doherty now that he's in Chapel Hill. Doherty will do just fine at Carolina, not least because he has had the benefit of apprenticing under Roy Williams at Kansas and playing under Dean Smith at UNC. Both experiences have rubbed off immensely on the new Carolina coach. When I interviewed Doherty for SI's Dean Smith Sportsman of the Year piece in 1997, he told me a story about an early '80s practice in Chapel Hill when Smith asked his players to throw the ball farther upcourt during a drill. Then Smith stopped and intoned, "Notice I said F-A-R-T-H-E-R, not F-U-R-T-H-E-R. That's a mistake that a lot of people make." There's Smith for you, always in instruction mode. Doherty will be the same way. Grant Wahl is a Sports Illustrated staff writer who covers college basketball and is a frequent contributor to CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author.
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