David Noel, who averaged 3.9 points off the bench last season, is the most experienced player on the team. He is the only returning player who scored in the championship game against Illinois (a free throw in 20 minutes of action).
"He's one of the big, tough, athletic players that Coach Williams has to work with," Coach Rick Scruggs of Gardner-Webb said by telephone. "And I thought Coach Williams did a great job. They're fast and really good in transition. They missed a bunch of free throws down the stretch, and that's the only time I could tell about their youth."
Noel said he had mixed emotions about this season. Although he will be playing a great deal more, he misses the camaraderie of last season's team and still talks regularly with several players who left.
"We're going to try to duplicate what we did last season," Noel said. "But to do it, we're going to have to play a perfect game, in a sense, every game. And my job -- one of my jobs -- is to lead by example."
Terry, who averaged 2.3 points a game last season, spoke optimistically about the challenge this team faces.
"It's a great opportunity for us to show the nation what we're capable of," he said. "We know that we're being written off because of the players we lost. But we don't use that as an excuse. We've got motivation to demonstrate that we're the Tar Heels, still a team to be dealt with."
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