Larry Drew II Quits on Roy Williams, North Carolina

Roy Williams was calm. The Pope might've put his Holiness' hand through a wall.

For the second time in nine months, Williams sat at a table and tried to explain a sudden transfer from his program. Friday, it was junior point guard Larry Drew II, months after twin forwards David and Travis Wear who told the coach they were in need of a forwarding address.

Williams seemed flummoxed as he tried to explain Drew's decision, his expression the sort you might expect if he'd been asked to name all the odd-numbered elements of the periodic table.

He said he was hurt by the decision and the usually folksy and funny coach showed it. He said he was surprised by it all, and he was. He said he was focused on the future and that his team would find a way.

What Roy Williams didn't say, however, said everything.

Larry Drew quit on his team.

Williams didn't say this, because he's a professional and apparently because he has patience to whoop Job in a staring contest.

But the truth was as obvious as the disappointment in Williams' voice.

Drew quit on his team, and more surprisingly, Williams, his biggest, and often only, defender.

More inexcusably, Drew didn't have the courtesy to tell his coach. His father, Atlanta Hawks coach Larry Drew, told Williams, the Tar Heels coach said in a Friday press conference.

Apparently, in the Drew household, the same protocol applies to quitting the Cub Scouts as it does Carolina.

Why Drew didn't contact Williams directly is as nonsensical as the timing of his decision. It's not as though Williams wouldn't have let him transfer. After all, this is North Carolina, a program that needs to beg players to stay like Kim Kardashian needs to troll Twitter for companionship.

Heck, had the largely unpopular Drew announced himself he was transferring, there would've been no shortage of Tar Heel fans personally volunteering to move his things. For free. On foot. To Tierra Del Fuego.

Drew was never popular in Chapel Hill, frankly for understandable reasons. He was marginal as a sophomore and regressed as a junior. Both years, his turnover percentages were unacceptably high, and by mid-January this year, his threat as a scorer was non-existent. Drew certainly stepped into a challenging situation, following Ray Felton and Ty Lawson in North Carolina's chain of point guards, and doing so without their surrounding talent.

Still, excusing Drew on the context of his promotion excuses the fact that Drew simply wasn't very good as ACC point guards go.

Everyone knew it. Except Roy Williams.

Which makes the decision all the more insulting to the Tar Heels coach.

Williams defended Drew at every turn to the point in his career.

"I do honestly believe [Drew] got way too much blame for last year," Williams said at the ACC's media kickoff in October. "Lawson had the greatest performance by a point guard I've ever seen in a fast style of play [in 2009]. ... Now the guy who takes his place is supposed to do that? And so I thought it was unfair.

He reiterated again Friday, praising his recent play and contextualizing his failures.

"He was unfairly criticized and maligned for last year," Williams said. "He didn't have Tyler Hansbrough or Danny Green to throw the ball to like Ty (Lawson)."

No one could have defended Drew any more vehemently than Williams did, to the point of starting him well after it was clear freshman Kendall Marshall deserved the job. Williams took heat from a North Carolina fan base already fed up with double-digit losses on the scoreboard and the loss column, yet Williams stood by his man long after even Tammy Wynette would've kicked Drew to the curb.

Heck, Williams did everything short of jumping up and down on a couch on Oprah extolling the virtues of his point guard.

Yet Drew left without a word to the coach who stood up for him.

More puzzlingly, the timing of Drew's decision makes little sense. By electing to leave now, rather than between semesters, Drew forfeits the remainder of his eligibility this semester. He will have only a year left, beginning in the fall of 2012. Meanwhile, both his play and the team's has picked up. The Tar Heels have won four in a row and are once again the class of the league, along with Duke. Drew still played 20 minutes a game and his play improved off the bench. He scored eight points against Clemson in his first game as a reserve and handed out nine assists in Tuesday's rout of Boston College.

Perhaps it was a decision made by Drew's parents, unhappy with their son's benching. If so, the parents played the situation terribly. Instead of simply being a marginal point guard in search of transfer, he's now a marginal point guard, a bad teammate and a player with overbearing parents.

If this was their decision, then we might recommend they return to doing PR work for Kenneth Cole.

Drew's departure will hurt the Heels in the short term. Kendall Marshall will have to handle a heavier workload at the point, while Dexter Strickland will have to pick up minutes at the point guard position, a role which he has yet to grow into. North Carolina also loses its best perimeter defender and a true speedster on the fast break, which could slow down the Tar Heels' preferred up-tempo pace.

But of all the things they do need, his speed, his defense, his composure, they don't need a quitter.

"Tough times don't last," Williams said. "Tough people do."

Drew didn't last.

Once again, what Roy Williams left unsaid, said everything.