In an exclusive interview, Rashad McCants discuss the 2005 Championship run at North Carolina
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00:00I ain't gonna lie I look at the championship game a lot because it
00:08brings a lot of memories to our discipline as a unit. We were so
00:13disciplined of accomplishing the goal that we knew at the beginning of the
00:19season there was nothing that was gonna stop us and throughout the whole season
00:25it was all about focus. The year before we all cut our heads off, our
00:34hair off. We were all in that Texas game and I don't wanna you know toot no horn or
00:42anything but that was kind of my idea to bring the guys together in a form
00:48where I was already shaving my head. I told everybody I want y'all to shave
00:53y'all head. You know what I'm saying? So me and Debo was the only ones that had to shave
00:57heads. Sean was just like fuck it let's go and once Sean did it yeah you know it
01:05was kind of like we all gonna do it so we all did it and we had a team meeting
01:09before the next game the next day we had a team meet all of us amongst the
01:14players and we just hashed out all of our differences and elephants in the
01:21room who felt what and even going into that game the next day we felt more
01:28together as a team right it was more cohesiveness there we just couldn't pull
01:33it out at the end you know I just didn't hit the shot I should have just hit the
01:36damn shot but we just didn't pull it in pull it together so that next year we
01:43added Marvin and I mean Marvin was probably the only key acquisition we
01:49really needed that could take us over to hump and he did and it made it
01:55magical because Marvin was the type of guy that didn't he didn't care like he
01:59was like I want everybody to eat I want everybody to win don't look at me like I
02:05need the ball like I'm just here to just be around y'all like he was just soaking
02:10up the energy so that made it easy to play with Mark and for Juwan and Jackie
02:15and Melvin it was senior year for them so it was special for everybody to make
02:19sure that was special for them they had been through a lot and I think us as a
02:23unit we all we were pretty much tired of each other at this point so we like man
02:29it's year three coming back again try to do this again like nah we got to win
02:37this whole thing now let's let's take it home and let's go fulfill our dreams in
02:43so Juwan actually told me when he was it's almost scary how much identical
02:51your stories are like he was like that year it was like championship or
02:55nothing like there was no other plan that year and he discussed how Melvin
03:01Scott was one of the few people who don't get mentioned a lot who kind of
03:05like you know helped change the game and how great you were and how you know that
03:11day the championship game was Sean's birthday so you guys really had like
03:17there was no other way but to win I like the shots a lot on that though like I
03:23was really selfish during that time I was going through some conflict with
03:27coach and I wasn't locked in I wasn't locked in not with the team or anything
03:36but it was Raymond was the one that always kind of reeled me in you know
03:41I'm saying because we had similar goals that we wanted to reach and you know I
03:47had to put I was 18 and a half 19 maybe like I don't know how to control these
03:55emotions when they come down to you know being mad and stubborn and trying to
03:59filter that out so my teammates was able to gear you know reel me in and shot
04:05look it's bigger than than anything that you can ever imagine what we doing here
04:10and so once that once the idea started to kick in and it was it wasn't more
04:16about the conflict than it was about the championship because that's why I came
04:20back I was supposed to be in a year before a championship so you know I was
04:26letting the conflict get in the way of what I had promised my teammates