Williams, McCaffery split on Iowa prospects

IOWA CITY - Roy Williams and Fran McCaffery each targeted two players in Iowa as part of their 2012 signing class. Both wanted 7-foot-1 center Adam Woodbury of Sioux City and 6-foot-1 point guard Marcus Paige of Marion. Both landed one.

Those players and coaches go head-to-head Wednesday with Iowa (5-2) playing at No. 12 North Carolina (5-1) in the Big Ten-ACC Challenge. Paige, the ACC's preseason player of the year, leads the Tar Heels with 15.2 points a game. Woodbury, who has started every game of his Iowa career, so far has posted career highs in points (9.1), rebounds (6.3) and minutes (22.4).

Williams liked both players when they competed for Martin Brothers' AAU team. Paige committed to the Tar Heels as a junior, but Woodbury entertained offers from both schools until weeks before signing day. He chose Iowa.

'His size is the first thing to see,” Williams said of Woodbury. 'He hasn't grown that much size-wise but with his maturity in the game. I saw him play a lot. He's a guy that could run. He was one of those team players that didn't need to have 25 shots to affect the game. I saw him play against some other top-notch big guys like Nerlens Noel, some of those kind of guys. I thought he just battled and battled and battled. I like that part of it.

'I thought he could really pass the guy for a big guy, too. He can defend his position. He could run, he could play the team game, he understood the game, he understood good spacing and all those good things we call savvy.”

McCaffery watched every allowable AAU game involving Paige, Woodbury and Mike Gesell over a two-year period. He maintains a good relationship with Paige and remains impressed with the left-handed guard.

'I still think in a lot of ways he's such an incredibly integral part of what they do,” McCaffery said. 'He can have the ball, he can go off the ball. He's going to be a late-game shot maker, always has been. Incredibly unselfish. He can get points or he can get assists, whatever his team needs.

'There's a reason why he was preseason player of the year candidate in the country, not just in his conference.”

Williams is famous (or infamous) for the players he's plucked from Iowa over the years, both at Kansas and now at North Carolina. He said all were unique situations and he couldn't rely on his past experiences with one to compare with another.

'You just go in trying to find as much as you can,” he said. 'We recruited (Paige) awfully hard. I don't think getting Harrison (Barnes) before him was a factor. Just like it wasn't with Raef LaFrentz, Nick Collison, Kirk Hinrich. We've had pretty good success in Iowa to say the least. We really needed a point guard in his class and I thought for me as a coach, I thought he was the best point guard out there in his class.”

PAIGE NOTICES IOWA'S IMPROVEMENT

Although Paige attends North Carolina, he follows Iowa closely. His family continues to support the Hawkeyes, and Paige attended a game last year at Carver-Hawkeye Arena.

Paige remains close to his former AAU teammates, and he also notices Iowa's program improvements under McCaffery. Iowa has posted back-to-back 20-win seasons after finishing 10-22 the year before McCaffery's arrival.

'Since Coach McCaffery's been there, there's been a lot more positive energy around the program,” Paige said. 'When I was growing up, during the (Todd) Lickliter years, there wasn't a whole lot of buzz or hype around with what they were doing.

'Last year, Coach McCaffery had them making a great run before they hit a rough spot. He's done a great job. Had he been there a little earlier, when I was in high school, I probably would have considered them even more.”

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