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The Daily Tar Heel

What happened to loyalty?: Drew will be missed but team will be ?ne without him

Tough times don’t last but tough people do, Roy Williams said Friday.

Is anyone else not surprised? For two-and-a-half years we’ve held our breath and hoped that Larry Drew II wouldn’t get fed up with us, even though we were all fed up with him.

No one will know if he ever really wanted to be here; whether he had any connection to Chapel Hill or this team.

By all appearances, he never fully committed to this team, only to himself.

Loyal teammates don’t give up, especially not halfway through a season with something real to play for.

This season is real, and after last year’s performance, this team is going places.

And it has to hurt for a player to realize he’s not the reason — that maybe it wasn’t meant to be for him.

UNC center Tyler Zeller spoke for the whole UNC family when he said he was “shocked” that Drew left and that he was angry with him. “He left us a little stranded,” Zeller said.

Drew is not Phil Ford. He’s not Tywon Lawson or Raymond Felton. Fans should realize they unfairly demanded that Drew be the next great Tar Heel point guard. We are all guilty and we were all wrong.

Drew helped bring us a national championship and definitely helped our team over the last few weeks, even from the bench. And we could have used him this week when we play Duke. He could have proved himself a valuable backup and an important piece of our basketball team.

We deserve better than desertion.

Moving forward, Kendall Marshall’s school record in an ACC game — 16 assists against Florida State yesterday — certainly helped to ease the transition. Marshall had his coming-out party and Drew’s presence was barely missed.

We wish Drew good luck in his future ambitions but we also say: good riddance.

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