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CHAPEL HILL — Will Graves considers himself a leader, a role model for the youngsters on the North Carolina men's basketball team.

Chances are, the 21-year-old junior from Greensboro wouldn't have said that seven months ago. Suspended for the final 18 games of the Tar Heels' national championship run, Graves wasn't even allowed to sit on the bench or wear his No. 13 uniform during the NCAA tournament.

"I hope he understands he missed a wonderful, wonderful time in his life, and you can't get that back," Heels coach Roy Williams said last week at North Carolina's media day. "So don't screw up anymore and miss another opportunity. I hope he still has a hunger for playing time. I hope he missed (basketball) a great deal. I hope it hurt. And I don't mind saying that. I hope it really hurt."

It did.

Especially those first two NCAA games in March at the Greensboro Coliseum. It would have been Graves' first chance to play in his hometown since high school, when he helped Dudley win back-to-back state championships and earned both News & Record and Associated Press player of the year honors as a senior in 2006.

Instead, the only cheers Graves heard for himself from the home crowd came during Carolina's open practice on the eve of the tournament.

"I couldn't imagine what he went through," senior Deon Thompson said. "I think about my family and coaches and teammates and the people close to my family, and (what it would be like) to let them down like that. I don't think anybody on the outside looking in can put themselves in his shoes."

One thought assuaged the anguish Graves felt, allowing him to smile through the hurt.

"Knowing that I had two years left in college," Graves said, "and knowing that the ACC tournament is going to be in Greensboro, it helped level it out. But, yeah, it was kind of hard."

Neither Graves nor Williams nor any of the Tar Heels players will say what happened last February. Whatever happened, it was enough to get him suspended — and almost enough to get him kicked off the team.

"You don't want to make mistakes you have to pay the consequences for, but everything happens for a reason," Graves said. "I'm better. I'm a better person for going through it, and it's time to move on.

"I have no hard feelings," he added. "If anything, I'm appreciative that I'm right here talking to y'all today wearing a Carolina uniform. &ellipses; I'm holding myself to the standards of a Carolina basketball player. I can say this: I've learned more here off the court than on the court."

And that, Graves said, makes him a leader.

He'll play a lot this season for a team that lost five of its top seven scorers. Graves likely will fill the sixth-man role Danny Green held as a sophomore and junior on his way to the NBA, adding instant offense off the bench. His Hall of Fame coach calls the 6-foot-6 Graves one of the team's most versatile players.

"He's potentially our best outside shooter," Williams said. "He's potentially out best rebounder from the perimeter. He's potentially our best post-up guy from the perimeter. He's maybe as good a passer as we have on the team. He's a guy who, if he does what I think he can do, could easily be a double-figure scorer for us. It remains to be seen if he's going to be focused enough to do the job. If he does, our team will be a heck of a lot better."

The focus is there, Graves said. He sees it every time he looks at his left forearm.

There's an image there, drawn in exquisite detail by a tattoo artist's needle and ink on the tender flesh inside the arm below the elbow — a bespectacled, smiling image of William Thomas Graves Jr., who died at age 69 in November 2001.

"We were real close," William Thomas Graves IV said of his grandfather. "He loved sports, and ... I loved him. He had a passion for Carolina athletics, and it rubbed off on me. A lot of what I do today is for him."

Graves said because of his grandfather, he's a fan first and a basketball player second. That outlook made it easy for Graves to be genuinely happy for his teammates during the title run, instead of moping in self-pity.

All through the suspension, Graves worked hard in practice. He said he's proud of his ACC regular-season and NCAA championship rings.

But the ache of not fully experiencing the ride is obviously there.

"It was a humbling experience," Graves said. "It just added fuel to the fire for me to come out here and lead a young team. ... I consider myself an unspoken leader, a behind-the-scenes leader with work ethic and trying to do what's right. I think my hunger from missing out last year will make me more aggressive, more of a leader, someone who leads by example, showing the young guys what to do and what not to do."

Contact Jeff Mills at 373-7024 or jeff.mills@news-record.com