Yea, college football is
cool. But now that our veggies are out of the way, let’s enjoy the crème brûlée of the college
basketball season. This is North Carolina, where we get to over-analyze
basketball (especially early in the year).
With that said, let’s turn our attention to the big college basketball
programs in the state (sorry Wake Forest).
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| This loaded team full of future pros has been replaced by a younger, less talented one |
UNC
I’m a Tar Heel fan. Despite the professional basketball being my
favorite sport, the Tar Heels are my favorite team. In fact, I would make an
argument that it is, historically, the best program in the country. With that said, we aren’t very good this year…at
least, not yet.
UNC lost four first-round
draft picks to the NBA last year.
Kendall Marshall, John Henson, Tyler Zeller, and Harrison Barnes are all
contributing on the next level. In their
place, the program has been taken over by a litany of talented but young
players. As a UNC fan, I can speak with
some authority on the fact that when we get freshmen, they LOOK like freshmen.
Sure, UK Freshmen are TECHNICALLY the same age; but their demeanors, bodies,
and games are aged. UNC’s freshmen are the top in the class that still need
college. You could see it when they had trouble defending the pick and roll
while playing Butler, and when they got hammered in number 1 Indiana (at least
in the Butler game they showed a will to fight back, clawing from 30 down to single
digits in the final minute).
Coach Roy Williams has
done a magnificent job of recruiting players; Brice Johnson and Paige Marcus
have both showed flashes of their promise.
Still, Williams is getting to know what this team is capable of doing
along with the rest of us. He has tinkered
with the lineup and will continue to do so until he finds what works (all UNC
fans remember how notoriously slow he was to make the switch from Larry Drew
III to Kendall Marshall). Moreover, this
team will go as far as the wing position carries it. I can’t recall a Tar Heel team that was
constructed in such a manner. PJ
Hairston (whose absence from the Indiana game was palpable), Leslie McDonald (a
tough, sharp shooting 6-8 forward recently recovered from last year’s ACL
tear), and Keith Bullock (the team’s best perimeter defender) are the heart of
the team’s defensive and offensive presence.
James McAdoo is, by far, the most highly
regarded pro prospect out of the crew.
His athleticism is on display every time he touches the ball. In fact, although he was
a 6th man last year, there were rumors he was seriously considering
jumping to the pros with the rest of his teammates at the end of last
year. He has come back, and his jumper
has looked improved (although his footwork and hands are still wildly
inconsistent). In order for UNC to
compete with the country’s elite, he will have to establish a more efficient
post game and not allow large stretches of the contest to pass without
affecting it. He is no longer a luxury player on a stacked team as he was last
year, now he is the guy that will have to lead a young and inexperienced team.
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| Seth Curry (Left) and Mason Plumlee were instrumental in defeating Kentucky |
Duke
Ok, so maybe I put off
writing this post until after they played Indiana hoping that they would have
recently lost. In fact, the opposite
happened, as they made their best case to date for being the number 1 team in
the country and increased their non-conference win streak to 97 wins. UK,
Louisville, and OSU (all top 5 teams) all lie in the graveyard of teams that Duke
has carried out in a body bag. Mason
Plumlee, in addition to breaking the all-time dunk record at Duke (seriously,
he has), has lived up to all of the preseason hype surrounding him. He’s averaging a monster double-double (19.9
points per game and 11 Rebounds per game) and has anchored a team filled with
the annual gluttony of Duke Shooters. What
may be different from recent years is that Duke guards really well on the
perimeter, and has a litany of finishers on the team. It will be interesting to watch them play on
the road vs. a quality opponent (Louisville and UK were both neutral-site
encounters, and they trailed OSU most of the game in Cameron Indoor Stadium).
Additionally, Seth Curry
has added a dimension to his game.
Previously, while he was a dead-eye shooter, he was largely as valuable
as a statue once he got near the paint. Now, he feels comfortable taking the
ball off the dribble and finishing at the cup.
Against UK, it was he (not Plumlee) who took the game over late and
closed the show for the ball club. With the
veteran leadership and talent of an inside/outside duo of Curry and Plumlee,
this Duke team will be the favorite to win both the regular season and conference
post-season titles.
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| Mark Gottfried has done a magnificent job of recruiting talent, now he just needs to mold them into a winning team |
NC State
They’ve pretty much been the red-headed
stepchild of NC basketball. The runt of
a state boasting with college basketball behemoths finally got picked first
this year, as they were selected to win the ACC this season by the Conference’s
coaches. That’s a lot of pressure for a team that has only made the NCAA
tournament a handful of times in the past 20 years, and hasn’t won a title
since 1983 (years before anyone on their current roster was even being thought
about).
So far, the (5-2)
Wolfpack are winless against top 25 teams (Oklahoma State and Michigan) and
haven’t looked capable of living up to the talent that they have on their
roster. They have looked undisciplined
(star player CJ Leslie got a Technical foul that earned him a DQ for reaching
the 5 foul limit) and overrated (Raleigh product and number 1 ranked HS player
Rodney Purvis has struggled mightily at times figuring out how best to fit in
to Coach Mark Gottfried’s system).
The team looks and feels
inexperienced. I think we will know everything we will need to know about this
team by midway through their ACC schedule.
The talent is there (Leslie and Lorenzo brown were both selected preseason
All-ACC) and Gottfried’s track record shows he can turn around programs that
have struggled (3 years ago NC State’s recruiting class wasn’t ranked, then it
was 10th, and last year 9th in the country). But if they don’t get any winning experience
soon, he may lose the team and that talent would’ve been wasted in Raleigh.
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