Eight o'clock, on ESPN.

Miami was one of the four ACC schools last spring (and eight in the last three years) to change coaches. It's ironic then that this small school with title interest in basketball got the one with the biggest ACC pedigree. Jim Larranaga got his first coaching position as an assistant to Terry Holland at Davidson, and later reunited with Holland at Virginia for the Ralph Samson years. More recent Carolina fans know him as coach of the George Mason team that knocked UNC out of the tournament en route to the Final Four in Tyler Hansbrough's freshman season; either way the man has experience beating the Heels.

Not that it was of much help in January, when Carolina easily beat the Hurricanes in Chapel Hill. Since then, Miami has gone on a bit of a tear, winning six of their next eight conference games. And while some of that is the weakness of their opponents, they did knock of Duke in Cameron in overtime, and handily dispatch Virginia Tech. This is a team that has definitely staked a claim as slightly above average in the conference, and are angling for an NCAA bid.

A lot of that is due to improvement in the frontcourt, as Reggie Johnson has returned to full health and Kenny Kadji has gotten more accustomed to ACC play. Johnson in particular had a phenomenal game against Duke. UNC's front line is of course a bit harder to handle than the Blue Devils, and although both Hohnson and Kadji hit double-digit scoring against the Heels, both were out rebounded and Kadji especially was ineffective on the boards.

The perimeter game hasn't changed much since the last meeting. Miami may be slowly trending towards taking more threes, but not significantly. The commonality in their big wins is the Hurricanes perimeter defense, which held Maryland and Duke to 21% and 29% behind the arc, respectively. They'll usually let the big playmaker score at the expense of taking away everybody else, a trend UNC fans are familiar with. I'd expect Harrison Barnes to have a big night, both to atone for his six point performance in the teams' first meeting, and as he shakes off the remnants of the injuries that slowed him down against Duke and UVa.

But Carolina wil continue to get most of their points from inside, and I expect them to have only a little more difficulty than they did last time. This will also be a good test of if the defense has suffered in the absence of Dexter Strickland, as it's the first game with a repeat opponent. I don't expect it to – Reggie Bullock has been really good – but we'll see. UNC should win again, if not quite so handily the second time around. And no amount of Zen meditation is going to overcome that.

It wasn't the best way to bounce back from a bad game, but it will suffice. UNC struggled to find the bottom of the net, and took way to long to figure a way around Virginia's double team, but the defense held strong until the Heels could close out the game with a 23-9 run. Considering the number of shooting guards Carolina had injured on the bench, it was a pretty nice win.

The poor shooting was pretty ugly, though. The Heels shot 35% from the field and missed their first nine three-pointers. And it was here that Virginia really missed Assane Sene, because Carolina crashed the offensive boards hard. Rebounding is one of the lynchpins of Virginia's defense, and UNC snatched 19 offensive rebounds from them. These second chances were critical, and the Heels made the most of them. It's the reason Tyler Zeller finished with 25 points, despite the Cavaliers' strategy of double and triple-teaming every time he was passed the ball.

It also helped that Mike Scott was limited to 27 minutes of action. He spent large swathes of time on the bench in both the first and second halves after picking up his second and third fouls, but even his performance late in the game was pretty lackluster. He only had four points in the last ten minutes, and frankly wasn't moving much without the ball. The combination of the pace and the effort he had to exert defending John Henson clearly took its toll. The only other big men Virginia played were Akil Mitchell and Darion Atkins; the duo combine for five points and eight fouls.

Which brings me to James McAdoo. As the last bench player left standing, it made things a lot easier that he had a good game. And over eighteen minutes, he scored nine points, pulled in seven rebounds, and most importantly had two steals, all without committing a foul. It's a glimpse of what we expect to see from him over the next couple of years, and it left me the most excited I've been about the freshman all year.

I'm not sure how this game is going to look once the season is done. Virginia was ranked 20th, but I expect them to fall farther before the season is up. Even in a down year for the ACC, they're to thin without Sene. UNC will see the Cavaliers again in two weeks in Charlottesville, and as far as things go, it's a good team for the Heels to draw twice. Is this a turning point for UNC? I don't know. Playing Miami on the road on Wednesday will tell us more, but if Carolina wins there they'll build up a great deal of momentum after with Clemson and State. We may be looking back at this game as the beginning of a phenomenal run to end the regular season. In the grand scheme of things though, little has changed in the last week and a half. The team isn't as bad as the end of the Duke game would have you believe, but they haven't fixed all of their problems merely by beating Virginia by eighteen, either.

UNC's first game in a week, because obviously nothing happened on Wednesday. Nothing.

There are typically two ways you respond to a game like last Wednesday's. You can come out flat and listless in the next one, physically and mentally exhausted, struggle and possibly lose a game you shouldn't. Or you can play in a white-hot rage, obliterate your opponent, burn down their arena and dance in the ashes to the lamentations of their women[*].

However, I don't really see UNC doing either of these things today. Because the Tar Heels play Virginia, the slowest basketball team known to man.

Alright, that's a slight exaggeration. There are six teams in the country playing basketball at a slower pace than the Cavaliers, making the slowest team Wisconsin, where UVa coach Tony Bennett got his coaching start. But the sentiment rings true. Virginia averages just over 60 possessions a game, a full 14 less than what Carolina manages. Think about that – UNC on average makes almost a full quarter more trips down the court than the tortoises in Charlottesville. It's like they're playing two different sports, and any rage UNC brings into this game is going to be tempered a bit by the inchworm pace the game will be dragged into.

Running a slow pace when you have the ball is easy; you just don't try to score until the shot clock hits single digits. Keeping the pace to glacial-speed when the other team wants to run the ball is more difficult, requiring a really tough half court defense. So it's no surprise the Cavaliers have one of the best in the country, and the best in the ACC, beating out the Tar Heels by a hair. This is the first UVa team that Bennett has truly been able to run the style he did at Washington, built around a trapping defense and a maniacal fixation on defensive rebounds. Carolina learned this lesson the hard way last year, when unheralded center Assane Sene stymied Zeller and Henson, pulled down even boards, and would have derailed the game had he not spent so much time on the bench in foul trouble. Sene will miss this year's game with a fractured ankle, and it's no coincidence that two of their three ACC losses and their two closest wins came in his absence; this is a huge blow for UVa. Without Sene, the Cavaliers have most had to rely on Akil Mitchell, who was much less of a detriment to the Heels, and all-around superhero Mike Scott inside. Carolina should have an easier time shooting this year.

Virginia's offense, of course, centers around Scott as well. He's the team's leading scorer and rebounder, taking a huge number of the team's shots and making most of them. It'll be interesting to see how he handles being defended by most likely John Henson, although possibly Harrison Barnes. Scott missed last year's game, and was only mildly successful as a sophomore against the 2010 team. That squad was Sylven Landesberg's through-and-through though, so on his own I'd expect him to do a fair bit of damage. It helps that he has a protege in Joe Harris, the slightly smaller wing player who places second in all those stat categories Scott dominates. He did OK facing Barnes last season, and has improved as a sophomore.

If you've been following the Tar Heels, or just saw the Duke game, you're more worried about Virginia's three-point shooting. Especially so if you remember Sammy Zeglinski's 5 of 8 performance two years ago. Zeglinski, now roughly 45 years old, is still hanging around, but the team as a whole shoots a lot less threes than in years past. Last year, the Cavaliers had a host of three-point options; this year outside of Zeglinski and Harris, there's only the freshman Malcolm Brogdon coming off the bench. Built like P.J. Hairston, he gets a lot of minutes for his defense, but of late has been good for 5 to 10 points a game.

Speaking of Hairston, the freshman guard will miss today's game with a sore left foot. This provides practically no support for Kendall Marshall and Reggie Bullock; I'd expect the Heels to occasionally go big and move Barnes to the shooting guard spot while playing a lot more Justin Watts than anyone is comfortable with. Of course, here is where the slow pace could help Carolina, keeping their legs fresher than they'd be otherwise, but I would think UNC will still push the tempo. The Cavaliers rarely play more than eight and really only six play significant minutes. If UNC can put a couple of their big men on the bench with tired legs or fouls, it will make the game a lot easier.

Virginia hasn't really had a lot of luck dragging UNC down to the Cavs' preferred pace since Tony Bennett arrived. I don't expect this team to have much more success. The match-ups are very favorable for the Heels, and unless Mike Scott has a big night and the perimeter players light up the Dean Dome, UNC should get the win. It won't be cathartic destruction everyone wants after this week, but it should keep the Heels atop the ACC race. The wanton bloodletting can wait; there's still other rivalry games on the schedule.

That hurt.

No, I understate things. That hurt a lot. Indescribably so. It will scar me, and I was just innocently watching from the comfort of my couch. I can't imagine what the anguish is for those who actually played. UNC did everything right for most of the game. They fell behind early to a barrage of scoring from Austin Rivers, but switched the defense up, putting Reggie Bullock on him instead of Harrison Barnes, and then clawed their way back. Duke was completely shut down for the last five minutes of the first half, and the Heels extended that into the second. Within a few minutes, UNC was up by ten and in complete control.

And then things just... stagnated. UNC didn't play particularly poorly, and Duke didn't play particularly well, but the lead just kind of stuck around ten. Tyler Zeller went out with four fouls, but the offense didn't really sputter; Harrison Barnes, after a frustrating first half kicked it into high gear and... the lead remained around ten. Rivers got a second wind, and the lead remained around ten.

Then the last three minutes happened.

Duke was still doing everything wrong at this point. They give it to Kelly for a three, but he's exhausted; it doesn't even reach the rim. But John Henson is deemed to have blocked it, and it's Duke ball. Tyler Thornton (!) makes a three. UNC timeout, seven point game Mason Plumlee gets a steal at half court on the next possession and the ball finds its way to a traveling Seth Curry. Another three, and it's a four point game. Harrison Barnes drives on the other end, stumbles after contact with Thornton, and is whistled with the charge.

Duke again elects to give Ryan Kelly another three-point attempt. He misses, of course. But the rebound finds its way back to Kelly, and even he can hit a baseline jumper. Suddenly, it's 82-80. Mason Plumlee immediately fouls Tyler Zeller. Zeller makes one of two free throws. 83-80.

Duke decides to give Ryan Kelly a third crack at a three pointer. It is again, way, way off. But in going for the rebound, Tyler Zeller tips it into the basket. All of basketball is confused, and it's a one-point game. But Tyler Zeller is fouled immediately. Tyler Zeller is a 79% free throw shooter. Tyler Zeller has already missed three of his nine free throws tonight. The team as a whole has missed 8 of 24, many of them front ends of one-and-ones. Tyler Zeller only makes one of his last two.

But it's a two point game, and Duke is bringing the ball up. Duke hasn't really done much to move the ball around. The only have eight assists on the entire night. And the defense is strong. The Blue Devils can't get near the three-point line. They're forced to call a timeout.

Out of the timeout, Duke still has nothing. Dawkins isn't open. Curry isn't open. Rivers gets a half-hearted screen from Mason Plumlee... and Reggie Bullock doesn't go through it. Bullock is now defending Plumlee, who's gotten maybe one entry pass all evening, and not from Rivers, who won't give it up unless forced. Rivers is being guarded by Zeller. Rivers doesn't make a move. Rivers doesn't look to pass. Rivers jacks up a three over a seven-footer from a step or two behind the arc.

And the fucking thing goes in.

It's a horrible, freakish, epic collapse. We're all sentenced to see it replayed for the rest of our lives, during every Carolina game. It obliterates what had been a very good game for Carolina, played at the head-whipping tempo they like. Kendall Marshall's terrific game – man is it fun to drive into a lane filled with Plumlees – with its 14 points and 8 assists is moot. Barnes' terrific second half, where after being held almost scoreless in the first he would finish with 25 points, is wiped away. Double-doubles from both Zeller and Henson are forgotten. Because of those last few minutes.

It didn't register as a collapse at the time. It was nothing like, say, Georgetown in 2007, which haunts me to this day. It was a death by a thousand cuts, a steady trickle of missed free throws and plays unfinished. The anger is just now setting in as I type, a good half-hour after the game. This whole thing is a travesty.

My one hope is the knowledge that the players have to be hurt infinitely more by this. That it has to just eat at them. The Florida State loss was an embarrassment, but shame can only motivate you so much. To lose like this, at home, in so painful a manner, to watch Austin Rivers run down the court celebrating, only to realize he was running away from the only group of people out of 20,000 who didn't want to punch him in the throat – that hurts. That festers. That is the kind of loss that burns the resolve to never lose again into a team. This is the sort of thing that forges a team, and spurs them on to leave destruction in their wake the rest of the way.

Or so I hope. Because I can't take any more losses like this.

Time to demonstrate to Duke their inferiority again. The game is on all the channels, 9 pm.

Duke makes shots. Plain and simple.

The Blue Devils have the fifth most efficient offense in the country, while UNC has the 17th, a difference of 6.7 points per 100 possessions, according to Ken Pomeroy's stats. In ACC play, that margin is even wider. But the two teams go about getting their points in very different ways, and it all begins with Duke's field goal percentage.

Barring the occasional year when Duke has a strong player at center, the Blue Devils typical rely on perimeter shooting, and this year is no exception. Only Boston College attempts more threes than Duke, and the Eagles don't find the bottom of the net nearly as often. So it's no surprise that the most shots are taken by two pure guards, Austin Rivers and Seth Curry, followed by 6'11 Ryan Kelly, who still takes a third of his shots from behind the arc.

Curry is a known quantity at this point. In his two games last season against the Heels, he scored over twenty points in each. He takes an equal number of shots from two and from three, but against Carolina he's more likely to rely on the latter; in Duke's loss in Chapel Hill last season he was the only Blue Devil to sink a three. He had six.

That game in Chapel Hill augers well for the Heels. Their perimeter defense was strong, and of Duke's 67 points, 50 came from two players, Curry and Nolan Smith. Smith's 30 points have graduated, and Austin Rivers hasn't been able to replace him. Not for a lack of trying, as Rivers takes more shots and scores more points than anyone else on the team, but he's been incredibly streaky. He's been benched more than once, had games where he's been a non factor, like Georgia Tech and Clemson, his first two ACC road games. He has the worst effective field goal percentage of any of the Duke starters, although not by much, and will be the easiest to force out of his rhythm. He may be halfway there already, expecting to defended by Harrison Barnes when it's more likely he'll see Bullock's hand in his face.

And this brings us to Ryan Kelly. Kelly is tasked with replacing Kyle Singler as the big man who spends surprisingly little time in the paint. Instead Kelly is more often using his size on the perimeter, drawing out a defender to an uncomfortable position and either draining the three or driving to the hoop. Unfortunately for him, UNC's big men are quite comfortable outside, and John Henson's wingspan can be a game-changer. Playing alongside Singler last season, Kelly was a non-factor in his two games against UNC, scoring 2 and 4 points. He's improved as he's been thrust into a more prominent role, but I still expect him to struggle.

Surprisingly, the best shooter on the team at the moment is Mason Plumlee, middle child of the Plumlee clan. He too has had no success in past games against the Heels, but this year he's emerged as the team's best rebounder and the player with the highest effective field goal percentage. He does get a lot of his points off those offensive boards though, which may make for slow going against Tyler Zeller. Plumlee's older brother has watched his minutes decline this year, but I expect him to get a lot of time tonight as Krzyzewski throws bodies at the UNC interior. We might also see more of freshman Michael Gbinije, who although smaller than the Plumlees could present interesting matchup problems for the Heels.

The player I do expect to have a big night, besides Curry, is Andre Dawkins. He too has been streaky, and also has had little success against UNC, but can have big nights when the bigger names are drawing all the defensive focus. He's more of a three-point shooter than his fellow guards, but also picks his shots a bit more carefully than Rivers does.

The big unknown in all of this is exactly what type of lineup Krzyzewski will go with for the majority of the game. He may try to go big to try to slow down UNC's offense at the expense of his own shooters; he may prefer to go small and swarm the perimeter, denying entry passes and taking his own chances with Duke's perimeter shooting strength. It's almost guaranteed the Blue Devils will slow the pace down, although if their smart they'll challenge the offensive boards more than a lot of recent teams – State especially – have attempted. Duke will need second chances at the rim to score enough to keep the Heels at bay, but I'm not sure it will be enough. In their last two games against Carolina, only Seth Curry among the current roster had any success against the Heels. While there's been some improvement, and Austin Rivers is a big unknown, I don't see this team having the talent and maturity to keep up with UNC.

Carolina wins by ten.

Mike Krzyzewski's Blue Devils have lost two of their last three games at home, and he's not happy:

"The last two years, we haven't lost that many, but those teams were very mature," Krzyzewski said Monday on the David Glenn Show. "With Scheyer and Singler and Smith and Lance and Brian, we had older, very dependable guys. You knew what to expect. This year's team is a team that doesn't have those guys.

"One of the best ways of communication is if someone on your team is communicating your message. That's what Singler did on a daily basis through his effort or Nolan Smith through his effort and talk. Or Scheyer, Lance and Brian. They did that as big brothers. That's something we're missing on this team. Not being negative about our team, but we just do not have that. As a result, the message you're trying to get across may not be getting as deep as it needs to be."

As a Carolina fan, I feel compelled to point out that Krzyzewski's entire schtick is that he's a leader who happens to coach basketball and he's built an entire industry around it. So to blame his current woes on a lack of leadership from the team is a little risible. He has four juniors playing over half the game; if a team leader hasn't emerged, isn't that the fault of the guy who teaches leadership for a very lucrative living?

But why leadership problems may be a catch-all for Duke's current woes, I'm more interested in how they're manifesting on the court. Because one thing Krzyzewski does have going for him is an extreme adaptability to the players he has on the floor. When Roy Williams' 2010 team couldn't handle the fast-paced offense like teams in years past with Larry Drew at the point, he ran it anyway. (And in his defense, there's no evidence that team could run a slow, half court set either.) Krzyzewski, on the other hand, had 73.9 possessions per game in 2006, but 67.3 the very next year; he'll run at whatever pace he deems appropriate. He abandoned interior play altogether when he didn't have the players for it, and won a championship with the most unorthodox use of a center I've ever seen. He recruited 6'8" Kyle Singler and then let him hang out on the perimeter on offense all the time.

But there are a few constants, and one of them is defense. Going back to 2009, Duke hasn't allowed more than a point per possession in ACC play. Currently they give up 1.04. Their turnover generation the past two season is also the lowest it has been in that time frame, and their steals considerably. Opponents have always been a little leery of taking threes against Duke's swarming perimeter defense, but this season they're taking more than they did since Elton Brand patrolled the Cameron paint. And the current motley collection of Plumlees are no Elton Brand.

(Selected Duke defensive stats. From left, possessions per 40 minutes, opponent's points per possession, opponent's effective field goal percentage, defensive rebounding percentage, turnovers forced per possession, opponent's three point attempts per shot, opponent's three point percentage, and steals per possession.)

Frankly, the Duke defense hasn't been as fearsome as in previous years, especially on the perimeter. And when an opponent can combine decent perimeter shooting with an athletic big man, it's been trouble for the Blue Devils. Jared Sullinger, Reggie Johnson, and Xavier Gibson all had field days against the Duke interior, and both Miami and Tempe shot 50% from behind the arc, unheard of against most Duke teams.

So I'd look less to leadership issues and more to defensive ones. Particularly Austin Rivers and Andre Dawkins, who are generating very few of the steals that Duke so often relies on. The Plumlees and Ryan Kelly are doing a little better inside, but rely on their height a lot. Stronger or more athletic big men can cause havoc, and I expect Tyler Zeller and John Henson to do just that. And all the leadership in Krzyzewski's little head isn't going to fix that.

This being the week of the Carolina-Duke game, I'm expected to direct a fair amount of hate Durham's way. And I don't aim to disappoint. But it doesn't have to be all vehemence; I'm a gracious man. So let me kick off the week with the nicest thing I'll say about the Cameron Crazies: They're not complete idiots.

A few years ago, Duke professor Dan Ariely ran an economics experiment on the Cameron Crazies. It's become rather famous, being retold in Ariely's book Predictably Irrational, Moskowitz's and Wertheim's Scorecasting, and numerous places on the web. It's also usually told wrong, so I'll turn it over to Ariely himself:

As Ziv Carmon (a professor at INSEAD) and I listened to the air horn during the campout at Duke in the spring of 1994, we were intrigued by the real-life experiment going on before our eyes. All the students who were camping out wanted passionately to go to the basketball game. They had all camped out for a long time for the privilege. But when the lottery was over, some of them would become ticket owners, while others would not.

The question was this: would the students who had won tickets – who had ownership of tickets – value those tickets more than the students who had not won them even though they all "worked" equally hard to obtain them? On the basis of Jack Knetsch, Dick Thaler, and Daniel Kahneman's research on the "endowment effect," we predicted that when we own something – whether it's a car or a violin, a cat or a basketball ticket – we begin to value it more than other people do.

[...]

That night we got a list of the students who had won the [ticket] lottery and those who hadn't, and we started telephoning. Our first call was to William, a senior majoring in chemistry. William was rather busy. After camping for the previous week, he had a lot of homework and e-mail to catch up on. He was not too happy, either, because after reaching the front of the line, he was still not one of the lucky ones who had won a ticket in the lottery.

"Hi, William," I said. "I understand you didn't get one of the tickets for the final four (sic)."

[...]

William and Joseph were just two of more than 100 students whom we called. In general, the students who did not own a ticket were willing to pay about $170 for one. The price they were willing to pay, as in William' case, was tempered by alternative uses for the money (such as spending it in a sports bar for drinks and food.) Those who owned a ticket, on the other hand, demanded about $2,400 for it. Like Joseph, they justified their price in terms of the importance of the experience and the lifelong memories it would create.

What was really surprising, though, was that in all our phone calls, not a single person was willing to sell a ticket at a price that someone else was willing to pay. What did we have? We had a group of students all hungry for a basketball ticket before the lottery drawing; and then, bang – in an instant after the drawing, they were divided into two groups – ticket owners and non–ticket owners. It was an emotional chasm that was formed, between those who now imagined the glory of the game, and those who imagined what else they could buy with the price of the ticket. And it was an empirical chasm as well – the average selling price (about $2,400) was separated by a factor of about 14 from the average buyer's offer (about $175).

From a rational persective, both the ticket holders and the non–ticket holders should have thought of the game in exactly the same way. After all, the anticipated atmosphere at the game and the enjoyment one could expect from the experience should not depend on winning the lottery. Then how could a random lottery drawing have changed the students' view of the game – and the value of the tickets – so dramatically?

Ah, those silly, irrational Duke students. They can't even get a market to clear! We should take them all around back and have them shot.

Except they're really not being irrational. Did you catch the key part of the experiment? The Final Four. This is the part most overlooked in retellings of the experiment, which just assumes the games are in Cameron. But the fact that it's the Final Four explains the true difference in buyer and seller values – we're looking at two different markets.

(Keep in mind, this analysis assumes the description in Ariely's book is accurate; the paper it comes from (PDF) makes it sound like this was just a phone survey the Friday before the FInal Four, where no students queried actually had tickets.)

Those looking to buy tickets were competing for the 23,674 seats in Charlotte Coliseum in 1994 (give or take). Surprisingly few of them would go to Duke students. Assuming the number was similar to that UNC would distribute three years later, I'd put it around 500 or so. Instead, the majority of the tickets are distributed to coaches and the general public; people, who if they're smart don't really have a strong desire to see Duke cut down the nets. Often, you can get tickets for the game outside the stadium or through brokers for twice or so the face value – not to far removed from the bids students were offering.

The students selling tickets however, basically have two people bidding for their seat – the guy on the phone, presumably also a guy rooting for the Blue Devils, and their own inner Duke fan. The inner Duke fan is going to win that auction every time. But it doesn't mean he's putting an irrational value on the ticket.

How do I know? Well, think about what happens when your team loses in the semifinals. Lots of fans of the losing team cut their losses and sell their tickets – I did in 1997 in Indianapolis. I knew what a fan of a team in the NCAA finals values a ticket at, because I valued it at exactly that price a mere five minutes earlier, before Arizona ended UNC's hopes. And yet I sold at a price much closer to what those ticketless Duke students were bidding. The market cleared.

This isn't to say the effect doesn't exist; many other studies have shown it, just on a smaller scale. Just this particular example of it is a pretty poor one. If anything, it's an example of how the initial price a god is fixed at influences its later prices; NCAA tickets are always underpriced relative to the secondary market, and those who miss out on the initial offering are loath to pay too much more when given the chance. But as amusing as it is to see the Cameron Crazies immortalized as irrational consumers, it's still a bad example, demonstrated on bad people.

Later this week: Less economics and more basketball!

I am nominally a Giants fan. This is because growing up, Lawrence Taylor was playing for the Giants, and he was the most famous Carolina football alumnus at the time. It also didn't hurt that at that time in North Carolina, everyone was a Redskins or Cowboys fan, and I am ornery and contrarian at the best of times.

I say nominal because during the 2000's I drifted away from the Giants, to the point that when they won the Super Bowl in 2008, I backed away from being referring to myself as a Giants fan. I hadn't suffered in the wilderness between 2001 and 2007; I didn't deserve to bask in the SUper Bowl win. I found that my NFL rooting interesting was geographically dependent. The further I was from North Carolina, the more of Panthers fan I was; the home state needed my help. The closer I am to the East Coast, especially in DC surrounded by those Cowboys and Redskins again, I revert to the Giants.

But generally in the Super Bowl I root for the team with the most Carolina alumni. This year this dovetails nicely with my Giants fandom, as Hakeem Nicks is one of the main offensive weapons for New York, while Marvin Austin is on the injured reserve list for the team as well. Oh, and Austin's still a little bitter, judging from this tweet:

where is @cmiller05 wanna take him out to dinner he help me get here #NCAAinvestegator

Sigh. (Chance Miller is the NCAA's Assistant Director of Agent, Gambling and Amateurism Activities.)

Carolina's been in a bit of a Super Bowl drought. The last team to win the game with Tar Heel alumni was the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2009, with Willie Parker, Jeff Reed and Greg Warren. Only Warren is still with the Steelers. UNC has had an alumnus play in the Super Bowl every year going back to at least 2002 though.

So if you don't have a vested interest in today's game, I'd urge to pul for the Giants. Don't do it for my sake, but for Nicks, who has played well enough over the past few years to deserve a Super Bowl ring. And it'll annoy the Patriots fans.

Carolina could stand to have a few more games like this. For a while it seemed like everything was going wrong; UNC couldn't score, Maryland couldn't miss. The Tar Heels were coughing the ball out at an unhealthy rate, the fans were... less than welcoming, and Tyler Zeller picked up his fourth foul with just under twelve minutes remaining. Then to make sure the deck was fully stacked against a UNC win, Kendall Marshall went to the bench with his fourth, with eight-and-a half minutes left and a precarious two point lead. It was time to get worried.

Except it really wasn't. Maryland was exhausted. Maryland was in foul trouble as well. Maryland did not have Harrison Barnes. Barnes didn't take the game over in Marshall's absence, but he was the constant threat, bring the ball up more than Stilman White, and drawing the defense to the extent that John Henson and Reggie Bullock could score. The Terrapins could only tread water, and on Zeller's and Marshall's return, they finally collapsed.

It took a lot of work to get there, however. Kendall Marshall had five turnovers in the first twelve minutes of the game. UNC was completely stymied by Alex Len, heretofore unheard of freshman center, who would finish with 12 points, nine rebounds, and four blocks. The team was out-of-sync early, with only Zeller playing close to well on offense. Frankly, they were rather lucky to only be down three at halftime, a fact the Heels backed up by almost immediately going down nine three minutes into the second.

But they held firm, and clawed back. Reggie Bullock was a bit of a revelation during this. Yes, Terrell Stoglin would finish with twenty points, and was beating Bullock off the dribble at the start, but he responded. Stoglin would hit only one of his nine three-pointers and shoot 8 of 21 from the field. Meanwhile Bullock was pulling down key offensive rebounds and otherwise keeping the team together when things looked like they could fall apart with two starters benched with foul trouble.

Was it a great game for Carolina? Not really. Maryland played better than one would expect, and it took the Heels too long to respond. But respond they did. The Terps, who tried to outrun UNC most of the game, were eventually worn down by a team that held strong and for the most part remained patient. It wasn't a great game, but it was a necessary one. And the Heels are a better team for having won it.

Tar Heels vs Terrapins boxscore

Hey! Carolina's back on the real ESPN. 4 pm, be there with bells on.

UNC's two-week tour of the new coaches of the ACC concludes today in College Park, with Mark Turgeon's Maryland Terps. In case you're just coming out of a coma, Gay Wiliams retired after 22 seasons this past spring, the entire internet spent a month hanging out at Testudo Times, and then Turgeon was hired. He, of course, got his start as a Larry Brown assistant at Kansas, and stayed on through the first few seasons of Roy Williams' tenure. But don't expect a lot of Williams' philosophy in this Maryland team – Turgeon almost always runs a slow-paced game.

In fact, this is faster-paced than most of his squads, in part because he's yet to bring in his own players and in part because the team just isn't good enough to impose its will on the speed of play. In addition to losing Gary Williams, the Terps have also lost Jordan Williams, Cliff Tucker, and Adrian Bowie. This leaves the team almost exclusively in the hands of Terrell Stoglin.

Stoglin, only a sophomore, takes a higher percentage of shots than anyone east of the Rockies. He leads the ACC in scoring by over four points per game more than his nearest competitor. His shooting percentage has dropped a bit from last season, because everyone and their mother realizes he's the guy to stop on this team. He's still an offensive force, though. He burned the Heels for 28 points last year, and although Reggie Bullock's defense has been very strong lately, there's only so much that can be done.

Fortunately, the rest of the team doesn't measure up. The Terps haven't really settled on a point guard, mostly relying on Pe'Shon Howard since he returned from a broken foot, but neither he nor Stoglin is a true PG, and it shows. In also manifests itself on the defensive end, where Maryland is one of the worst teams in the country at generating steals and turnovers. Maryland fills out their backcourt with a collection of average-type players, primarily Nick Faust, Sean Mosely, and Mychal Parker all some purpose on the floor – Parker's is to turn it over, apparently – but don't present much of a threat.

Which leaves the paint. And that means James Padgett. Padgett's strength is on the offensive boards, cleaning up his team's numerous misses. He probably could stand to be involved in the offense more, but he'll have trouble with Zeller and Henson. He's most often paired with freshman Ashton Pankey, another strong rebounder. He has one of the worst +/- stats in the ACC, though. I'd expect to see more of Alex Len, a 7'1" freshman from the Ukraine, who has a decent block rate on the strength of his size alone.

Let's face it, Turgeon's first season has been a bit of a disappointment.The team is trailing below .500 in a weak year for the conference, and has lost four of their last five. There's the potential for a good team in there, like the one that came back from 16 points in the second half to force two overtimes against Miami. But there's the other team, the one that falls behind by sixteen in the first place. If Carolina doesn't get caught looking ahead at Duke, this is an excellent opportunity to shake off their recent road woes and keep the momentum strong coming into the first game against the Blue Devils.

(And as for those road problems, tickets in College Park are embarrassingly cheap. Fan interest has been waning of late.)

The ACC announced today exactly how Pittsburgh and Syracuse are going to fit into the little club we've got over here, and it's killing the college basketball we all love just a little more.

Bt first let's discuss football, as that's the impetus for this entire thing, and it's the sport handling expansion a little better. Pittsburgh will join the Coastal Division, and Syracuse the Atlantic. The conference schedule will extend to nine games, with each team keeping their one game against their cross-division rival and two other games in the opposite definition. No one's rival will change; Syracuse and Pitt will be paired with one another. The face that there will be a uneven number of home and away conference games is apparently going to be balanced by having every team in the division either have the extra home or road game. So despite seeing teams like Clemson only twice every six years instead of four as it currently stands, not much will change.

Basketball is a little rougher. The schedule expands to eighteen games, as previously announced. But each team is reduced to one guaranteed home-and-home opponent; for UNC, that means the end of the guaranteed two games with N.C. State. (The other pairings are Boston College and Syracuse; Clemson and Georgia Tech; Duke and North Carolina; Florida State and Miami; Maryland and Pitt; NC State and Wake Forest; Virginia and Virginia Tech. Maryland gets the worst of it, losing rivalry games with both Duke and Virginia.) Instead, the current system of three additional home-and-home opponents, and three each just home and just away is replaced with four, four, and four, respectively.

This is a bit of a letdown, really. I long ago gave up my dreams of a true equal, home-and-home schedule, but the ACC is taking away games fans have a real passion for, like UNC-State and Maryland-Duke and replacing them with what? A lot of mediocre games that aren't of interest to anyone. There's already more ACC games per evening than ESPN and the local affiliates can handle, pushing more and more games to ESPN3 and ESPNU. And with the ACC in a slump over the past five years, there's less and less reason to tune into the less entertaining games.

We've already lost a lot of what made the ACC special. Now we're trading the sort of games that draw fans in, that guarantee folks in the seats and eyes on the television, with ones no one has any emotional attachment to. I'd never miss a Carolina-State game, but it takes a little more effort to clear my schedule when the Heels play Boston College. Things are going the same route as in football, with officials abandoning the games everyone loves and just throwing out any pairings and assuming the fans will show up. Well I've seen a lot of empty seats this season, and I'm not as confident as others that they'll be coming back.

But hey. I'm sure the five home-and-home's we will have will all be thrilling. And who really cares about those long-standing rivalries with Clemson, Virginia and State. No one gets into college sports for things like that, right? Who needs history when there's... whatever's left?

I don't know when National Signing Day became a thing, exactly. I would have had no reason to pay attention to it before joining SB Nation, so I don't know if it was a big thing in the SEC before 2007, or if it's just exploded since then. Either way, by now it's pretty ridiculous. Webcams filming fax machines, all for the benefit of some middle-aged football fans. My Twitter feed was packed with so many details about high school students I was worried the FBI might confiscate my phone.

The ne thing Signing Day always bring to mind is my first true experience with it. On February 7th, 2007, I completely unaware it even was Signing Day, got this e-mail from Peter Bean, founder of Burnt Orange Nation, which I print in its entirety:

subject: Signing day

Nice little class Butch has coming in. Landing Marvin Austin, too? Wow.

Impressive.

PB

And yeah, it was. And now we're waiting to see exactly what NCAA punishment Austin and a rash of other players, tutors, and one very corrupt assistant coach brought upon the university. Signing Day never had much appeal to me before, but it definitely has none now.

Anyway, the second guy from the left in the above picture is a member of Larry Fedora's 23-man inaugural class. Inside Carolina and a host of other sites can tell you all about them. It includes two quarterbacks, one of whom comes from my old alma mater, for which I feel the need to apologize to him for. The class is ranked 42nd, which means absolutely nothing, but appears to be higher than N.C. State's ranking if you have someone you'd like to harass about it. Feel free to discuss anyone who caught your eye in the comments; otherwise, it's back to basketball for the time being.

Some days, you can't hit a shot to save your life. For Carolina, such days seem to happen in Lawrence Joel more often that not. The Heels hadn't broken 40% shooting in their last two Winston-Salem visits, and tonight was a new low – 31% from the field, making a dismal 22 of 71 shots. And these weren't difficult shots either. Open threes and two-foot put-backs alike clanked of the rim.

Luckily, UNC did everything right. They rebounded extremely well, getting 21 second-chance opportunities on the offensive end and 50 boards overall. Turnovers were extremely rare. And the defense was lockdown terrific. Only C.J. Harris would finish with double-digit scoring for Wake, a stat that belies just how good Reggie Bullock's defense actually was. Of those 19, 8 wee from the free throw line and another four came in garbage time after the Tar Heel starters had been pulled. No, Harris was only 1-6 from behind the arc and had four points at halftime. He was a complete non-factor, all because of Bullock.

The Wake big men were able to give UNC a bit of trouble on the defensive end. It was a physical game that often left bodies on the floor. But Kendall Marshall could often find Zeller or Henson on the baseline left open for a dunk; his six assists would have been double that had the bigs not missed so many layups. And left alone on the perimeter, Marshall hit two threes and was otherwise Carolina's best shooter on the floor, a definite improvement after Sunday's all-pass extravaganza.

The bottom line is, this was not a good basketball game. It was pretty horrible, in fact, and such a performance against a better team would be worrisome. But UNC showed a lot of composure when things weren't working, and the defense stepped up when the offense couldn't hack it. So what if we spent half the game spitballing about the 2009 championship team? A win is a win, and UNC proved they can win very, very, ugly.

Once again, 9 pm on ESPNU. Free us from the crappy cable stations, ABC/Disney!

It may be a little early, but I can't shake the feeling that Jeff Bzdelik is the worst ACC coaching hire of the 2000's. Wake gave up on Dino Gaudio pretty early, firing him after a 20-11 season from a team that was bounced in the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament. Almost all of the starters left with Gaudio, so it wasn't too much of a surprise that the Demon Deacons struggled last season, but a 1-15 conference record and 8-24 mark overall was shockingly bad. This was the worst team in a major conference last season. Can Bzdelik really rebuild it?

Well, he already as double the conference wins of last season, inexplicably beating Virginia Tech at home and handily defeating Boston College on the road. They've also lost by 36 to N.C. State, and 28 to also-bad Arizona State. If this team is succeeding more this year, it's a 50-50 split between their improvement and the rest of the conference getting worse.

This team revolves around forward Travis McKie. He's the leading rebounder, second-leading scorer, and takes considerably more shots than anyone else on the floor. He was also held to seven points and four turnovers in his freshman meeting against the Heels; facing John Henson will do that to you. While McKie is comfortable drifting out to the perimeter, tonight he'll be tangling with Harrison Barnes more. I expect the Wake forward to have a very frustrating evening.

C.J. Harris, on the other hand, may have more success. He leads the team in scoring, threes, and assists, despite typically not playing the point. He also had little success against Carolina last season, but has improved his shooting considerably in the offseason. I'd point to him as the big threat, not unlike Lorenzo Brown at State and Glen Rice at Georgia Tech. UNC handled them both quite well.

Wake mostly fills out the team with an assortment of big men, which makes their poor rebounding performance particularly surprising. That's changed a bit since Ty Walker, suspended for the fall semester, returned in January. He's second on the team in rebounding and first in blocks, but has been rather absent on the offensive end. He did have four blocks in Wake's last meeting with the Heels, however. He's typically paired with Nikita Mescheriakov, who at 6'8" has supplanted seven-footer Carson Derosiers. It's shocking that with this much height, this team rebounds so badly. They might give Henson and Tyler Zeller trouble inside; if UNC can replicate Sunday's outside shooting performance, this won't be of any concern. Zeller has also really solidified his game of late, so the trio of big men still might not be enough to keep him down.

Wake, like most bad teams, can't really impose their will on the tempo of a ahem, but given the choice they lean towards running the ball, unlike Bzdelik's Air Force teams. This, of course, plays nicely into UNC's hands. Wake has indeed improved, especially when it comes to turning the ball over, so this might not be as easy a game as last season's. It shouldn't be hard though, and Wake fans are left to ask themselves exactly what sort of future this team has.

The internet briefly had a complete meltdown after the Duke Chronicle published a piece on how Duke was selling student tickets to the Iron Dukes, because they couldn't get enough Cameron Crazies to fill the joint of late. The nadir apparently came at the Wake Forest game a few weeks ago, where 400 seats were sold as students preferred to attend rush week activities for the Greek system.

This resulted in some wonderfully anguished letters to the editor, worth reading for comedic value alone. They also take an overly rosy view of history. I was around for the '94 to '98 seasons, and got the e-mails from griping Duke students – "Wojciechowski runs like a girl" was particularly memorable – and read the cheer sheets that had to explain the basics of ACC basketball to a bunch of Jersey kids who had no idea what was going on. And if that was all the article produced, I'd be happily amused.

Instead, it was the way the rest of the press covered the story that drove me bonkers. You'd think someone had just told sportswriters that Santa Claus wasn't real. Eamonn Brennan was horrified. DJ Gallo demanded Duke students do what he wants. Yahoo! just blamed the modern era for not making Duke unique any more.

Of course, anyone who spent time in Carmichael knew Cameron was never particularly unique, and Duke fan support has always been a bit soft. (The donation level for season tickets through the Iron Dukes is considerably less than that for the Rams Club, despite nearly twice the seating capacity of the Dean Dome. But if you want my opinion on what's changing at Duke, it's this – the Cameron Crazies are being co-opted.

Think about it. Nike sells T-shirts emblazoned with the name of the student section, suitably trademarked and be-swooshed. And for this they get the privilege of camping out, trying to pass classes in a tent, and otherwise interrupt their lives to provide a suitable backdrop for a basketball team. And if they don't cheer enough? The highest-paid university official berates them during the game.

The fans that do come to the game still identify strongly with the team. Almost too strongly, as this student quote suggests:

"I honestly can't understand why people would not want to come to the games," the 18-year-old Riley said as he waited to enter the stadium for Saturday's game with St. John's. "I know there are good reasons, but I feel like it's important. It's a big part of who we are here."

I'm guessing being free atmosphere for shoe companies and cable networks aren't as compelling a reason as they used to be. Neither is supporting players who bail after a season. Face facts. College basketball may not be as big of a thing to folks from Jersey anymore. And no amount of atmosphere-tweaking is going to fix it.

If only it wasn't Georgia Tech.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that the Yellow Jackets posed a particular threat to Carolina. The Heels jumped out to a quick 11-4 lead and never really looked back. The defense was strong, completely taking Glen Rice, Jr. out of the game. And the offense introduced a new wrinkle, going 8 for 12 from behind the arc in the first half, and 10-16 for the game.

And this is why I wish it wasn't Georgia Tech. Because Tech doesn't have the greatest of defenses, especially on the perimeter. I can look with admiration at the way Kendall Marshall sliced up the interior defense on his way to 12 assists, and be confident that will be around for the entire season. But the perimeter shooting? That's a rarity, and one I would feel better about had the opposing defense been made of sterner stuff.

But, we play the hand we're dealt, and the Heels did well. P.J. Hairston shook off his offensive slump and drained two threes while continuing his recent defensive performance. Reggie Bullock sank three, and Marshall and Stilman White each contributed one. And Harrison Barnes just tore the Yellow Jackets apart, hitting all three of his threes on his way to a team-high 23 points. He's now gone for 20+ points in three of six ACC games, typically with at least one stretch where he completely takes over the game. Tonight it was a second half stint where he had seven straight points and forced one Georgia Tech timeout after a particularly vicious dunk.

But it's still Georgia Tech. And after Georgia Tech comes equally dismal Wake Forest, and then only slightly better Maryland. There's a lot of mediocrity in the ACC this season, and it won't be until the Duke game that we'll truly be able to judge how this team has improved since the Florida State loss. There's a lot of good here. I just wish there was a better opponent to test them.

6 pm, ESPNU.

I've found over the years that a new basketball coach can do a lot for a team. As long as there's some talent there, a team can overachieve just on the optimism he inspires, and a new playing style opposing coaches can't scout as well for. The biggest example in recent years was Sidney Lowe's first season at State, where he took a team that really only retained Engin Atsur and Gavin Grant from Sendek's last NCAA-qualifying team, and beat UNC in Raleigh before making a surprising run to the ACC Championship game. Or consider Tony Bennett, who took a team consisting of Sylvan Landesberg and little else, beat UNC in Chapel Hill, and jumped out to a 5-2 ACC start before losing their last nine. A new coach isn't going turn things around completely in his first season, but there's an opportunity to surprise.

Contrast this with Brian Gregory, new coach at Georgia Tech. He wasn't left much by outgoing coach Paul Hewitt, but he has the rather phenomenal Glen Rice, Jr. and an experienced point guard in Mfon Udofia. I don't expect a world-beater, but I' think they could compete in the wide-open middle of the conference.

Instead, we're seeing the worst start for a new ACC coach since, well, Jeff Bzdelik last season. Tech has won one game since Christmas, an inexplicable 82-71drubbing of State in Raleigh. In that game Rice (22 points) and Udofia (17) caught fire from beyond the arc, as the Yellow Jackets would hit 9 of 15 threes. Rice followed that performance with two games where he didn't crack double-digit scoring, and the team as a whole has scored more the 50 points once in the last four games. The offense is sputtering mightily.

None of that is going to stop UNC fans from being a little on edge, though, because the Tar Heels haven't seen the Yellow Jackets since the nadir of last season, a 78-58 loss in Atlanta that stood as one of the worst of Roy Williams' tenure in Chapel Hill. It was the last game Larry Drew II would start as a Tar Heel, and a complete and utter failure, from Iman Shumpert's rampant scoring to the rebounding performance of Brian Oliver and Daniel Miller.

The good news is Shumpert and Oliver are both long gone, to the NBA and Seton Hall. Miller stands as the lone big man with any decent defensive prowess, and sets to face off against a Tyler Zeller with something to prove. The offense has struggled to move the ball, with one of the lowest assist-to-field goals mad ratio in the nation. There's little to no ball movement, just a hope that Rice or his fellow guards can create something. Seeing how no one amongst the starters is hitting more than a third of their threes, these creations are few and far between.

The Tech defense has bitten the Heels in the past, racking up 13 steals in their last meeting and 11 in the one prior to that, another Yellow Jacket win. But even there Tech has regressed under Gregory, playing more conservative and not attempting to pick as many pockets. The results have been disastrous, as only Maryland has a worst rate of turnover generation. Tech is a team that relies on interior defense now, but doesn't have the talent to go head-to-head with Zeller or John Henson. Or so I believe, at least. Sophomore Kammeon Holsey will find himself paired against Henson, and while he's had the occasional big game, especially during Tech's recent floundering, I don't see him having much success against the bigger, longer, Tar Heel.

But then again, I never do, and Tech has surprised in the last few years. This is a good test of UNC's mental toughness. The rush of playing State and finding their way without Dexter Strickland has worn off, and now with little preparation they get a team they should handle easily, and at home. Carolina has no excuse for not dominating this game, especially considering what Tech did last season. Now it's left to see whether they will.

You brazen hussy.

Imagine my surprise when I opened the paper yesterday to read your little reference to infidelity. Just an innocent little put down to a reporter. Like you didn't know.

You think you're specia? State's been losing to Carolina in Chapel Hill for what, eight straight years?That's not a relationship. That's a fling. We've been losing in Chapel Hill for fifty-five years. That's a relationship. That's a foundation. That's something real.

And now? Now they won't even let us come to Chapel Hill some years. It's all, "Oh, we just don't have room for you on the schedule," and "You can come by next season." But their hot new thing? You'll they'll beat every year. And they take such pleasure in it.

Stop it. Just stop it. It's our job to go to up to UNC every year and have our spirits crushed. Just like a marriage should be. Find your own futile hill to fail to climb. Try losing to Wake. Leave us our thing. Please.

Back off,

The Clemson Tigers.

That sound you hear is the anguished cries of Wolfpack fans. Not that you needed me to point that out. It's a pretty recognizable sound by this point.

For all my concerns about Lorenzo Brown, who Kendall Marshall defended quite well, I was never worried about how UNC would handle the Wolfpack in the paint. And with good reason. State had no one who could restrain Tyler Zeller, as the Carolina big man would finish with 21 points and 17 rebounds, the most boards in the Smith Center by anyone not named Hansbrough or May. Richard Howell would foul out with 8:40 remaining trying to defend Zeller, and his replacement DeShawn Painter was completely ineffectual.

As was C.J. Leslie, State's leading scorer coming into the game. Held to nine points on 3-12 shooting, it's safe to say he's still hasn't gotten the best of any of his meetings with John Henson, whom would finish with five blocks, two on Leslie. Mark Gottfried had his team, like many who have faced Carolina lately, focused on preventing the Heels' fast break. Which meant abandoning offensive rebounding to have three players back behind half court after every missed shot. UNC controlled the boards easily, finishing with 33 defensive rebounds and 48 overall. Unless the Wolfpack could shoot the lights out of the place, they weren't going to win.

In fact, they're lucky the game was as close as it was. UNC would lead by as much as twenty-eight before going scoreless for the find five minutes, and State had a rash of banked-in threes to bring the margin within spitting distance of respectability. Carolina's entire defense stepped up in the absence of Dexter Strickland – Roy Williams would say that his absence in practice first highlighted for the team exactly how much he does on the court – holding State to season-low shooting. Reggie Bullock shined in his first start, and even Stilman White, playing five minutes in relief of Marshall, acquitted himself nicely and drained a three.

I'm not yet sold on the new Strickland-less Carolina team. This was just one game, with a week's preparation, against an opponent the Heels have no trouble getting amped up for. But for this game at least, Carolina played like a championship team. More games like this, especially on the road, and we can look forward to a very nice March.

State on the other hand, can always look forward to next year. They last won in Chapel Hill in 2003; they've had a lot of practice at looking forward.

The Wolfpsck bring yet another new coach to Chapel Hill. 7 pm, ESPN.

Sidney Lowe was 1-10 against Carolina.
Herb Sendek was 5-17 against Carolina.
Les Robinson was 5-7 against Carolina.
Jim Valvano was 7-18 against Carolina.
Norm Sloan was 14-26 against Carolina.
Press Maravich was 2-2 against Carolina.
Everett Case was 28-18 against Carolina.
Leroy Jay was 1-8 against Carolina.
Bob Warren was 1-3 against Carolina.
R.R. Sermon was 5-17 against Carolina.
Gus Tebell was 2-10 against Carolina.
Richard Crozier was 2-4 against Carolina.
Harry Hartsell was 0-4 against Carolina.
And Tal Safford and E.D. Sandborn both won their only games against Carolina, in 1919 and 1913, respectively.

Here's wishing you all the success of your predecessors in the years to come.

Yours truly, Carolina March

(Except for Case and those two guys from WWI. In fact, I'll even grant you post-ACC founding Everett Case success (11-17). Just because I'm filled with such bonhomie and all. And yes, I dropped your predecessor the same note six years prior. I'm nothing if not a slave to tradition.)

Ah, N.C. State. The team Harrison Barnes and John Henson crushed by twenty last year in Chapel Hill. And then again by twelve in Raleigh. A team that is basically the same as the one that Carolina so easily handled last year. Sure, there are a few new freshmen, but their playing time is limited; it's for the most part the same crowd. UNC owns this team. So why am I concerned.

It's not new coach Mark Gottfried, or at least nothing in particular about him. True, new coaches have had some success when underestimated by the Heels, none more so than Gottfried's predecessor, Sidney Lowe. But a lot of new coaches have entered the conference in the past few season, and it's not like I had a sense of unease over Jeff Bzdelik or anything

I think it's that I'm tied as closely to the miseries of State fans as i used to be, and more of their optimism is filtering in than has in years past. Because on paper, this team hasn't changed much from last year's model, outside of losing Tracy Smith. The offense now first and foremost goes through C.J. Leslie, who has improved his shooting considerably this year, at the expense of rebounding, which becomes more difficult without Smith in the paint to do the yeoman's work. He's also a bit more turnover prone. He's joined in the paint by Richard Howell, who is also little-changed from last year's model. He's a little more involved in the scoring but mostly he's the main rebounder on the team, a job he does very well, residing in the Top 50 nationwide in both offensive and defensive rebounding percentage. But rebounds are the Heels' strength, and unless they pull another Florida State performance, they should more than hold their own.

Sure, there's a chance Scott Wood could become the third Tar Heel opponent in as many games to just catch fire from behind the arc. He hasn't in the past, but that's what he's on the court to do. He's taken more threes than his next two teammates combined this season (C.J. Williams and Alex Johnson, both seniors). Wood will probably find himself matching up against Barnes – whose perimeter defense is vastly underrated – or Reggie Bullock, no slouch in that department himself.

No, when it comes down to it, I'm concerned about Lorenzo Brown. Last year he was the brightest point of either of the two Wolfpack performances against Carolina, coming off the bench to score twenty points in Chapel Hill, and managing eleven in Raleigh. He hit only one three-pointer against the Heels last year, instead generating a lot of his own points with drives from the perimeter or his five steals in the two games. He was a freshman. Now he's a sophomore. He's also the new point guard.

And he gets Carolina in their first game without Dexter Strickland, perimeter defender extraordinaire.Which means he'll draw a combination of Kendall Marshall or Bullock, both good defenders, but susceptible to being taken off the dribble, Marshall especially. And this coming in a game where the backup point guard spot for the Heels is still a bit of an unknown – expect Stillman White before TV timeouts, in little usage, although apparently everything has been tried in practice this week. This is a situation ripe for Brown to have a tremendous game, and a Carolina team that still hasn't hand'ed meltdowns all that well.

Typically, the jump in performance between the freshmen and sophomore year's is the biggest in college. State brought in a great freshman class in Lowe's final season. C.J. Leslie has slowly progressed; Ryan Harrow left for Kentucky. But Brown is the one making big gains, and he's my biggest concern in Chapel Hill tonight. In the paint, the Heels should have no problem, unless you're expecting a different Jordan Vanderberg to suddenly appear. Their defense is exploitable, their offense dependent on interior play the Heels can handle. But Brown? He's the threat.