University of North Carolina Athletics
Jacobs: Tar Heels Evolving Before Our Eyes
February 22, 2011 | Men's Basketball
Feb. 22, 2011
By Barry Jacobs, TarHeelBlue.com
Twenty victories in the first 26 games. A winning record assured in ACC competition. A chance at first place in the conference with the regular season winding down. Steady ascent in the national polls. Undefeated at home. Several players in the running for ACC postseason honors. An NCAA tournament invitation dead ahead.
This is more like it. These are the familiar elements of a men's basketball season at North Carolina, where last year's struggles are increasingly a faded memory.
Too often we define a season by the end result - championships, the depth of advance in NCAA competition, total number of victories and the like. Yet the best time to savor the quality of a team may be in February -- as it emerges from the chrysalis of promise into a full-blown basketball butterfly, not after it flies into the history books.
Individually and collectively, the 2011 Tar Heels are evolving before our eyes. There is confidence where once there was uncertainty, a sense of purpose where sometimes there was confusion. From big men John Henson and Tyler Zeller, healthy for a full season only as a junior; to defensive stopper Dexter Strickland; to Kendall Marshall and Harrison Barnes, as impressive as any rookies in the ACC, this is a squad growing into its skin.
Lest we forget, this year's success comes despite the absence of four players who might reasonably be expected to be wearing Carolina uniforms - Ed Davis, who went pro following his injury-shortened sophomore year, and transfers Larry Drew II and David and Travis Wear. All four were McDonald's All-Americas.
Nor, other than transfer Justin Knox, is there a four-year player in the nine-man rotation. (Knox is a graduate student.)
Understandably, then, given its recast ranks and reliance of underclassmen, UNC is not yet a powerhouse that can impose its will on opponents with regularity. That was evident last weekend against a well-coached Boston College squad in a contest that showed both the myriad strengths and lingering vulnerabilities of the 2011 Tar Heels.
New BC coach Steve Donahue prefers a faster tempo than Al Skinner, his predecessor. His Eagles entered the Smith Center - at 25 one of the ACC's oldest arenas -- among the league's leaders in scoring and in field goal and 3-point accuracy.
But, in one of the weirder quirks of the ACC's unbalanced schedule, they were facing the Tar Heels for the second time in five games. BC tried to run with UNC in their Feb.1 meeting at Chestnut Hill, and was practically blown out of its own building as the Heels came within a point of their highest scoring total of the year in a 106-74 romp.
This time Donahue throttled back the tempo. He employed liberal use of a zone defense against one of the ACC's weakest 3-point shooting clubs, avoided crashing the offensive boards in favor of denying fast break opportunities, and relied heavily on perimeter jumpers. More than half of BC's field goal tries were threes, 27 of 52.
"If you're going to win here, I thought that was the way to beat them," Donahue said after losing at Chapel Hill. "I don't know if there's anybody in college basketball who can score over them."
Certainly not the Eagles, who have a single player taller than 6-8 and used two walk-on guards against the Heels. The visitors made only 27 percent of their shots and were dominated on the boards.
Even with that underwhelming execution, Dohanue's game plan worked to a large extent, challenging UNC where it's most vulnerable. As a result, not only couldn't Carolina put the Eagles away, it allowed them to pull within a basket in the final seconds.
"I'm sure we'll see more zone," Roy Williams said. "If I was playing against us, I would probably guard us that way." Certainly the temptation is there for opponents - even Texas, which had barely practiced the tactic, employed it at times in a close victory over UNC in December at Greensboro.
Yet the Heels have only lost twice, including at top-ranked Duke, since that mid-December meeting with the Longhorns, a top-five club.
We've all heard the familiar adage that good teams find a way to win. This Williams squad has triumphed in every manner possible, from blowout to cliffhanger, from grinding defensive struggle to relentless offensive explosion.
The other day BC largely dictated the terms of engagement, holding UNC to 37 percent shooting and its lowest scoring total ever in the Smith Center (48 points). And still that wasn't enough against an `11 squad with the flexibility, toughness, and assurance to surmount most difficulties. "I give them credit for figuring out a way to win the game," Donahue said.
Williams continues to speak of his squad as a work in progress; that there is steady progress is itself comforting in the wake of last year's travails. "I've said all along I thought this team would get better and better in all phases of the game," the coach said of his eighth Carolina team.
Regardless of what measures are applied when the season is over, these Heels already are a success. They've returned the program to top-notch competitiveness, and proven they're a good team, defined by their uncommon ability to find a way to win.
