Call the Tailor

First Massachusetts, now this!


After watching Carolina's excruciating home loss to Wake Forest, our third loss in a row, I think it's time to strip the NORTH off our the jerseys.  This year's Heels are simply NOT playing like a Carolina basketball team is supposed to play.


Once again, the Heels displayed a disheartening lack of smarts and savvy.  The Heels were killed by poor shooting; we have no margin for error so an off night by Will Grave meant a long one for Carolina.  Even after netting a few meaningless threes late, the Tar Heels shot only 37 percent.  The Heels took too many jump shots - wing players Larry Drew, Marcus Ginyard, Leslie McDonald and Dexter Strickland were a combined 7 for 30 for 23 percent - and failed to look down low enough.  Feeding the post is text book Carolina basketball, and we did not do that tonight.


But for me the defense was the biggest problem, especially our defense of Ishmael Smith. Smith is a terrible jump shooter, but for most of the game Larry Drew played him tight when he was away for the basket.  Instead of playing off of Smith and preventing penetration, Drew did the opposite.  The result is that Smith spent most of the game driving to the rack for lay ups.  Carolina basketball is above all smart basketball, and Drew was not smart in his defense of Smith.


Bad shooting and bad defense - quite a combo, but to do that at home is doubly bad.  


The defending national champs (we need some perspective here, and 2 championships in 5 years should give Heels fans some comfort when watching this year's team) are clearly suffering.  Halfway into the season Carolina still has not learned how to play Carolina basketball.  Drew is the main culprit, but no one is playing with the confidence and smarts of a quintessential Tar Heels team, including seniors Ginyard and Thompson.  


The good news is the Heels have a six-day break, time for Davis to heal but more importantly time for 'ol Roy and the coaching staff to hopefully coach up this young team.  And hopefully time for the them to earn the NORTH back on their jerseys, in time to make a run at 8 or 9 wins in the ACC and another nice run in the NCAA tournament.