Without Marcus Ginyard and Will Graves the Heels looked incredibly young and inexperienced in losing to Bobby Cremins' College of Charleston tonight. Carolina is not very deep at guard; tonight it showed that our perimeter game has no margin for error, and having Ginyard and Graves out was too much for the Heels to overcome.
It was also a road game, but that's more of an excuse. The lack of development by Carolina's wings is the big story, for the season thus far and for tonight's loss.
Leslie McDonald had some nice moments, and turned out to be Carolina's third leading scorer. Then again, with Carolina up 3 with :30 seconds left all that good work was undone by his bad final - and missed - shot. Drew hit a big 3 late, but made lots of bad decisions throughout the game. Dexter Strickland had a terrible game from any perspective: bad passes, not moving his feet on defense, ill-advised shots, and blown lay ups. Justin Watts made Will Graves look like David Noel, shooting the ball every time he touched it - whether he was open or not.
But our guard's biggest crime was forgetting to get the ball down low. When Carolina did, late in the second half, Ed Davis and Deon Thompson were unstoppable. Then we forgot that Carolina basketball means going down low, started making mistakes and taking bad shots, and CoC hit that big three at the end to send it to overtime.
A disconcerting loss any way you look at it, but perhaps not as disconcerting as the fact that 15 games into the season some of the young Heels are actually getting - and playing - younger. Let's hope Ginyard and Graves - especially Ginyard - return for Sunday's ACC opener versus Virginia Tech. And that Drew and Stickland mature quickly in practice between now and Sunday.
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