Carolina's football season pretty much ended less than 24 hours after the new hoops season started.
The tantalizing football team, led by a calm and confident T.J. Yates, had it's season grind to a halt in the second half versus Virginia Tech on Saturday. Yates came into the game with only four interceptions, but doubled that season total versus the Hokies. The biggest one turned a touchdown into an interception as the Hokies defensive back (a fellow Fayetteville native, BTW) wrestled the ball away from Erik Highsmith. That pass was a 50-50 ball, so it's hard to blame Yates.
Yates has been lauded this season for not forcing passes into coverage. On the interception he led Highsmith a little to much, but that should have been a touchdown. A score there would have made the score 17 - 9 Heels.
Hard to fault either Yates or Highsmith. Neither player has been suspended or missed a game due to injury. As I blogged last week, the players on this team - and their effort - are making the university proud. Despite losing more than 30 players to injury or stupidity they are competing. And a win Saturday against N.C. State will was the bad taste away pretty quickly.
Can't remember if I ever blogged football over Carolina basketball. Perhaps I led with football since it's easy to assess the game against Virginia Tech. Three days after the win over Lipscomb I'm still wondering what to write.
It was a sloppy, uneven game by the Heels. There is plenty of good news.
John Henson looked great, tallying 17 boards, 10 points and 7 blocks. More importantly, he looked comfortable on the court.
The other good news is that Tyler Zeller eventually asserted himself late in the game. When Carolina finally put the game away the Heels went to Z down low. I would love for him to become the center of the offense, and have us dump the ball down low to Zeller when he HAVE to have a basket. Against Lipscomb he showed that, albeit very late in the contest.
And finally, there's Harrison Barnes. He was a cool customer on his way to 14 points. He took and made baskets from all over the floor, which was encouraging. The only down side is he did not take that many shots, but I assume that will take care of itself. As a freshman Barnes will need time to find the balance between 'letting the game come to him' and 'taking control of the game when he needs to' something a superstar talent like him will need to figure out if Carolina is be successful.
Fellow freshmen Reggie Bullock and Kendall Marshall also had very nice games. Bullock was as advertised, a scorer who can hit shots from all over the floor. His two three-pointers were very encouraging. And Marshall looked great running the point, dishing and scoring. He reminded me a bit of more offensive Derrick Phelps (probably a sloppy observation since Phelps was a lock-down defender and led the Heels to a championship).
The down side, as it was last year, was Larry Drew II. As comfortable as Henson looked, conversely Drew looked like he was thinking way to much. A third-year point guard with lots of minutes under his belt should be more confident and instinctual running the offense, and Drew was anything but for much of the game.
Drew's running of the offense led to a ragged performance by the Heels. It was still a win, over a decent team, and the Heels did make shots and score 80 points something they failed to do in an AC game last season (chew on that for a while: the Heels failed to score 80 points in ANY conference game last year).
I hope that I'm over-analyzing one game, but Drew has very little margin for error. And that makes Heels fans like me nervous as we start the season. But we won, Henson, Zeller, Barnes, Bullock and Marshall looked good, so there is lots to build on. And Roy - and Drew - should figure it out.
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