Not encouraging

Last night's loss to Illinois, in Carolina's first road game, was discouraging on a number of levels.

One, and most troubling, was how horrendous our back court play was.  Our guards were responsible for 14 of our 18 turnovers.  You can't win, at home but especially on the road, when you throw the ball away that much.  

In addition to the turnovers, Larry Drew II continues to make absolutely no impact on offensive.  He simply has NOT been running an offense lately.  Actually I should take that back; for the first 15 minutes of the game Drew and Carolina's guard's were feeding the post, and Zeller, Henson and Knox were making shots.  But in the second half, after Illinois started packing it in on defense but especially after Zeller picked up his third foul, Drew was clueless.  

Strickland is a nice defender, and with his speed you can see why Roy was tempted into turning him into a point guard that could push the ball on offense a la Lawson and Felton, but man does his shot stink.   And he makes bad decisions with the ball.

But the story of this game is turnovers.  The Heels actually shot it well in the second half, but gave the ball away too often.

Once again, the offense looked better in the second half with Marshall and Bullock on the floor.  Marshall pushes it Lawson-style while Drew dribbles Adam Boone-style.  And I love Bullock's mentality; when he comes in he knows he needs to make things happen and looks to score.  He gets it.

I wish Barnes had Bullock's mentality.  Instead of making plays too often Barnes stands on the perimeter, overthinking things.  I imagine Roy urges him to put the ball on the floor more but for some reason Barnes does not seem to trust his overall game, only trusting his jump shooting.  I'd run some back screen lobs for him, or even an NBA-style clear out to get him to take it to the rack more.

But in addition to the lackluster and ineffective back court play and turnovers, last night's game showed we have no nO NO margin for error with our big men.  After Zeller picked up that third foul the game was over.  Henson gamely kept us in it for a while; he was the one bright spot, making a variety of shots down low on his way to 16 points.  But after Z went to the bench we stopped going inside, or the very tall Illini took that away, and we were never really in the game.

Turnovers are one symptom of a lack of concentration, of a lack of intensity.  One other sign of that is missed free throws.  The Heels made less than half, including another air ball from Henson.  And some of those misses were huge.  Carolina missed three early in the second half, free throws that could have stemmed the Illinois surge that bridged half time.  

It's distressing to lose any game when your a Tar Heels fan, but to lose due to bad decisions, bad passes, and bad concentration is even worse.  That's how teams like Clemson or Florida State or other talented but losing teams historically lose.  Obviously, that's NOT Carolina basketball.  

I hope Roy gets our back court to figure that out, and that Marshall gets more of Drew's minutes and that some of Bullock's mentality rubs off on Barnes, before it's too late.