Wake Forest-North Carolina: Clean Up on Aisle Tar Heel

If the water cooler talk in ACC country wasn’t about UNC’s loss to BC, surely the Heels' second loss in eight days and a seemingly impossible 0-2 ACC start will be the talk of hoop fanatics everywhere from now until Thursday night, when Ol’ Roy’s squad heads to Charlottesville for a date with the Wahoos.

There will be plenty of words dedicated to the topic “What’s wrong with UNC?” over the next few days, but in this case, a few numbers may be as telling as the thousands of words attempting to describe what appears to be a tired, frustrated, and impatient Tar Heel team.

First off, in two opening ACC losses, UNC has surrendered an average of 88 points per game. That's a lot of points. Simply put, that's too many. This is particularly troubling to a team that uses good defense to create turnovers and secure defensive rebounds, which jump start their transition offense.

Next number of concern is 59—that’s how many points the winning team’s point guards have contributed to the final score the opening two losses. Tyrese Rice, who has a history of hanging a bunch on the Heels, scored 25, and last night Wake’s Jeff Teague scored a career-high 34 points.

Most disconcerting for Carolina fans was the simple fact that it appeared that Teague could score at will no matter who guarded him.

Consider the numbers 22 and 20. During these first two league losses, the Tar Heels have allowed an opponent’s role players to shine. Against B.C. it was Rakim Sanders, and against Wake it was Chas McFarland. Sanders was averaging 11.1 points before he dropped 22 on Carolina, and McFarland was averaging just 10 before scoring 20 points last night.

Muddying the waters a bit more is that McFarland was only averaging 21 minutes per game (presumably due to foul trouble, etc.), but he managed 33 minutes last night.

Then there is Tyler Hansbrough's magic number of 20. Psycho T had scored 20 or more in every game this year since his return from injury against Michigan State. Last night, the Heels' half-court offense was disrupted by Wake’s strategy of pushing Hansbrough further from the basket.

Enter the number three—as in three-point shot. Wake's strategy worked, as the impatient Tar Heels tried 23 three-pointers (they attempted 22 against Boston College the Sunday previous), but made only six of them for 26 percent. Last year, the Heels averaged 14.8 three-point attempts per game.

When UNC gets behind, they have a tendency to try to catch-up from the outside-in instead of remembering that their strength is from the inside-out.

The Heels are generally thought to be a good three-point shooting team, but a three-point shot in transition when moving forward is different (and easier to make) than a three-point shot generated from lateral movements, picks, or other components of a half-court offense. Ask anybody who plays.

Then there’s this number—35 percent. Against the Eagles, UNC shot 38 percent overall. Last night against Wake they posted their lowest percentage of the season, making just 26 of 74 shots for 35.1 per cent. For the game, Deon Thompson, Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington, and Tyler Hansbrough were a combined 28 percent on 14 of 50 shooting.

Thompson and Lawson both had particularly bad nights. Lawson was off target and clearly frustrated at times while trying to force plays, while Thompson missed all five shots in the first half and five more in the second, including a point blank dunk. Were it not for a spectacular effort by Danny Green, Wake would have won by double figures.

And then there is the all-important No. 1—would that be the No. 1 preseason ranking and the presumption that UNC, like Wake, with all its returning starters, could simply waltz through the season and magically appear at the Final Four? No, not that No. 1. Although preseason hype and easy non-conference wins do not a champion make, Carolina’s No. 1 issue is the No. 1 on Marcus Ginyard’s jersey.

Ginyard was injured in October, and last night, two games into the regular season ACC campaign, he was on the Tar Heel bench in street clothes. He had surgery in early October to repair a stress fracture in his left foot. But he is still only able to participate in about 50 percent of each practice. The senior played against Rutgers, Nevada, and Boston College, but has sat out two games since.

Ginyard is the Heels’ best defender. He’s the guy you send in to stop the other team’s big scorer (even if it’s the point guard). More importantly, Ginyard is a cool customer.

In big games, at crunch time, every team needs that guy that settles everybody down and keeps everybody focused. Ginyard is that guy, and UNC needs him back out on the court.

Problem is nobody can figure out why Ginyard’s injury isn’t healing properly. In a press conference on Saturday, Ol’ Roy said “I don’t know” nine times in six minutes. Clearly, everybody is frustrated, and no one as much as Ginyard himself.

So what’s the good news?

Well, for starters, the Tar Heels are emphatically insuring that they won’t fall prey to the “Duke Syndrome”—crushing everything in their path from November through February only to create high rankings and false expectation on the way to a late March or early April meltdown. If you are going to have issues, now is the time to have them while you have a lot of games to work out the solutions.

Secondly, the Heels have demonstrated in both games their ability to stay in the game even when things are going very badly. Last night, UNC looked tired and frustrated at times. They committed 18 turnovers. They committed 28 fouls, and they shot 28 percent in the second half. Their star players struggled every step of the way, and the game was still competitive to the end.

Make no mistake, Wake was in control and the Heels were struggling to keep it close, but UNC could have simply wilted when down by nine in the second half.

While these losses are tough for the Heels and their faithful to swallow now, they will eventually be seen as the games that either exposed the Tar Heels' weaknesses that ultimately led to a disappointing season, or they will be seen as the games that shaped their identity and led to improvement that will pay big dividends in the upcoming ACC and NCAA tournaments.

Only time will tell.

(Photos by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images and Getty Images)