North Carolina Basketball: What We Learned from No. 1 Tar Heels' Early Loss

It only took six games for No. 1-ranked North Carolina to drop their first game of the 2011-12 season, coming at the hands of UNLV 90-80 Saturday night.

The Heels were out-shot from behind the arc, out-rebounded and simply out-hustled throughout the game.  

Not something you would expect from the top-ranked team in the country, but UNC looked nothing of the sort immediately after the second half started, if not before.

Just how badly were the Heels out-performed?  

They left behind 27 points from behind the arc, 13 points from the foul line and nine rebounds as the final buzzer sounded.  

This could make one assume UNC's 10-point loss was somewhat respectable, but would make someone smarter wonder how UNC allowed 27 unaccounted-for points from threes, how they didn't capitalize on 13 different opportunities from the stripe, or how they got out-rebounded when their starting front line features two seven-footers.

So far this season, these three facets have been the biggest downfalls of this UNC team: perimeter defense, free-throw shooting and rebounding.  

Facets that are elementary, and ones at which a team that garnered 30 out of 31 first-place votes on the preseason Top 25 should be just a tad better.

Friday night, Doug Gottlieb made the comment that UNC was "playing not to get injured" against South Carolina.  

And Saturday night didn't look any different.

UNC shot 44 percent from three Saturday on 4-for-9 shooting, yet almost every time they came down the floor they fed John Henson and Tyler Zeller relentlessly.  

It's been a recipe for success thus far, so why didn't it work against a team like UNLV?

Because UNLV actually had size and knew how to defend the post better than your run-of-the-mill Tennessee State team.  

Kendall Marshall, as great as he is, became so predictable even I  knew what he going to do—feed the post.  Dexter Strickland, too.

That allowed UNLV to get set and collapse their defense accordingly, which turned into an absolute nightmare for all of UNC's bigs.  It also didn't help that UNC's front line looked to shoot whenever they touched the ball. Every. Single. Time.

"What's a kick out?" they wondered.

Granted, there were a lot of missed calls down low for UNC, but honestly, when you feed the post eight possessions in a row, you're not going to get many calls.  And even when UNC did get the calls, their likelihood of connecting on their free-throw attempts was pretty low—depressingly low.

I can't blame all of UNLV's great shooting on UNC's lackluster defense though. UNLV was simply possessed on Saturday.  But UNC could have done a lot more to contain them, and they didn't. 

If I may be so bold, here's a tip, UNC: when you try to cool down hot shooters, you don't just jump at them after they shoot, you deny them ever getting the ball in the first place.

As for rebounding, it comes down to one thing: effort—and you can't teach effort.

UNC needed this loss.  They needed to be humbled and to realize just how vulnerable they really are.  I've seen it all season long, and knew it was just a matter of time.

They aren't invincible, their offense isn't unstoppable and, more importantly, their defense isn't the least bit intimidating.  

I've watched every game UNC has played so far this season—even their exhibition game against UNC Pembroke—and none of those teams came in scared of UNC.  Not one.  

To fulfill the lofty expectations placed on UNC this season—by the fans as well as the players—UNC has to stop thinking they're the baddest boys in the country and start acting like it.  

That means they cannot be out-performed by a scrappy UNLV team.  

You can't let a God-awful South Carolina team (no disrespect, South Carolina) hang with you throughout an entire game when you're capable of putting them away in the first 15 minutes.  

And you can't give a fan section of the likes of UNC Asheville a reason to chant "overrated" as you gently beat a much lesser team by only 16 points (which was 16 only because of some late-game UNC free throws).

Get mean, get tough, get after it, North Carolina. And for God's sake, make some free throws, or this feeling of being "shocked" by a much less talented team will become an all too familiar feeling.