The Daily Hoop

My running blog for the game, with comments at the end.

14:01  Too fast for 4 minutes, just right for the last 2.  The Heels cannot run with UK, just stay  in a half court game and all will be good.  Nice to see RB effective early on both ends.  Henson-Jones III is shaping up to be big-time.

11:45  HB’s second foul, not good.  He has to be in the game.  Henson is really in TJ’s head, which is good.  If this becomes TJ trying to out-duel Henson, I like the Heels chances.  Love to see PJ in the game, great sign.

7:24  The UK guys are playing a lot of minutes, Davis especially.  That will help down the stretch.  You can tell the Cats haven’t played a team that matches up with them so well.  Davis is having a problem dealing with a focused Zeller.  Carolina’s offensive efficiency the last 8+ minutes has been outstanding.

3:50  A great example of how little Justin Watts should play, and how important the 3 is.  The Heels are hot from deep, and it’s the difference right now.  And, why in the world would John Henson be on the bench so long…especially with Watts in the game (??).  TJ lit up Watts but good.  That is a complete mismatch.  HB’s 3rd foul – ugh.  That could prove to be big later.

Half  UNC 43, UK 38  The Henson’s missed dunk was a foul, but the Doron Lamb charge was not one – so it evens out.  The Heels are going to get plenty of 3 looks in the second half because UK will never let the lane be available.  Carolina will have to prove it can really shoot from deep for 40 minutes.  If Jones can be contained a bit, the Heels might be able to eek ahead by double-digits.  Look for Anthony Davis to be a lot more involved, and look for Darius Miller to move over to the point if UK continues to struggle in the half court.

14:02  (56-52) Terrific plodding by UNC.  They are having some trouble dealing with the one-on-one stuff, but everywhere else they’re fine.  The long stretch without a blow will help the Heels.  Continuing to hit the 3, so far so good.

8:13  (60-58)  Neither coach is going to call a timeout.  Survival of the fittest.  Amazing the Heels cold go over 5 minutes without scoring and still be in the lead.  Look for a mental error to decide the game late.

7:55  (60-59)  Zeller needs to recognize his day as a scorer is over unless he can get the miss.  UK will not let him catch it and score the rest of the way.

3:28  (64-69)  As always, the 3 is huge.  The Heels not getting them now, and Lamb knocks down back-to-back 3’s.  The ball game is effectively over now as UK has the ball and is in the bonus.  The Heels need to spend the next 3+ minutes making sure they get good shots.  Get Zeller out of the post and let HB go to the hole.  If he can get fouled, that will help.  If not, just kick it out and let Zeller knock down the 12 footer.  As long as Zeller is in the post, UNC will not be able to get to the rim.  Hairston needs to be in the rest of the way as well.

Final  UK 72, UNC 71  John can’t be the shooter at the end of a game (unless it’s a put-back or no other option).  7 seconds left and HB popping clean to Henson’s left (Gilchrist lost HB).  That had HB-game-winner written all over it.  All Henson had to do was give it to Barnes, and that’s the ball game.

I’ll give the Heels credit.  I didn’t think they could stay with Kentucky, much less control the entire first half.  If you told me at noon today that Carolina would lead at the half by 5 and hold UK to 34 points in the second half, I would have said the Heels win by double-digits.  Hard to be overly mad at the effort.

I hate to say it, but I think this really may be Calipari’s title year.  UK is nowhere near as good as they’ll be in 3 months.  I really like Kidd-Gilchrist, and Doron Lamb is a super player.  Not sure the Heels will get a whole lot better.  The lack of a penetrator is going to cause some problems.

I’d like to see Roy understand that Zeller doesn’t have to be in the post on every single possession.  From 8 minutes on, Calipari sent the immediate double at Zeller.  Keeping him in the post did two things:  1) It ensured he wouldn’t score, and he nearly turned it over several times  2) It completely clogged up the lane so there was no chance for any penetration whatsoever.  Essentially, Cal turned UNC in a team of jump shooters.  Carolina will see this over and over again the rest of the season.  If the Heels want to help themselves, Zeller is going to have to spend some time at the high post.  Not every possession, but more than he does now.

I should say, though, that I’m impressed with Roy’s defensive game plan.  If you kept watching CBS after the game (and, why should you), Calipari talked about Carolina giving up the middle (and how UK exploited that).  Notice, however, how Calipari wasn’t saying “They gave us the 3 all day”.  Roy has been studying his math.

Because of that plan, the Heels didn’t get killed from behind the arc.  That allowed them to control the first half despite HB’s foul trouble, and maintain the lead even after they went more than 5 minutes in the second half without a point, and have a chance to win the game at the end.  Carolina made Lamb, Miller, Jones, and even Wiltjer put the ball on the floor.  Sure, they made some nice plays (Jones especially, but that defensive plan allowed Carolina to weather a slew of UK storms and be right there at the end despite shooting sub-40% in the second half while UK shot 56%.  Very little went well for the Heels in the second half (they only scored 28 points), but they kept UK close down the stretch by not giving up a bunch of easy 3’s (Lamb’s 3’s weren’t easy, those were just good shots by him).

If this is the way Carolina plays defense the rest of the way, they’ll be fine.  Kentucky is probably the only team in the country that beats the Heels today given how well UNC shot the 3 and defended the 3.

Rather than do a blow-by-blow of what happened over the weekend, I thought it better to focus on a specific item that will continue to give the Heels trouble unless it’s addressed:  Defending the three point shot.  This really starts with defending the high and side ball screen.  Carolina may look at times like it doesn’t know how it wants to defend the ball screen.  This is because they have various options based on personnel and time-score situations.  Sometimes they go under, sometimes they go over, sometimes the big man hedges, sometimes he doesn’t, and in end-game situations they switch all screens (which is why Zeller ended up guarding UNLV’s point guard late in the game).

There is a reason for all of it.  Against non-shooters, they go under.  Against shooting big guys, they don’t hedge so they can stay close to the big man shooter.  Typically, they do the standard hedge-go-over-recover.  And Roy likes the late game switching because it forces the other team to use more of the clock and tends to get their offense a bit out of sync on a crucial possession (in theory).

To be honest, I’m ok with all the screen defenses.  You can’t guard the screen one way anymore because so many teams run their entire offense off the high and side screen action.  My problem is what happens behind the screen.  The over-helping is really non-help.  I mentioned this in the preview post and I’ve already seen more of it in the first month of the season by two dozen different teams.  Call it dribble-drive, call it drive-and-kick, call it whatever you want.  The reality is that teams have moved completely away from throwing the ball in the post to score.  Set a high screen and give the dribbler a 3-way go:  pitch it to the ball side corner if the help comes (this is what happened to UNC), slip it to the post guy if the big man steps up to hard to help, or reverse the ball to the opposite corner if there is over-rotation on the back side (this happened to UNC too).

UNLV is a contemporary team.  Their entire offense is built around getting a 3 pointer.  The.Whole.Offense.  So it begs the question:  Why would you play an old-style defense against a new-style offense?  When Bellfield (and Anthony Marshall) kept using the high ball screen, Carolina tried to keep him from turning the corner and scoring in the lane.  Why?  Just let him go.  This is a guy that took 12 shots, 8 of them 3’s and took only 1 free throw.  So do the math.  Does he want to turn the corner and drive to the hoop, or does he want to turn the corner and spot up for 3 (and later pitch it to the corners for Stanback)?  Let him turn the corner, let him get in the lane, if he makes a 2 over Henson/Zeller with Kendall hustling to bother him from behind, so be it.

More importantly, if you take away the 3 you take away UNLV’s offense.  It’s no different than what teams tried to do 40 years ago, it’s just inverted.  Back in the day defenses were geared to eliminate the post players.  Now it’s time to adjust.  Force teams to make mid-range shots and it throws their offense out of sync.  If you don’t do that you get the UNLV result.  Roy can get away with it most of the time because he has the better players.  But a couple/three times each year something like this pops up.  And the maddening part is that he (Roy)  finally has the perfect personnel to be good at defending the 3.  Two very large big guys + long, quick wing players = what you want to defend the 3.  Force teams to dribble the ball in the ground, give them no outlets around the arc, make the small ball handlers score over Henson/Zeller.  Pretty easy.  You get residual benefits too.  Since the big guys on the other team are always on the perimeter setting screens you can remove them from the rebounding equation (as opposed to what happens when you defend incorrectly and allow the big guy to roll down the lane and get inside position because you’ve over-rotated on the help).  And, if the other team’s guards are always shooting in the lane, that means they’re always running behind Kendall when the ball comes back up in transition (make or miss).  When the opposition’s guards are always shooting 3’s they have an instant 20-22 foot head start on keeping Marshall in front of them (something Dave Rose game-planed on Sat. with great results as Bellfied and Marshall harassed Kendall all night all over the court).

Bad rebounding and Kendall being harassed by a quicker defender – that leads to poor offense.  And that’s what we got on Saturday.  The unimaginative defense bled over to the offense.  This is what Wisconsin will do on Wed. (and do it far better than UNLV because they are far better defensively), and it will be what UK does on Sat.  Roy will either adjust, or the Heels will look befuddled.  My money is on the latter.  Williams looks at the improved defensive 3 pt. FG% this year and sees better 3 pt. defense.  I see fool’s gold.  Teams practice shooting hundreds and hundreds of 3’s each week.  These teams want to shoot the 3 on EVERY possession.  It is their ENTIRE offense.  Failing to recognize that and stop it is more than just bad coaching.  It’s unintelligent coaching.  Roy is far from unintelligent.  That leads me to believe that he simply can’t change.  He’s blinded by 40 years of coaching philosophy.

I watch Brad Stevens teach and coach defense, and I see imagination.  I watch Tony Bennett teach and coach defense, and I see contemporary philosophy.  I watch Roy teach and coach defense and I see a guy – a math major mind you – that can’t add.  To Roy, an easy 2 is worth more than an easy 3.  Stop the easy 2 and try to bother the easy 3.  If you’re the 2009 team you can win this way because you have an offense that puts a ridiculous amount of pressure on the other team.  That makes those easy 3’s a lot harder when you know Carolina is almost assuredly going to score on the other end.  This year’s team is built differently.  Roy should embrace that.  Embrace the 62-60 games.  Use Henson.  Funnel people to him.  Take away the other team’s preferences (at no point on Sat. did UNLV look uncomfortable on offense).

The Heels have trouble scoring efficiently, despite having the best passing point guard in the program’s history.  What does that tell you?  It tells me that this is a very bad offensive basketball team.  Henson is limited, so is Strickland, and so is Kendall.  Offensively, those guys are limited in their ability to score.  No shame in that, no shame whatsoever.  They have other skills that are off-the-charts good.  UNC has 3 guys that can score:  PJ Hairston, Harrison Barnes, and Tyler Zeller.  Barnes and Zeller have other flaws that limit their effectiveness, which greatly impacts how smoothly Carolina’s offense flows.  All of this adds up to the anti-Roy team.  This is why I wrote that I didn’t think this team could/would win the title.  Not enough offense and a lack of 3 point defense.  UNLV exposed both of those big-time.

Only one thing is left to see:  Will Roy adjust?

I could give some well-thought-out analysis of last night’s 24-21 loss to the Hokies.  But, really, there is no need to do that.  As they have all season (save the Clemson game), UNC showed it has just as much or more talent than every opponent it has played.  At times the Heels have looked good on offense, defense, and special teams.  The problem – and this rose up in every phase last night – is the good stretches are few and far between.

Carolina is exactly the team I thought they would be when I picked them to go 6-6 at the beginning of the year (they now stand at 6-5 with Duke left to go).  Bryn Renner has been good, and he’s been not so good.  The defensive front has been top-notch, but the defensive secondary has been low-notch.  The lack of imagination by the defensive staff – limited by a lack of players and play-makers on the back end – reached its nadir last night.  As they did against Wake (with great success), the Heels blitzed the Hokies early in an effort to break tendency.  Unfortunately, Frank Beamer doesn’t let his quarterback hold the ball very long so blitzing rarely works against the sturdy Virgina Tech offense.  Once Ryan Houston fumbled on the 2 and the Hokies recovered you had a sense that something bad was about to happen.  And it did.  18 plays and 95 yards later Tech tied the game at 7.  Ball game.

Allowing a team to go 95 yards is painful to watch, especially watching the Hokies do it in typical drip-drip-drip fashion.  Carolina bottled up Tech’s running game, and limited Logan Thomas through the air, and still couldn’t really stop the Hokies.  Why?  Because UNC does nothing to bother the other team schematically on defense.  The one theme that has been present all season is Carolina’s inability to make the other team’s offense – and the quarterback specifically – uncomfortable.  The one time they did manage to rattle the opposition’s offense resulted in a massive beat-down of Wake Forest.  This puts incredible pressure on UNC’s offense to perform at a high level on every series.  That has happened some, but not enough.  So, what you get is a marginally competitive team with a 6-5 record against a soft schedule.

But the real talking point today is the status of Everette Withers.  At this point it’s pretty clear to everyone (him included one would think) that Withers has 1 or 2 more games left in his Carolina coaching career.  Because of this, I have a radical idea – can Withers before the bowl.  Staff and all – let ‘em walk.  Yes – this would just about insure a bowl loss, and tremendous chaos and outrage would result.  And it would be very difficult to get a staff organized quickly enough.  But hear me out.

If you could get Gus Malzahn to agree the take the job this weekend (My choice, if he’s interested.  Imagine the spread offense in Chapel Hill.  Very cool.), he could begin organizing some folks to come with him now.  Assistants have left teams before bowl games in the past so they could get started on their new jobs, so it’s not unprecedented.  And, it would give Malzan a full month to begin working with his new players.  The bowl game would become a huge, fun thing.  New offense, new defense, new coach – very cool.  Right now, can you honestly say you’re looking forward to the Emerald Bowl or the Military Bowl?

If you want to make football important, and not just talk about it being important, then make it important right now.  You’re not doing anything unjust to the players.  They know Withers is done (as we saw from Gio Bernard’s comments after the State game).  And, telling Withers now allows him (and the rest of the assistants) a chance to actively start looking for a new job as they come open (presumably next weekend).

Give the new coach a running start.  Let him take the helm next Sunday.  Let him install the new game plan for the bowl game.  Let him run the 15+ practices between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.  Let all those potential recruits see what Carolina football could be by watching the new Heels take the field in the bowl game.  And, most importantly, let the new coach get a head start on recruiting (as Butch Davis had when he was hired).

Hire the guy now.  Like, right now.

Imagine that your job required you to fly to the west coast for two days to give a once-in-a-lifetime presentation.  Then imagine that just before you are to give this presentation, the President of the United States shows up to talk to you and to watch you give your presentation.  Then imagine that you had to leave immediately after giving your presentation and take a red-eye back east.  You get to rest one day, and then you have to give a sales pitch to people who you know are going to hate it even before you begin the pitch.  Amazingly, though, both the presentation and the sales pitch go over as well as you could have ever hoped.

Folks, UNC’s basketball season has begun about as well as any of us could have hoped.  I think Roy Williams likes doing this to the teams he thinks can be very good.  By “this” I mean he likes to challenge them in a very difficult way.  It’s hard to remember a time the Heels opened the season with two games any more difficult than these two.  Both the Spartans and the Bulldogs are near-lock NCAA tournament teams, and both games were played in less than ideal spots (speaking only about basketball here – clearly what happened on the U.S.S Carl Vinson is an incredibly ideal life experience).  Despite all the hoopla, all the travel, all the difficulty, Carolina managed to put both games away early in the second half.  In fact, despite everything, UNC led by 20 in both games.  Later in the year as we monitor how well Michigan State and UNC-Asheville do, we’ll all look back and marvel at that.

So, Roy gets his wish.  His Heels were most definitely challenged in both games.  In sort of an odd reversed NCAA opening weekend format (UNC-A would be a normal opening round opponent, and MSU would be a normal second round foe), Williams got to see – and see right away – just how his team would fare in a tournament-type routine.  Both games went about as I expected.  I thought UNC would struggle for a while with the Spartans but find a way to ease ahead late in the second half.  The Heels actually exceeded this a bit by easing ahead late in the first half and jumping all over Tom Izzo’s crew early in the second half.  Carolina did let MSU hang around, but the game was never in doubt in the second half.

The UNC-A game was close throughout the first half.  Kendall Marshall smartly managed the last 50 seconds of the half to get the Heels the last four points before intermission.  That popped a tenuous 5 point lead up to 9, and allowed UNC to continue that popping for ten minutes of the second half.  Amazingly, in neither of the two games did Carolina ever lead by less than double digits in the second half (you can nit-pick this a bit with the first few moments of the second half against UNC-A, but you get where I’m going here).

Really, neither of these two games had much to do with basketball.  This was a toughness test.  And it was immediate.  Like, right now – you have to be tough.  Right.Now.  And UNC was tough.  Very, very tough.  Clearly they didn’t play their best basketball in either game.  But, goodness, it’s so early in November.  This is as early as I can ever remember the season starting in earnest.  Not even four full weeks of practice have elapsed, yet Carolina has played a good Michigan St. team on a boat, and played a true road game against a probable conference champ.

I liked what I saw from Kendall Marshall, John Henson, Harrison Barnes, and P.J. Hairston.  I really liked what I saw of Dexter Strickland in his backup point guard role (not so thrilled with him shooting outside the lane though).  I’d like to see more from Reggie Bullock and James Michael McAdoo.  I think Tyler Zeller is still adjusting to being the number one option, and Roy treating him that way.  And I’m scratching my head as to why Justin Watts is the first “big” man off the bench (or why he gets any minutes at all, save the end of the game mop-up).

Two home games upcoming which should be fairly simple victories, then off to Las Vegas for a couple of games which shouldn’t be much harder.  After this, the real games begin.  First up are the 13th ranked Wisconsin Badgers led by first team All-America point guard Jordan Taylor, and then a trip to Lexington on Dec. 3 to take on the mighty Kentucky Wildcats in Rupp Arena.  We’ll know a lot more about the Heels after this stretch of games.

For now, I’m excited to see the toughness from last year’s post-Larry Drew team has carried over in to this season.

Last week I gave credit.  This week I will not be doing that.

If you hold a team to 13 points, and only 3 in the second half, you have to win the game.  Have.To.

Coming off nearly 600 yards of total offense against Wake Forest, the Heels manage only a third of that total today and score exactly no points.  Embarrassing doesn’t begin to describe the pathetic production of UNC’s offense.  This was John Schoop’s worst day in five season’s as offensive coordinator.  Defensively, Carolina was pretty decent.  The front four was especially good almost all day long.  More importantly, for the first time maybe all year, the defense was good enough keep the Heels offense in the game until the very end.

But this game was more about caring and preparation.  What infuriates State fans about North Carolina is the fact that Tar Heel fans don’t really care about the State games (despite what Everett Withers said this week).  Simply put, State just cares more.  And that shows in the 0-5 record the Heels have since John Bunting was fired.  What infuriates Carolina fans is the fact that the Wolfpack has a staff full of competent football coaches.  Tom O’Brien, Dana Bible, Mike Archer, John Tenuta.  Those are serious football guys.

Right now, UNC does not have the same level of serious football guys inhabiting Kenan Stadium.  Maybe that will change in a couple of months.  But this fact should give all Tar Heel fans pause:  Since Bill Dooley left Chapel Hill in the fall of 1977, UNC has had only one good football coach (Mack Brown).  Dick Crum, Carl Torbush, John Bunting, Butch Davis, Everette Withers.  Those five have had some decent moments (Crum’s 1980 ACC title season being the best).  But none were good, and a couple of them were down-right awful.  34 years with one decent coach is not going to work.  The longer this goes on, the more Duke-like Carolina football becomes.

One day we’ll all wake up and realize what is becoming more obvious by the day.  North Carolina football is one step above bad…but only on some days.  Mostly it’s just bad.

For all the discredit I’ve handed out to Everett Withers, I will not do that today.  Withers deserves an immense amount of credit for a huge bounce-back 49-24 win over Wake Forest.  A trampled defense turned up the heat on Wake QB Tanner Price right from the first possession, and managed to hold the ACC’s leading receiver Chris Givens to one-third of his average game total.  The secondary had a couple of lapses, but only a couple.  Offensively, Bryn Renner was spectacular.  In fact, it was a career day for the whole offense as the Heels put up 560 yards on the Deacs.  Renner set a career high with 338 yards, Gio Bernard came within a yard of rushing for a career high (154 yards), and while Dwight Jones didn’t get in the end zone he did set career high in receiving yards.

I’m sure this was a tough week in Chapel Hill on a number of fronts this weeks.  However, Withers and his staff calmly met the players last Sunday after a soul crushing loss to Clemson.  The positive approach appears to have worked.  This was the most prepared, on both sides of the ball, the Heels have been all season.  It was nice to see some early pressure on Tanner Price.  The early blitz, sack, and fumble recovery by Zach Brown would stay with Price all afternoon until Jim Grobe pulled his QB late in the game.  And with the offense putting up the most points a Carolina team has registered in seven years, Price would have had to be sharp as a knife today.  He wasn’t, and the Heels rolled.

The only knit-picking I’ll do is on John Schoop.  It’s time to find, and use, some packages for A.J. Blue.  Blue can throw it and he’s proven to be a pretty powerful and fairly fast runner.  It would be nice to see a couple of new wrinkles featuring Blue next week in Raleigh.  Ah…yes…Raleigh.  NC State week.  Lovely.  The Pack is coming off a beat-down worse than what the Heels suffered last week in Death Valley.  34-oh down in Tallahassee.  So, as usual, Carolina finds itself in an odd game with State.  It sure would be nice to see blue beat red for a change.

Every year I go to the UNC basketball coach’s clinic and watch a couple of practices, and every year I come to the clinic with tons of questions about the Tar Heels.  Questions such as:  Will Kendall Marshall be able to play 30+ effective minutes each game?  Will Harrison Barnes be as great (more great?) as he was the second half of last year?  Is Tyler Zeller going to be able to play an entire season the way he did in the NCAA tournament last year?  Is Reggie Bullock really healthy?  Who will be the leader of the Jump Around dance now that Leslie McDonald is hurt?

All of these questions are important.  But, really, there is only one question that any of us care about:  Is this team capable of winning a national championship?  We’ll get to that in a bit.

Since the media has been trying to compare this year’s team to the 2005 and 2009 title winners, I’ll take the bait and spend a few lines doing that too.  In his media day press conference last week, Roy Williams admitted there were some similarities between his two championship teams and this year’s squad.  I don’t really see it with the 2009 team, but I understand what Roy is trying to do.  It’s a good coaching move, one designed to let his players know that he really does think this team can win in April.

The core group that made up the 2008-09 team won A WHOLE LOT of games prior to the ’08-’09 season.  That group had won two ACC regular season titles, two ACC tournament titles, been to a Final Four, and come within a Wayne Ellington jumper of going to the Final Four two years earlier as well.  They accomplished all of this before they set foot on the court in 2008.

This year’s team has one ACC regular season title.  That’s it.

But this year does look a bit similar to 2004-05. (Disclaimer:  I wrote what comes next prior to the Grantland.com article that picked the Heels to win it all this year.  This section looks very similar to what’s in that article….but mine came first, even though I always wait until after the coach’s clinic to send out this email.  Just didn’t want you people to think I’m a plagiarist.  <Insert Michael McAdoo joke here>).

In 2005, if Raymond Felton wasn’t on the court the Heels were in trouble.  This year, if Kendall Marshall isn’t on the court, the Heels are in trouble.  In 2005, the best reserve was a freshman big man with uncommon ability (Marvin Williams).  This year, arguably the best reserve could be a freshman big man with uncommon ability (James Michael McAdoo).  In 2005, UNC had a nearly unstoppable post presence (Sean May).  This year, UNC may have a nearly unstoppable post presence (Tyler Zeller).  In 2005, the Heels had a scoring machine on the wing that few teams could handle (Rashad McCants).  This year, the Heels have a scoring machine on the wing that few teams will be able to handle (Harrison Barnes).  And then there is this:  The 2005 team entered that season having lost close to 50 games over the previous three seasons (47 to be exact).  The fact that Roy was able to overcome such a losing mentality and win his first title is remarkable (and remains an underrated achievement for Williams).  While this year’s team hasn’t lost nearly as much as the ’05 team had, there is still a group of players who suffered through the Larry Drew Era.  That era was marked by poor play, lots of losses, and incredibly bad chemistry.  It appears the chemistry issues have been fixed, and tons of wins have followed Drew’s exit.

In 2005, Carolina built on the previous season’s success and put together a great late season run to win the title.  Can this year’s team build on last year’s success and put together a great late season run….and win a title?

If you’re looking for a word to describe what I saw over the two days it would be:  Surprising.

Read the rest of this entry »

Not much to say, and none of it good.  At some point, North Carolina’s defensive backs are going to have to cover somebody.  If they don’t, we’ve seen the Heels win all the games they’re going to win this year.

59-24 before Dabo Swinney called off the Tigers in the 4th quarter.  59 points in three quarters.  The worst defensive efforts of the John Bunting era weren’t this bad.  If not for T.J. Thorpe’s kickoff return for a touchdown and Clemson completely shutting it down the last fifteen minutes, the score could have been more like 70-20 instead of the not-as-close-as-it-looks 59-38 final.

Unless UNC wins out, Everett Withers saw his chance to become the permanent head coach disappear today.  Probably just as well.  Right now, this staff is doing an extremely poor job of preparing the Heels to play.  That isn’t going to get better with this group of coaches this season.

Let the coaching rumors begin.

When you don’t have a good game plan, you fumble a kickoff, you kick the ball out of bounds on a critical late kickoff, and you don’t convert on two late fourth down attempts, a loss is usually the result.  This game was lost in the first quarter.  Miami’s speed was on display throughout the game, but never more so than in the first fifteen minutes of the game.  It was all Carolina could do to hang on.

Defensively, it was yet another poor effort from a Tar Heel defense that is slowly crumbling before our eyes.  As has been the case all season, UNC’s inability to cover cost the Heels repeatedly.  Yet, incredibly, Carolina held the Canes to 3 points and just over 60 yards in the second half.  Most of that was Miami’s willingness to play conservatively with a large lead, but the Heels defense deserves a ton of credit for not letting the game get away.

Offensively, two words:  Gio Bernard.  He was fantastic.  Nearly 200 yards of total offense for the redshirt freshman (110 yards on the ground, another 78 receiving).  Bernard has become the best all-around back in the ACC.  Conversely, the offensive line has become the anti-Gio.  How so many big, huge guys are unable to protect Bryn Renner is a continuing mystery.  Renner had a big day despite being under constant pressure.  There are some things that bug me about Renner, but toughness is not one of them.  However, if the offensive line doesn’t get their act together Renner may not survive the rest of the year.

At some point, very soon I hope, Withers is going to have to put early pressure on the opposing quarterback.  As we have seen in nearly every game this season, allowing the other team’s quarterback to feel comfortable in the pocket early in the game has proven to be a problem.  Jacory Harris can be rattled.  We’ve all seen it with Harris.  But he can be deadly effective when given a chance to gain confidence, and that’s what we saw today.  Next week Carolina will play the best QB they’ve seen so far this year.  If Clemson’s Taj Boyd is allowed to sit in the pocket and figure things out, Clemson will put up 50 on the Heels in Death Valley.

5-3 with four games left:  vs. Wake, at Virginia Tech, at State, and Duke at home to close it out.  Go 2-2 against those four and win the bowl game to get the program’s fourth straight eight win season.  My sense, right now, is that is a workable result.  My gut, however, tells me that Jim Grobe will figure out a way to out-scheme Everett Withers.  That same gut feeling also tells me that this UNC team is not good enough to win in Raleigh.  Pair those two losses with a probable loss at Blacksburg (which, by the way, would leave the Heels in a tailspin after five straight losses) and the Duke game is for a possible bowl.  I say “possible” because a 6-6 UNC isn’t very attractive after losing five straight.

We’ll see how it plays out, but today (and last week vs. Louisville, and two weeks ago against ECU, and three weeks ago vs. Georgia Tech) was not good.  The opponents get better.  Will Carolina?

When is 5-1 not really 5-1?  When you’re the North Carolina Tar Heels.  UNC has won 5 games against 5 below-to-very-below average teams.  The average margin of victory against this murderer’s row of Rutgers, Virginia, ECU, and Louisville is a little over 8 points (we leave James Madison out off this list so as not to skew the margin to look better than it should).  The combined record of those four teams is 10-11.  So what does this tell us?  It tells us that the Heels have managed to beat 4 bad teams by a touchdown each game.  Not exactly stellar play.

You might be saying “Hey, at least they’re winning the game”.  And, yes, it’s not a horrible thing to beat Louisville 14-7 and move to 5-1 on the year.  But this is a mirage.  5-1 isn’t 5-1.  Other than Gio Bernard and Dwight Jones, and some occasional good play by Bryn Renner and the defensive line, there are few good things about this year’s football team.  Now that the caliber of opponent is going to increase – exponentially – it’s hard to find a team the Heels will beat in the second half of the season.  Certainly Duke should be a win, but can you honestly say that Carolina will be favored against State on the road, or Wake (who popped Florida St.)?

The same two themes that  I’ve touched on all season were on full display today:  Offensive inconsistency and poor secondary play (leading to poor overall defensive play).  On offense, the line play has been just north of awful this season.  That group must begin to play better if the Heels have any real chance of winning multiple games down the stretch.  Renner’s play has been as expected – good one week, less than good the next.  Bernard’s play has been much better than expected, and without him it’s seems a given that a couple more losses would be on the ledger.

Frankly, it’s remarkable in some ways that UNC isn’t 2-4.  Carolina gave the ball away 5 times against Rutgers and still managed to win (that’ll never happen again in my lifetime).  ECU turned the ball over 4 times in the first half yet managed to stay in the game by totally dominating UNC’s defense in the second half.  One less turnover by the Pirates and Greenville might still be partying.  And then there’s Saturday’s games against Louisville.  The Cardinals were a team that had just fired their offensive coordinator prior to the game and had one of the worst offenses in the country.  Yet, amazingly, the Heels allowed that woeful offense to pile up close to 200 yards in the first half.  Even after “waking up” in the second half the Heels could only muster 14 points.  I would imagine the Tar Heels have used up their share of good fortune for the rest of the season.

The major issue continues to be with the Everett Withers defensive philosophy.   I don’t want to beat the guy up too much here.  His attitude through the entire Butch Davis mess has been terrific.  And, he deserves credit for not allowing a mediocre football team to believe they are mediocre.  There is a lot to be said for that.  However, Withers lacks a killer instinct for defensive football (which has seeped down to new defensive coordinator Art Kaufman).  When Withers arrived in 2008 he had just finished presiding over the worst defense in the country at Minnesota.  Statistically, the Gophers were the worst defensive team in the country.  Let that sink in for a minute.  The.Worst.

Withers brought his “don’t worry about the yards, worry about the points” mindset to Chapel Hill.  With a roster stuffed full of NFL-to-be players, Withers implemented the most basic of defenses:  Little to no blitzing, lots of zone coverage.  In fact, Bob Davie mentioned on the Louisville telecast that you’re always going to know where Carolina is on defense, meaning the scheme is not complicated or confusing to opposing offenses.  Sitting at 5-1, one would think that Withers has it under control.  Couple this with the incredibly young and poor secondary, and one can also see why Withers is loathe to put his defensive backs in to isolated man-to-man schemes.

The ‘ol “bend but don’t break” mantra has limits though.  Specifically, the Withers Way does two things – neither of them helpful.  First, the lack of pressure allows the opposing offense to get comfortable (both with the UNC defense, and with its own offensive plays).  This is what is classically referred to as an offense’s rhythm.  And opposing offenses have had plenty of rhythm against the Heels this year.  In fact, Virginia and ECU’s quarterbacks had such good rhythm that both QB’s had career days in completions and yardage.  At some point this will hurt you, especially given that Carolina has yet to see the best quarterbacks on its schedule (Taj Boyd at Clemson, Mike Glennon at State, Logan Thomas at Virginia Tech).  Second, the “give up yards not points” philosophy allows the other team to possess the ball far too much.  To wit, the Heels have played six games this year and have yet to win the time of possession stat.  This means UNC’s offense gets fewer plays than it should.  That’s not good, and it’s made all the worse when you have two home run hitters like Gio Bernard and Dwight Jones.  You want to give those guys as many plays as you possibly can.

As Georgia Tech showed (the only good team the Heels have played, and – shock – the only loss so far), good teams will gladly eat up the clock and gobble up yards.  And, by the way, those good teams also will find a way to put the ball in the end zone if you let them have the ball long enough.  Miami, Clemson, Wake, State, and Virginia Tech can all score big numbers of points.  Unless Withers and Kaufman can figure out a way to pry the ball away from the other team more, it would not shock me at all to see Carolina show up in Durham needing a win to get to a bowl (yes, that would be five straight losses).