UNC survived a scare Saturday night at Cleveland State winning by 6, but only after taking the lead for good in the last minute of play. Cleveland State played good man-to-man defense and kept the Heels in doubt all night. Thanks to some key baskets by Jawad Williams and Rashad McCants down the stretch, the Heels were able to escape the 194 possession affair with only a minor knee strain injury to Jackie Manuel. .The Heels had a rough shooting night. There’s really not much more to it. While it felt like they turned the ball over too much, they actually lost the ball on a season-best 16% of their possessions. Shooting was awful, though. After a 40% second half, the Heels finished at just 42% shooting. Only 15% of their shots came from 3-point land.

Clearly the weakest shooting came from Rashad McCants and Melvin Scott, who combined for 10-31 (32%). Raymond Felton didn’t add much with only 2-5 shooting. Felton is looking to pass too much in the half court set. With only Williams and May hitting reliably, the Heels simply struggled to find a way to keep Cleveland State honest.

UNC’s defense went to sleep at times as well. With Bohlander and Terry having to spell Manuel (injury) and May (foul trouble), the Heels suffered a steep intensity loss. Terry has a long, long way to go before becoming a reliable ACC-caliber talent. Once David Noel is back from his injury, the Heels will feel a huge improvement from their bench.

Next up is Illinois. Dee Brown ate up Raymond Felton last season. While it is revenge time, the Heels need to push tempo, but not get too aggressive on defense. Brown averages 19 points per game on 44% 3-point shooting in 3 games.

Chapter Two of the Roy Williams featured the same theme begun in the First; fast tempo. The Heels were explosive from their defense and got some fast, easy buckets. The catalyst behind it all was Raymond Felton who upon getting the ball in any situation, heads upcourt faster than any point guard I’ve ever seen. Felton had four steals, 12 assists and just 3 turnovers. The team as a whole took care of the ball pretty well for a November fast paced game. The Heels gave up the ball on 16% of their possessions, in line with their performance two nights ago. And about that pace? The Heels clicked it up once again leading to a blistering 174-possession game. In order to keep the tempo going Roy Williams did a masterful job of substituting, allowing no player to play more than 32 minutes.

Offensively we saw more of the Heels’ halfcourt set due to Davidson’s outstanding willingness to get back on defense. While the Heel’s transition into the halfcourt set was better than on Saturday, the Heels took 37% of their shots from behind the arc, too many for my taste. Consequently they did not do as well getting the ball inside to the big men as they did in their first effort.

Defensively the Heels were a step better than they were Saturday playing some really aggressive man-to-man defense in the first half. Felton’s ability to slam down the accelerator punished Davidson repeatedly, putting the game beyond reach early.

The Heels had an average night of rebounding, though. With the number of possessions even at 87, the Heels could only force a draw in that statistic against a slightly smaller opponent.

We saw some great personality from Roy Williams tonight. On the ESPN broadcast, they featured a UNC practice and showed many clips of Roy’s schoolhouse. One time he said something like,”Rashad you make think you’re six years old sometimes…and don’t look at me like that. Just play.” During the game there was an intentional foul by a Davidson player on Rashad McCants. Immediately Sean May placed his hand on the Davidson player’s chest and some jawing ensued. But before May even got a work out Roy Williams was well onto the court point his finger in the face of…his own players. Essentially he told them “We don’t play like that here at Carolina. We’re not gonna be that kind of team.” Williams’ style of discipline is working. While he keeps these players on a tight rope, team morale seems to be very good. They are more “focused” than anything positive or negative.

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Jawad Williams led all scorers with the hot shooting hand. Jawad’s ball control on the break has really improved, and he seems to be playing through the foul much better than before (He used to give up at the first hint of contact). Williams was hot from the arc where he hit shots mainly from the quarter angles, not from the top of the key.

Sean May proved tough again inside during the first half, but seemed winded after garnering so much of Davidson’s defensive attention. May is playing much better through the foul, as well.

Rashad McCants didn’t seem to be at the end of so many great plays tonight, just in the middle of them. A sign of a great player is that he can be silent all night and come away with 13 points. Cold shooting from the perimeter really shut his offensive aggressiveness down. However McCants’ defense continued to shine as he put relentless pressure on the ball all night. He needs to learn how to get back to his man quicker after double teams.

The rest of the team looked like they did on Saturday, with the exception of some cold shooting be Melvin Scott. Byron Sanders unquestionably has to want the ball more for UNC to have any depth on the interior.

One last note, in the post-game analysis Phil Ford said he thinks this team is one of those that has a chance to make a run for the Final Four. The followed that by saying there are about 30 teams at this time of year that match that description. Whew! For a minute I thought the hype machine had taken him over as well!

Saturday night’s season opener wasn’t just a coming out party for new coach Roy Williams, it was that and more for Sophomore ubiquitous forward Rashad McCants. McCant’s lead the team in scoring with 18, assists with 8, and steals with 4, with no fouls in 30 minutes of play. McCants’ game has improved most notably in the areas of shot selection and defense. While he still has far to go with his ballhandling, there is no doubt that the skill set he is developing under Roy Williams’ coaching staff will solidify his chances of being an NBA success.Head Coach Roy Williams has done some impressive things with this squad already. With virtually the same lineup as last season, Williams has been able to turn up the heat defensively. Perimeter defense is much better, but the interior defense is vastly improved. The Heels were not only able to force turnovers on 24% of ODU’s possessions, they capitalized by pushing tempo extremely hard, leading to many easy baskets.

Williams began the practice season by stating his intention to push tempo, but don’t we hear that from coaches routinely? Usually after about 7 games speed goes by the wayside and shot selection and patience become the coaches’ point of emphasis.

Will that happen to this squad? We’ll see, however the shot selection, for the most part, was outstanding in the half-court set. UNC worked the ball inside with such proficiency that they attempted 3-pointers on only 11% of their shots. That’s a big improvement over the ’03 team which settled for 3’s a whopping 40% of the time.

Even with the fast tempo one would expect the team to get sloppy with the ball. Last night’s effort gets grade of B- on that front. UNC turned the ball over on 17.6% of its possessions. That number ought to be around 12% with a good point guard like Raymond Felton leading the team.

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Well, was the tempo THAT fast? Saturday’s opener featured a total of 178 collective possessions. In the average games coached by Matt Doherty there were 170 possessions. In the average Bull Guthridge game there were 163 possessions. In the average game in Dean Smith’s last two years the average was 164 possessions. Certainly we’ll see the pace slow as Williams pushes shot selection and as the competition gets better. However, don’t be surprised to see this team’s games average in the speedy upper 160’s.Can the Heels’ take this pace given the lack of depth? In fact, yes. The team’s conditioning looks fantastic. Perhaps mild Fall weather has helped, but what we saw was a good distribution of minutes that saw no player having to play more than 30 minutes. With that kind of help, the top 7 players should have no problem getting through ACC conference games.

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The real question is: Can this team hold it together mentally for 40 minutes? This group has 3-4 minute lapses last season that killed them. Last night it happened again. After nearly 4 minutes in which ODU outscored the Heels 12-8 (midway through the second half), Roy Williams called a timeout and VERY emphatically snapped his team into gear. They responded with an instant 6-2 run.Coach Williams has implemented some interesting and promising playbook improvements. Gone is the single high-post game that opposing zones picked apart. Instead we saw much 3-around-2 offense with twin posts actually MOVING without the ball! Yeah! The Heels needs to improve the transition from the secondary break into the halfcourt set, but signs are that once a few players learn the book a little better there will be a lot more good scoring opportunities. Overall, though, spacing in the offensive end was much better than what we have recently seen.

Defensively we saw mostly man-to-man from the Heels. Most impressive, though, was the interior defense. The Heels blocked 9 ODU shots and it wasn’t just from the big men. Wing man help was pretty good, although Jawad Williams needs to learn when to leave his man to help better than he has.

We actually saw about 3 possessions of 1-2-2 zone defense early on. In this 1-2-2, the point man settles into the lane once the ball has moved to one side of the court. After a timeout, the heels played this 1-2-2 for one possession, scored when they got the ball back, and immediately went into ½ court man-to-man pressure “D”. This, presumably, was the call made in the timeout huddle and not called on the fly.

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Rashad McCants was outstanding, as mentioned before. He seems to still look for seams in the defense, but forces the issue, still, a bit too far. McCants’ ballhandling is clearly his biggest weakness. There was a time when he tried to dribble around an opposing bigman out at the three-point line and lacked the explosive step to get around him. However, in the highlight of the game, McCants broke down the middle of the court with three defenders ahead of him and one off his right hip. Dribbling left most of the way down, McCants made the mistake of switching to the right hand only to have it immediately stolen. McCant’s clearly knew his error and corrected it by absolutely FLYING down the court to make a left-handed block on the opponents driving shot. It was something that every aspiring basketball player should have seen.Raymond Felton was outstanding as well. His ability to push the ball up the court and see nearly everything is simply amazing. Felton’s defense is improved, however he needs to learn when to commit himself off his balance for steals. Felton didn’t seem interested in shooting the ball from the perimeter, either. If Felton is to be a lottery pick next Summer, he will need to develop that shot.

Felton went down 6:26 into the game after making a brilliant drive against an off-balance defender. While Felton was out the Heels were outscored 4-2 and lacked focus under Melvin Scott at point guard. It is clear that Felton, McCants, and May are irreplaceable this season.

Melvin Scott played well. Scott seems to have the green light on shooting, and has come a long way with his stop and pop. Scott’s ballhandling has improved quite a bit, but is only good enough to spell Felton when he is tired.

Sean May has lost weight and it seems to have improved his shooting. Saturday night he seemed to really have the correct amount of jump to make shots with his back to the basket.

Jawad Williams was, well, Jawad. Never the fleetest of foot or mind, Williams seemed a bit confused during some of the plays. However! He has dropped the determination to shoot from the top of the key every 5 possessions. Roy Williams apparently wants to use Jawad as more of a George Lynch-type of player. You may recall that Lynch didn’t spend a lot of time on the perimeter. I don’t recall Williams dribbling much at all last night.

In the press conference Roy Williams sang the praises of Jackie Manuel. “I told him [in practice this week] if he were any better lookin’ I’d kiss him.” Williams explained that he went to Manuel and told him that he didn’t want him jump shooting a whole lot, and we saw that. Manuel is putting the ball on the floor more and not shooting the outside shot at all. He made some great defensive plays en route to a 12-point night in 21 minutes of play.

Well, that is the first 6. Finding two more able players to rotate into the mix will make the difference between being a Sweet 16 type of team vs. just an invitee come March. The man on the top of the list at this point is 6-7 Freshman Justin Bohlander. Bohlander looks like a beefed up and angrier Will Johnson, but that is a good thing. Bohlander’s interior defense was outstanding. In just 14 minutes of play he snared 4 rebounds. Bohlander has no confidence offensively, however he may have just been shell-shocked in his first college game.

Bohlander’s higher rated high school teammate Reyshawn Terry was just…OK. While he only spent 5 minutes out there, he seemed lost, but looks like a good athlete. Last year’s next man would have been Byron Sanders, but he looked even more lost. Sanders is simply afraid of the ball. On one possession he received the ball 18 feet from the basket with a wide-open lane and opted for a delayed jump shot. Why not charge the rim and eat it, while insulting the defense’s mother on the way down? What is Sanders so afraid of?

Clearly the injured David Noel will have to come in and be a reliable 7th man and a force inside.

While it is too early to make predictions, one can reasonably foresee a fun year for Tar Heel fans…barring any injuries. It would be nice for the players, should they hit the ground and know they aren’t hurt, to pop up and relieve all of our stopped hearts.