UNC finished off BYU, TN, and Iowa to win the Maui Classic Wednesday by a long shot. No opponent came close to making the games interesting. Even the trio of ESPN commentators was blownaway by the Heels stating they couldn’t think of a way to improve this team.

Well, well!! That sure is flattering but let’s look at a couple of stats that ought to bring everyone down to earth. TN and IA scored 0.88 and 1.06 points per possession (respectively). They turned the ball over on 23% and 25% of their possessions. Therefore, the Heels are forcing turnovers quite well, but they are not defending shots well enough. This is partially explained by the complete commitment to man-to-man defense. A passive 2-3 zone would force few turnovers and worse shots.

Clearly UNC’s weakness is interior defense. Of course UNC will have trouble with hot-3pt-shooting teams, but the way to beat UNC is to get the ball inside and draw fouls on the Williams and May.

Jay Bilas and Bill Raftery both commented several times about the blistering pace at which UNC was playing. This is true. There were more than 180 possessions in each of the Hawaii games. Typical conference games hover in the 150’s. However, UNC always starts the season at break-neck speed. Once opponents practice and improve conditioning, they will get back on defense better to force UNC into more half-court situations.

Carolina’s second problem that shows is the trailing defensive intensity in the second half. I won’t worry about this until Carolina is going into the locker room at the half up by a handful of points.

Next up is a #54 USC team that has only played one game. (Iowa is #53). Their website refers to us as “Tobacco Road”. Therefore I want to destroy them by 90 points.

http://tinyurl.com/6vya6

http://tinyurl.com/43j2q

This one got ugly nice and fast. The Heels came out playing phenominal defense and pushing tempo and it made all the difference in the world tonight. UNC used much midcourt trapping to create opportunites. However there was a major letdown in defensive intensity throughout the second half. Williams needs to pare the meat of his roster down to 8 players to build chemistry. Here are my 8: Felton, McCants, J. Williams, May, M. Williams. Rotate in David Noel, Manuel, Thomas. Leave the rest on the bus.

I was most impressed with Marvin Williams and David Noel tonight. Noel reacts on defense well, but needs to learn when to jump and how to jump straight up in order to stop fouling so much. Williams is just hungry. He has that fire that Jawad Williams so sorely lacks.

Felton was fantastic. May played well, but his limited leaping ability will really hinder him down the road. Jackie Manuel is just terrible on offense.

Tomorrow’s opponent will be better. I am disappointed that Louisville lost today because it would have been good to play them.

While I didn’t get to see last night’s game, I listened to the radio broadcast and have combed the stats for reasons why UNC lost to a mediocre Santa Clara.

The most obvious problem was the lack of Raymond Felton who was suspended by the NCAA for playing a summer league game in Raleigh. Without Felton the Heels didn’t push the ball upcourt to get easy fast break points and did not run the offense fluently.

A second problem was to Santa Clara’s credit: they shot well. Not only did they hit open shots, the hit guarded ones, too. Santa Clara attempted 34% of their shots from 3-point land and hit 35% of those.

UNC scored only 0.77 points per possession which leads me to the main, controllable problem; the Heels didn’t move well on offense without the ball. UNC had 4 more possessions than Santa Clara, so the rebounding was good. The Heels turned the ball over on 18% of their possessions, which is only a bit higher than normal. Carolina shot 37% from the field without an extraordinary number of 3-point attempts. So, the Heels did not work the ball around well enough and earn easy shots.

I surley hope that Jerad Haase isn’t the radio replacement for Phil Ford. Ford as the third wheel was able to offer some great insight as to what the coaches are probably saying and keyed well on the Heels’ main weakness’. Haase, on the other hand, sounded like someone who’se never played. He repeatedly stated that point guard play wasn’t the Heels’ weakness last night. Yet, when Roy Williams came on the press conference one of his first complaints was the inability to get fast break points. My big criticism, lack of off-ball movement, comes directly from the floor leader, the point guard. Let’s hope Haase had a bad night. Otherwise it will be painful to listen to him this year.

Let’s also get the big picture in perspective. This team is good, but not great. Greatness comes from experience, talent, coaching, and chemistry. This team has moderate experience, and very good coaching. Talentwise, it is one of the most overrated teams in Carolina history. Rashad McCants is the only returning Heel that will play in the NBA. Beyond that, there are just some good, inconsistent players. This team has major chemistry problems. When the most talented player is whining about being being in prison, it is hard to believe he isn’t alienating the team daily with other wierd fallacies.

I stated that Felton is hugely important. Without him the Heels could play poorly. However without consistent contributions from Jawad Williams, this team will not be better than they were last year. Felton is the key to surviving, Williams is the key to greatness.

A game like this can be great for a team. We’ll know on Monday when BYU gives a Heels a quick recovery test. Look for UNC to push the fast break more, but be more patient on offense. It should be a fun week!

There has been some concern about where Friday night’s game can be seen. There are two networks carrying the game:

• CSTV http://www.collegesports.com/
• INHD (hi-def) http://tinyurl.com/4pala

CSTV is a new network and is not carried on Raleigh’s Time Warner cable. INHD is carried by Raleigh’s TWC, but only in the high-definition tier on channel 291. Game time is 9:00pm EST.

Here is a link to the TWC channel lineups in NC:

http://tinyurl.com/4ka4w

I got some very good quesions about integrating the Outlook schedule. One problem is that the schedule is importing as its own sub-calendar; which defeats the purpose. There is a great article on this at:

tinyurl.com/6jt4g

in other words…:

(I can only speak for Outlook 97, but…) You want to file| import the personal folder file (pst). In the dialogue boxes that follow, select the Calendar | Heels folder to “import from”. Import it into the CURRENT folder.

If the schedule goes to its own folder it really won’t be effective since the games will not show up in your top-level calendar view with all of your other appointments. While in the Calendar\Heels calendar, go to the Current View pull down window from the menu bar and select the Active Appointments view. This will show all the games in a list format.

Open the first item and select Categories at the bottom of the appointment card. Add UNC Hoops as a new category. Now just paste the phrase UNC Hoops into every blank in the “categories” column in the Active Appointments window.

Turn on the view of the Folder List (View | Folder List). click the Recurrence: none item at the top of the list once. Select all appointments with Ctrl-A. Then, while holding down Ctrl, drag the appointments to the “Calendar” folder.

The Ctrl drag copies the appointments to the Calendar folder and leaves the Heels folder intact. You could just drag those appointments and delete the Heels folder if you’d like. If you ever just want to view the Carolina schedule with nothing else, you can change the Filter to include only UNC Hoops categories (View | Filters…)

I hope this helps. Now as far as getting it into your PDA…can’t help you there!