In Monday night ACC action, Georgia Tech beat Appalachian State, 70-57.
Tuesday's ACC Action | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Teams | Times | TV | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
UNC @ UNCG | 7:00 | ESPN2 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Monday's Results | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Georgia Tech 70 Appalachian State 57 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Charles Mitchell continues his Maryland tradition of wildly erratic swings in production. This time out: 15 minutes, 1-7 from the floor and just three points and three boards.
Fellow transfer DeMarco Cox finished with 13 points and five boards.
Duke's early dominance of the Freshman of The Week Award has ended: State's Caleb Martin is the first non-Blue Devil (and only the second player other than Jahlil Okafor) to win it.
Louisville's Montrezl Harrell won Player Of The Week.
ESPN raises this question: is it time to start worrying about UNC?
Well, not if you're a Duke fan, but you get the idea: things aren't going well for the Heels lately.
The problem Ol' Roy's teams have had for a couple of years now continues - it's the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, and when Marcus Paige struggles, it's even worse because he's the only consistent three point threat UNC has (to be fair, JP Tokoto has made strides, but he's not there yet).
It's more than that, though. His team has played erratically, been soft at times, and several players haven't really improved or lived up to expectations.
Nate Britt, Desmond Hubert, Isaiah Hicks, Joel James - none of them have lived up to advance billing.
Paige has greatly exceeded them and Tokoto is steadily improving. Kennedy Meeks is a different player with the weight loss. Brice Johnson has turned it up lately but that's just a recent development and who knows if it continues? We expect that Theo Pinson and Justin Jackson will be fine as they mature, as Joel Berry likely will be as well.
Still, when you look down the bench and you need a reliable player, in the Dean Smith sense and tradition, you see Jackson Simmons, Stilman White and Luke Davis.
They're all admirable players but spot players really (White did do a tremendous job when he was needed as a freshman before he left on his Mormon mission).
Ol' Roy's long been celebrated as a recruiter and a judge of talent. So how did he end up here with so many players who are flawed, limited or not emotionally equipped for this level of play?
It occurs to us that there's another question here though, and that's pretty interesting too. Why did Williams seem so much better at Kansas than he's been at UNC? Or perhaps why was he so consistently, relentlessly good there?
Yes he has two national titles with UNC, although he may not get to keep 2005 and we recall Tyler Hansbrough speaking of his Swahili class as well, so it's conceivable both could be casualties of UNC's academic fraud scandal.
Still, those teams played and won. Now?
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He's still winning, and like Coach K, his own successes define a higher level of failure.
Still, since Hansbrough departed, UNC has had one NIT year (20-17), two big years (29 and 32 wins) and then stepped down to 25 and 24 wins, third round NCAA exits, and of course 6-3 this year.
It's hardly disastrous, and at Clemson you'd get your own country club and probably a fake fraternity tossed in, a la Tates Locke.
But it's not the UNC people expect.
Part of it no doubt has to do with the scandal which has hung over UNC like a black cloud, but here's another possibility which may not be entirely public.
Remember recently when former FSU coach Pat Kennedy said that one year, the entire starting UNC lineup was made up of academic exceptions?
We can't prove this, and probably only a few people could, but it wouldn't surprise us at all if UNC admissions had quietly turned down some recruits over the past several years, not wishing to court bad publicity or, more recently, to annoy the accreditation folks, leave alone give the N&O's Dan Kane something else to dig into.
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That would explain UNC's dip, relative though it is, and Williams' sudden difficulty attracting high-level talent.
Don't get us wrong, he has brought in some talented players. But consider who hasn't chosen Chapel Hill:
Duke's three starting freshmen, Myles Turner, Karl-Anthony Towns, Cliff Alexander, Aaron Gordon, Julius Randle, Cody Zeller, Dakari Johnson, Noah Vonleh, Andrew Wiggins, Jabari Parker, Marcus Smart, Rasheed Sulaimon and Anthony Davis.
Among others.
There was a time when UNC was just automatically in the Top Five for most phenoms and would've signed some of the guys above.
Since 2011, Williams has signed Desmond Hubert, James Michael McAdoo, Jackson Simmons, Stilman White, PJ Hairston, Joel James, Brice Johnson, Marcus Paige, JP Tokoto, Kennedy Meeks, Isaiah Hicks, Nate Britt, and this year's promising class of Joel Berry, Justin Jackson and Theo Pinson.
So far for next year, UNC has signed Luke Maye, who may turn out but who does not have the reputation of, say, Alexander or Gordon.
So is it bad judgment or fallout from the scandal, whether that means players shying away or the school declining excellent players with perhaps less than ideal academics?
Either way, look at that list above and realize that since the class of 2011, Williams has put just one player in the NBA, and no one at UNC is really much interested in bragging about Hairston.
Quite simply, there's no John Henson, no Tyler Zeller, much less Tyler Hansbrough, no Ed Davis, no Marvin Williams, no Kendall Marshall, no Danny Green, no Harrison Barnes, no Brandan Wright, no Reggie Bullock, no Ty Lawson, no, God help them, PJ Hairston.
Perhaps ESPN's argument should be this: Williams is doing a tremendous job to keep UNC at a reasonably high level despite a steep dropoff in talent. The why is debatable. That it's happened is beyond question.