Another tough break for UNC in a tough season - Jason
Capel is out for the UConn game, after also missing Florida State. He has a
concussion.
Incidentally, Andy Britt has a column up on GoHeels.com suggesting that
this year is evolving into the payback tour, which is smart in many
respects, not least of all in pointing out that UNC has the infrastructure for a
quick turnaround. But we're not sure about the rest of his conclusions,
specifically about Matt Doherty.
The question here is twofold - will he be successful, and how is post-Dean
Smith success defined? As Britt points out, he was successful last year,
to a point, and was named national coach of the year. However, he inherited a
team off of a Final Four appearance, minus a point guard who was allergic to
defense, and had a solid frontcourt and backcourt and bench. The reverse
question is equally interesting - how could they go from beating Duke at Cameron
to stumbling through to the end of the season? How could they beat Duke with
Boozer and lose twice to Duke - in less than 10 days - without him?
Moreover, Joseph Forte, Ron Curry, and Julius Peppers were all reportedly not
happy.
Now in fairness, a transition will almost always leave someone unhappy.
But there are two ways to look at this: 1) he did a great job with a group of
limited athletes, or 2) he inherited a solid team and didn't do a great job at
the end.
And the current question isn't recruiting - he's done a great job of that -
the current question is about how he is dealing with this group. Is he building
for the future, as Britt suggests? Or has he not taught them what they need to
know?
It's a fair question. We can say with some degree of certainty that had Smith
or Krzyzewski (or Pitino for that matter) coached them, they would have improved
over the course of the season. In UNC's case, that doesn't seem to be
happening.