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Tar Heels reclaim spot among elite

Posted on March 10, 2011March 24, 2011 by Staff

By Eddy Landreth
Staff Writer

The Tar Heels probably shocked some people with how easily they disposed of Duke in Chapel Hill to finish first in the final ACC regular-season standings.

The victory vaulted Carolina to sixth in the Associated Press poll and seventh in the coaches’ poll, up from 13th in both before the game.

Now the challenge is to stay focused on improving each day and repeating the positive traits they’ve developed.

“I think we’ve come a long way since Puerto Rico [last November], and I still think we have a long way we can go,” said freshman Kendall Marshall, who with his performance against Duke provided the nation with a glimpse of just how good the Tar Heels’ newest point guard is.

He went 5-of-8 from the field, scored 15 points, handed out 11 assists and made just two turnovers.

UNC finished the regular season 24-6, 14-2 in the league, while Duke went 27-4, 13-3.

The Tar Heels start fresh on Friday at noon at the Greensboro Coliseum in the ACC Tournament, playing the winner of Thursday’s game between Virginia and Miami.

The keys for this team to keep winning are to stay healthy and fight off satisfaction. Satisfaction is one of the biggest hurdles to achieving greatness.

“You want to peak at a time when it really matters, and that is what we’re doing,” sophomore John Henson said. “You know we can’t get satisfied. We’ve got to keep it up.”

For a team that lost 17 games last season, failed to make the NCAA Tournament and began this year 4-3, winning the ACC regular season and the ACC Tournament would be a magnificent accomplish.

What this team has already done is a testament to coach Roy Williams, his staff and his ability to judge talent and recruit it, and a credit to the players’ willingness to be coached, stick together and develop a toughness that has enabled Carolina to find a way to win no matter what the circumstances.

“I had a theory that if we just kept working, everything would fall into place, and it happened [on Saturday against Duke],” freshman forward Harrison Barnes said. “We won the ACC.”

But as any Carolina or Duke fan knows, the most important time of the year is the final weeks of the season. Ultimately, the measure of which team, Carolina or Duke, had the best year will be which team went further in the NCAA Tournament.

Given that each has won two national titles just since 2001, there is always a shot that one of the two could turn out to have a better year than any team in the nation.

The beauty of this team is that while it has struggled to score at times, its defense became the foundation on which it built the rest of its game.

Night in and night out, the Tar Heels’ defense pushes opponents’ offenses away from the basket and forces them to rely heavily on jump shots. Henson and Tyler Zeller are the main reason for this.

Henson has also become one of the two best rebounders in the league, along with Maryland’s Jordan Williams. Defensively, Henson has no equal in the ACC, and maybe in the country.

“They are so big inside,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. “Those two kids are the best tandem of big guys in the country. It’s very difficult to score against them inside, and they can score inside.

“As a result of that, it loosens things up for other people. They are very balanced. They’re talented and good.”

The question UNC will answer in the coming weeks is whether this team can become great, not just good.

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