
{"id":1656,"date":"2008-01-16T13:35:27","date_gmt":"2008-01-16T21:35:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/2008\/01\/16\/i-had-a-dream-last-night-that-north-carolina-was-playing-in-the-national-championship-game-and%e2%80%a6\/"},"modified":"2008-01-16T13:35:27","modified_gmt":"2008-01-16T21:35:27","slug":"i-had-a-dream-last-night-that-north-carolina-was-playing-in-the-national-championship-game-and%e2%80%a6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2008\/01\/16\/i-had-a-dream-last-night-that-north-carolina-was-playing-in-the-national-championship-game-and%e2%80%a6\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;I had a dream last night that North Carolina was playing in the national championship game, and\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>By Frank Heath<br \/>\n<\/em><\/strong><em>Sports Columnist<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Will this UNC basketball team go down in history as one of the Tar Heels\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 best-ever?<br \/>\nThe Tar Heels, whose 93-62 skunking of ACC rival NC State on Saturday was their seventeenth win without a defeat, are certainly positioning themselves to be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153in the conversation.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The last Carolina team to reach 17-0 was the 1997-98 team that included Antawn Jamison, Shammond Williams, Vince Carter, Ed Cota, Ademola Okulaja, Brendan Haywood \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 and was pretty darned good itself. But the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc98 Tar Heels will not be remembered among the very top echelon by most because they did not reach the national championship game.<\/p>\n<p>The judging criteria in such an argument are pretty stringent, and the current UNC team, while on a roll, is not even halfway to its destination. Certainly by going undefeated this year (which in this day of expanded schedules would extrapolate to 40-0!), Carolina could join the hallowed company of the 1956-57 team, a 32-0 national champion. The odds of UNC doing that, though, remain quite low, as no Division I team has survived unbeaten since the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers.<\/p>\n<p>These Tar Heels will lose at some point, and chances are they may look bad in doing it.<\/p>\n<p>UNC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s national championship teams in 1982, \u00e2\u20ac\u212293 and 2005 all suffered losses against the Wake Forest Deacons, and all three of them looked, on those days, like pretty ordinary basketball squads. The \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc77 Tar Heels, who reached the title game before losing against Marquette, suffered an awful 20-point defeat at Clemson that season before reeling off 17 straight wins.<\/p>\n<p>It was how these earlier champions responded to their losses, more than the losses themselves, that determined their destinies.<\/p>\n<p>Now it appears as though this year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s UNC team will decide its destiny by the way they play defense.<\/p>\n<p>With Ty Lawson running the break at warp speed, Wayne Ellington becoming a more calculating assassin from the wing with each week and the great All-American Tyler Hansbrough showing no signs of slowing down or tiring, the Tar Heels have all the pieces in place on offense to compete with the best the rest of the country has to offer. They are pretty good at rebounding, as well. But Coach Roy Williams has reminded anyone who will listen this year that his guys need to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153guard the ball\u00e2\u20ac\u009d better.<\/p>\n<p>In the runaway win over State, Carolina saw firsthand the sort of results that it can get by playing defense well. The effort started \u00e2\u20ac\u201c as it must \u00e2\u20ac\u201c out front, with Lawson and Ellington pushing State\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s perimeter ballhandlers 30 feet out from the basket, sometimes even pinning the Pack\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s guards at half-court.<\/p>\n<p>But Carolina\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s defensive assault did not end or even slow down there, as everyone on the team was active on \u00e2\u20ac\u0153d.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Once State did maneuver the ball into the post, UNC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s double teams came quick, passing lanes were impeded and shot blockers were on alert. Carolina batted away eight shots in the first half alone, and Danny Green and Deon Thompson altered as many shots as they blocked. State missed 18 consecutive field-goal attempts, and, as Carolina\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s offense fed off of the team\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s defensive intensity, the Pack could only watch as the Tar Heels ran off 25 unanswered points. The domination was so complete that the game\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s eventual outcome was obvious several minutes before halftime.<\/p>\n<p>If these Tar Heels will consistently give that sort of effort on defense, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll make themselves a difficult team to beat. What it will require is a considerable number of those elements that do not necessarily register on the stat sheet, but that coaches can identify in a split second: things like hustle, effort, focus, determination and execution.<\/p>\n<p>Those same coaches will remind everyone that offense is more like fun, while defense is more like hard work; but when defense is done right, the resulting consequence can be just as fun.<\/p>\n<p>The 1993 national championship team took to defense naturally, while the talented UNC team that won the national championship in 2005 was able to recognize the challenge it faced and elevate its defense to match the way it already could play on offense. If the 2007-08 Tar Heels do the same, there is no reason why they can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t end up \u00e2\u20ac\u0153in the conversation\u00e2\u20ac\u009d when people 10, 20 and 30 years down the road talk about the greatest North Carolina teams ever. But for this team, defense remains an if, not a given, as one game a season does not make.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Frank Heath Sports Columnist Will this UNC basketball team go down in history as one of the Tar Heels\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 best-ever? The Tar Heels, whose 93-62 skunking of ACC rival NC State on Saturday was their seventeenth win without a defeat, are certainly positioning themselves to be \u00e2\u20ac\u0153in the conversation.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[68],"class_list":["post-1656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-unc-basketball"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1656\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}