2009-10 ACC Previews: North Carolina

LCB believes that while teams have been playing games since the start of November the real college basketball season does not begin until conference play is in full gear. Over the next couple of weeks, we will preview each ACC team by remembering some of the conference's past players that may have gone forgotten in some circles.

Season Outlook: Strange how the fates of prodigies and workmen can become intertwined, or even reversed. Jeff McInnis came to Carolina with Jerry Stackhouse and Rasheed Wallace as a holy triumvirate. Pythagoras could only be so lucky to base theorems off these three prodigous talents; they were indeed marked as special. But time with Messiahs tends to be extraordinarily brief. McInnis, Stackhouse, and 'Sheed blasted in and out of Chapel Hill as if they were a Jimi Hendrix guitar solo, overwhelming, awe inspiring, and gone too quickly; however, the buzz from their amps resounded long enough to make impressions on a skinny, freshman role player: Shammond Williams.

In his freshman year, Dean Smith asked Shammond Williams to back up Jeff McInnis at point guard. At times, the idea worked, but the general impression left was akin to watching a chicken learn how to fly. Wings fluttered, but the end result was a ball dribbled off the knee and a flurry of feathers. Still, under the tutelage of McInnis and Donald Williams, Shammond would eventually peck and claw his way into a sharpshooting hawk. This clumsy barn yard bird, turned stealthy bird of prey, went from an afterthought to an ACC Tourney MVP his Junior year and wound up averaging 16.8 ppg as a Senior, and, at the time of his graduation, held all of the following records: Most Career Three Point Field Goals Made (233), Most Season Three Point Field Goals Made (95), Most Three Point Field Goals Made in a game (8), Highest Career Free Throw Percentage (.849), and Highest Season Free Throw Percentage (.911).

This year's UNC team promises to be a work in progress, collectively embodying the commitment and the innate ability it takes to go from a humble hen and a victim of foxes to being the actual predator. Feathers must be shed. Sinew and muscle fine-tuned. Teeth and talon hewn and sharpened. Evolutionary steps must be taken. And, of course, none of that promises eternity.

Raw talent can implode on itself and corrode in the veins like a heroine overdose. Remember McInnis left Chapel Hill under a cloud of suspicion, and even the hardest worker can fall victim to unfriendly confines, or a loss of habitat, and go 1 for 13 or 2 for 12, a la Shammond in the two biggest games of his Carolina career. Working for a destiny that does not exist can be a cruel fate indeed, which is what makes this year's Carolina team so difficult to read. The talent that can't help but mesmerize appears to ebb in the veins of an Ed Davis or a Tyler Zeller, maybe even a John Henson, and the nine to five guys are also present in Deon Thompson and Marcus Ginyard. The problem is that the young talent isn't quite a blinding blast of "Purple Haze," but more the steady steps of an indie band battling its way to superstardom--think Kings of Leon's "Knocked Up"--and Ginyard, the would be catalyst, seems to be falling apart physically under the duress of trying to force his own evolutionary steps; his Achilles heel an inability to take the steps from admirable to unforgettable, literally causing the deterioration of the foot needed to shove him and his team into flight.

Shammond Williams' are not forged overnight, and neither are championship teams. My advice for such a young team: "Keep On Rockin' in the Free World."

Key Players: F Deon Thompson (Sr.), F Ed Davis (So.), G Marcus Ginyard (Sr.),

F Tyler Zeller (So.), PG Larry Drew II (So.)

Top Newcomers: G Dexter Strickland (Fr.)

Record at Time of Posting: 11-4

Teach's Prediction: 2nd in the regular season

Langston's Prediction: 1st in the regular season

Iceman AD's Prediction: 2nd in the regular season

Key Games:

W Ohio St. 77-73

L Syracuse 87-71

W Michigan St. 89-82

L Kentucky 68-66

L Texas 103-90

L College of Charleston 82-79 (OT)

VA Tech 1/10

@ Clemson 1/13

Wake 1/20

@ NC State 1/26

@ VA Tech 2/04

@ Maryland 2/07

Duke 2/10

NC State 2/13

@ GA Tech 2/16

@ Boston College 2/20

@ Wake 2/27

Miami 3/02

@ Duke 3/06