Number One North Carolina Takes Off Tonight

Lanes like runways and the sky is blue:

It's been said that John Henson's bones are hollow as crack pipes

                               and fallopian tubes,

UNC Routs NC State: Mr. Barnes, Your Arrival Time Is Approaching

How does one judge the moment of an individual's arrival? The term arrival is thrown around like it is some cumulative moment, that everything in life has added up to. We say a player has arrived as if that settles all debate on an athlete's legacy and there is nothing else to add, but rarely, are moments in sports so final, or even satisfying, or distressful, as we would like to make them. Brett Favre is less than his touchdowns, but more than his interceptions. Michael Jordan is less cool than his highlight reel, and LeBron James is more sinister than a triple double, but better than The Decision. These people we call athletes are more of a twisted, mutated bird species than they are pure hawks and doves. Take Jay Cutler, for example, and it is impossible to paint him as a total quitter and wimp because he went out of a championship game with a knee sprain, when one considers that the man gets pummeled weekly and has battled diabetes for most of his life. These moments of definition are never the entire story. They are never all-encompassing. Humanity is too complicated for that.

North Carolina freshman Harrison Barnes, the preseason All-American and one-time projected overall pick in this year's NBA draft, waited eighteen games this college basketball season before crossing into the stratosphere of twenty points. He dropped twenty-five on NC State yesterday, and it would be easy to say that he has now arrived on the college stage as a force to be reckoned with, especially since he also scored a last second, game-winning shot on Miami earlier in the week, but it's not that simple. Harrison Barnes was a legit college player prior to this week, already a vital cog in turning around Carolina's pedestrian 4-3 start to the season to a surging 14-5 record that features a 5-1 start in the ACC, giving a strong defensive effort every night and demonstrating an ability to hit clutch threes on the road or at home. Harrison Barnes may have smiled wide enough to say finally yesterday and let out a sigh of relief at how easily and often the ball went in the basket for him, against the Wolfpack, but that twenty-five points was not his biggest contribution to Carolina basketball in these early stages of his career.

The goodwill was there for all to see. John Henson was cracking jokes, dunking like Walt Disney's Goofy used to ski off cliffs. Tyler Zeller was grinning like some old church Deacon remembering the first time he got drunk at a barn dance, and even Old Roy couldn't help but be happy for a moment. The focus seemed to orbit around Harrison Barnes' stat line, but the thing was, that wasn't it at all. This team was happy because the real gravity of the moment was that this young team is finally starting to realize its identiy, something that didn't seem possible when it got blown out three games ago by Georgia Tech. At that moment, this team seemed as lost as it had last year when it was depending on Deon Thompson, Ed Davis, and Will Graves for leadership, which was like relying on cannibals to perform CPR. 

The negative vibes from last year's teams had infiltrated the Tar Heel fanbase to such an extent that Roy Williams, winner of two national championships in the last six years and coach of five Final Four teams in the last nine years, was no longer seen as a viable source of leadership by his own basketball family. People were not only questioning his coaching abilities, but his recruiting strategies as well, and the blood in the water was blinding them to the fact that this team was not last year's team, that this year's team fights back from double digit margins on the road and bounces back from twenty-point blowouts with three consecutive conference wins, that the much maligned Larry Drew II is embracing a role off the bench, that slow-footed Kendall Marshall can run Roy's roadrunner offense, that Reggie Bullock can carry a team offensively in spurts, that Leslie McDonald is for real, that John Henson may actually be a basketball player, that Tyler Zeller is a serviceable big man, and that, yes, Harrison Barnes can score over twenty points in a game. This team will not win a conference championship or a national title this year, and it may even get swept by Duke, but after two consecutive years of losing at least its top three scorers and having to rebuild its rotations and talent base, this team is displaying signs not only that it will get what Roy is preaching but that it wants to hear the sermon. This team is hungry for success, not draft status or personal stats, and that in and of itself is the most telling sign of how Roy Williams is shaping this team.

Harrison Barnes' twenty-five points is something to smile at, but only in the way that a kid smiles at a passing plane, unsure of where it's going to land. Enjoy the flight; hopefully, it's just beginning.

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

LCB Live Blog: Duke - UNC

You're invited to stop by and enjoy some nice conversation between friends and acquaintances for tonight's Duke-UNC game at Cameron. It starts around nine and its BYOB. So tell all of your friends, except for Steve.