After 6 days of some mucho needed O&M R&R, our Hokies retake the court @ #5 ranked UNC.

By: bourbonstreet |

If there actually is a good time to catch the soon to possibly be defending 2008 NC2A tourney champs, that would be right about now. As UNC is so injury plagued at point-guard that the Center of Disease control is thinking of asking fabled tobacco road to say “Ahhhhh”. But still, we are the underdogs, and with good reason, as Roy Williams has a #1 Tourney seed on his hands these days down at Chapel Hill. But can we win, is there any hope b’street?
The bottom layer to a certain ancient world mythical box was made up of hope, below that there were just splinters. We are realistically closer to the splinters than we are to having some real live hoops hope here folks. But let’s take a closer looks and some UNC birdies and boggys to see what I mean……

  • UNC scores, early, often, and a lot, as the Tar-Heels have been 1st or 2nd in scoring all year, and not only that, they are beating the dickens outta people. The T.Heels are checking in at 4th best in Scoring Margin per game with a nifty 18 point edge per contest.
  • If that were not enough, UNC is 4th in Offensive Rebounding, 4th again in Defensive boards, which pretty well explains their #1 ranking in raw Rebounding Margin.
  • To make matters even worse, UNC shoots lights out most nites, as the T.Heels are 32nd from the Floor and an even better 9th from the Charity Stripe in all of D-1 hoops.
  • UNC home vs. VT away: Scoring Margin favors the Heels by a whopping +23 points, Shooting favors UNC by 7%, 3 point shooting favors UNC by 11%, FT shooting by 12%, and the Rebounding edge goes to UNC by 8 boards.

But the fact that Ty Lawson is dinged up does help, as Ty is ranked in the top-100 in an incredible four national categories (FT%, Assists, Steals and Assist/Turnover ratio). That’s a potential superstar departure for any team to have to withstand; though Ty is currently listed as Day-to-Day. The fact that his two primary point-guard back-ups are lame does not make that any better. So you might could say we are catching the Heels at a good time. But UNC still has the soon to be Top-5 NBA Draft pick otherwise knows as Tyler Hansbrough “toys”. He is only ranked in the top-53 in three different individual national categories (Points, FG%, and Rebounds). So it’s not like this McDonald’s all-American riddled dream team is suddenly hurting for Talent.

I looked as hard as I could; I simply could not even find anything the T.Heels do worse than say at a legit B- level. The only categories in which they are even remotely close are Scoring Defense, and Defensive FG% allowed, but those are much more a function of the NASCAR tempo that UNC plays at, as opposed to a legitimate team-wide liability, much less a legit Hokie point of attack.

So, this one is just not looking good. At least not on the road, as I’m just hoping to see some fresh Hokie legs, and some improved Windex work that might keep things within 15 points. As I’m now seeing this UNC team as a Final-4 invitee, in fact, they have a pretty good chance to pull a James Worthy and win it all. Virginia Tech 73 UNC 91.