North Carolina ACC basketball preview:

#16 R.P.I. North Carolina @ #82 R.P.I. Virginia Tech:

TV coverage: ESPN2, 9pm
Vegas line: VT+7
o/u=141
$-line: TBA

“The only place improving comes before owning is the dictionary.”
-bourbonstreet-

Such is a play on words; or words to live by, from Coach Greenberg and yours truly respectively.

Accordingly, TSL had to improve.

So TSL had to make some changes to MB’s, presentations, the website in general and publishing alike.

VT hoops needs to improve and it needs to improve in a hurry when facing what is quite possibly the best frontline in all of Division-One hoops from down on tobacco road in the UNC ‘heels. Only U.C.L.A., “the” Ohio State have any say here, with maybe a word or two low-post wise from Kentucky and or Duke.

According to Lindy’s pre-season magazine, UNC only courts the #1 small-forwards (Barnes) in all the land. The #2 power-forward (Henson), to go with the #2 center in D-1 hoops (Zellar), and then only the fifth best point-guard in men’s hoops (Marshall). Poor UNC, they are only one of the few bona-fide National Champion contenders in all the land and it is gonna take a helluva a Hokie effort to pull this upset off.

UNC at a glance: (out of 338 D-1 hoops teams)

• 1^st best in scoring offense for all of D-1 (85.2 ppg)
• 1^st best in offensive rebounding for all of D-1
• 3^rd best in rebounding margin (+10.8)
• 4^th best in assists (18.7)
• 6^th fewest personal fouls (14.4)
• 16^th best in blocks (5.8)
• 291_st in FT% percentage (63.7%)

UNC Frontcourt:

• Association talent count=4 to 5 pro ballers
• Injuries: 6`10“ 210 lb. reserve freshman forward Desmond Hubert has an ankle injury and is listed as “questionable” for Thursday

Up front the ‘Heels have talent, size, athleticism, skillz, offense and defense. In 6`11“ 220 lb. power-forward and junior year returnee on #31 John Henson they basically have all of that rolled into one. John leads UNC in blocks (3.0), rebounds (9.7), and defensive rebounds with a stunning 128 defended boards and he is only second in scoring at 14.4 ppg (points per game). Yup, Mr. Henson is a pro and he has filled out just a little bit this campaign both in physical terms and in offensive production alike. Manning the small-forward spot is the teams leading scorer, the 6`8“ 210 lb. sophomore Harrison Barnes with 16.8 ppg. #40 Barnes is more of a purified wing scorer, though he also gets you 4.8 boards and he does lead the UNC playing rotation at a near 10% improvement from beyond the arc with a very smart looking 44.2 from 3-point land this season. Barnes is one other thing, he is a fairly clutch player as he has already nailed 2 A.c.c. game winning shots out on the road thus far in his sky-blue career. #44 Ty Zeller is the 7` 250 lb. senior year big who is prolly more parts forward and less parts center, despite his third most 14.2 ppg and his second best 9.2 rebounds per contest. Ty is also part worm on the offensive-glass where he simply has a nose for the ball with 71 offensive rebounds already this season. Ty will block a shot for you and he always shoots right at 55% from the floor.

All three of the UNC frontline are Pros, and wait, there’s more. In fact there is now a legacy McAdoo down at UNC. Yes sports-fans, they are related as the high scoring Buffalo Braves A.B.A.’er and 1980’s former Lakers super-sub’ one Bob McAdoo is James Michael Ray McAdoo’s second-cousin. James wears #43 and he is yet another McDonald’s all-American baller to sign with mighty UNC outta Norfolk Virginia. James is a 6`9“ 220 lb. freshman smooth-scoring big who could actually enjoy a perimeter oriented skill-set that best fits playing outside. The latest McAdoo nets you 5 points and scrapes up 4 boards in frontcourt relief off the Heel bench. Right now Coach Williams is mostly going with only a 4-man rotation upfront in A.c.c. play; although some might call that just a tad thin on low-post depth, much does that really matter at the end of the day when all 4 will sign Association contracts and get paid?

UNC Backcourt:

• N.B.A. talent count=1, maybe even 1.5 players
• Injuries: UNC’s top outside shooter 6`5“ 210 lb. junior year shooting-guard Leslie McDonald is out for the year with a blown A.C.L. and M.C.L. alike –God bless

The Heel backcourt may not have as many professional caliber players from stem to stern as the Carolina frontcourt enjoys. However, it could very well possess the best pure point-guard when it comes to distributing the rock in all of D-1, it has some size, and it has a little experience as well.

#5, 6`3“ 188 lb. super-soph’ Kendall Marshall is a Dumfries Virginia Commonwealth escapee. Marshall is the latest in a long linage of home cooked stud D.N.A. VA.H.S. snubs who would not give Seth Greenberg and Virginia Tech the time of day, not even if they were wearing more than one watch. That said, Kendall can dish the rock and he does drop dimes (assists) all over the place as Kendall is #1 in the A.c.c. in assists and #2 in the NC2A on the whole at 9.6 assists per game. Now mix in 6 points, a couple of boards, a team leading 1.4 steals and you have a pretty heady floor-general indeed. Only thing I see here is that Marshall does need to work on his range on his J (jumper) if he wants to take his pass-first game to the next level. That said the N.B.A. is rapidly becoming a point-guard’s league with all of the new rule changes and this Marshall kid never met an offense that he could not run.

Dexter Strickland (no relation –to Rod thereof) is a backcourt vagabond guard for Coach Roy who checks in at 6`3“ 180 lbs. of third year combo guard that is neither a pure point-guard nor pure shooter. If truth be told I’m not even sure if Dexter is a true lead-guard? Though I am sure he gives you 8 points, a couple of boards and a couple of assists despite shooting 0% from 3-point land as a guard this season. Dexter is a pretty good on the ball defender, so look for him to check Erick Green and his gimpy M.C.L. in this one.

Helping out off the Heel backcourt bench are Reggie Bullock and P.J. Harriston. Both guys are tallish rangy guards who can do some damage from long-range. Reggie is a 6`7“ 205 lb. sophomore sharpshooter who nets you 8.5 points and runs down 4.5 boards along with 39% from beyond the arc off the Heels pine (or bench). Standing nearly as tall (6`6“) and shooting fairly well in his own right from range (33%) is P.J. Harrison. P.J. is a 220 lb. chiseled freshman Wing whose soft touch belies his “carved outta wood” statuesque frame that loves to finish strong and elevate well above the rim. P.J. also leads the Heels at 84% from the FT-stripe; in fact, he is the only Heel in Coach Roy’s 9 man playing rotation who hits for better than 3 outta 4 as FTA’s go. Unpredictably chipping in and having played in all 18 Heel games thus far is practice utility player Justin Watts. Justin is the industrious senior year gym-rat that lives for hoops that dots most D-1 mens hoops rosters who is the ringer that you will want on your Y.M.C.A. or corporate league team for years to come. Justin gives you 1.4 points and rebounds alike in his routine spot-minutes and is more of a steadying lockeroom version of applied sports psych ballast than anything else.

Keys to the game:

1. Beat the UNC bigs down the floor for easy baskets before Coach Williams can set his halfcourt S.W.A.T. team defense up
2. Play tougher: VT is beginning to get the reputation of s finesse oriented squad
3. O&M Frontcourt minutes: Davila, Raines and even Barksdale must stay outta foul-trouble so that they may stay on the court and match-up with the awesome UNC frontline in both Zone and Man-to-Man

Conclusion(s), illation, OPT digits:
Let’s not mince words or quibble here folks, North Carolina is the rightful favorite in this one, and with good reasons plural. However, stranger things have happened along the way to the candy-shop before and you never know what will happen in a given sporting contest. Don’t believe me? Just ask the Sugar Bowl itself to continue my allegory or for that matter just ask any bitter-sweet road team in any given Atlantic Coast basketball game. Likewise, you could go ahead and ask UNC who just got pumped good and hard by 33 down in Tallahassee last Saturday night how that tastes.

Such is the nature of the beast when you are the visiting team in A.c.c. mens basketball play where anything can and sometimes does happen. Will that happen Thursday night inside of our very own Cassell Coliseum?

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326 combined front-line FTA’s for Coach Roy’s four-man low-post rotation is a real live problem folks. That’s a whole lotta O&M personal fouls against just begging to be whistled, home court advantage be damned, legitimacy or not.

So is the fact that Virginia Tech is catching UNC right after F.S.U. did a whole lotta pitching vs. UNC last Saturday night that had Head Coach Roy Williams pitching a (poison) Ivy League fit last time out. Don’t believe me? Check it out..

“Princeton’s defense must be a hell of a lot better than ours, they can hold them to 10 points in a half and we give up 8,000.” -UNC coach Roy Williams-

Yah, that’s not good folks, as these Heels have to be pretty prickly after absorbing a nasty junk-kick of a tomahawk-chop from the Florida State Seminoles last weekend down in Tallahassee. Accordingly, it sure looks to me like VT is catching UNC at just the ‘rong time.

I’ll be back with a closer and my OPT digits on Thursday men, though I can tell you right now that I am still questing for a R.A.T.T. reason to pick Virginia Tech to somehow win.

Here’s the long and the short of it … inside the A.c.c. –unlike our recent pretty successful out-of-conference (OOC) run; scouting is maxed out, every tendency is well known. Notice that VT has not scored more than 59 points since last year. That’s not good sports fans. Some of that is O&M offensive tendencies being figured out, and some of that is our rooks (rookies) hitting the wall a little earlier than expected. UNC on the other hand has only allowed more than 65 points on one occasion since December seventeenth. In our last 5 games, the VT offense is off by 5% from the floor, and by 9% from downtown.

That’s not good, and neither are the looming frontcourt match-ups which favor UNC in no small way; pun intended. VT may indeed be straight butter, though UNC rolls in this one.

Virginia Tech=63, North Carolina=79

“LETS GO!”

“HOKIES!”

bourbonstreet**