UNC Hoops: The Tar Heel Lesson Plan Part II
By Matt Hamm
Well by now even if you were lucky enough to miss the game, you know that the Heels were absolutely embarrassed in Tallahassee by the Seminoles Saturday. You can’t put a skirt on this one and call it pretty, the game was flat out ugly, the Heels were bad, really bad. They were outplayed, out-hustled, and out coached. But as we learned in Part I of our Tar Heel Lesson Plan, there’s nothing to do now but learn from the hard lesson FSU taught us all. It’s time to stop all the sulking, learn our lesson and move on. It’s time for Part II of our first Tar Heel lesson plan of the season!
The final lesson is the most important lesson of all, for Tar Heel players, coaches and even fans.
Lesson 5: We’ve all been here before, let’s act like it! Look anyone that follows me on Twitter, or anyone that read my Rapid Reactions column knows, I wasn’t so even keeled on Saturday. But let’s all take our collective breaths here Tar Heel nation! We got our you know what’s handed to us,we got crushed, humiliated, creamed, demolished, whatever. What you’ve never seen UNC lose before? Was that Tyler Zeller’s first career loss? I get it wasn’t the what happened, it’s the how it happened, in this game that’s got us all going crazy.
But it’s really time to pump the breaks on all this negativity. Why the Heels will be fine with historical evidence after the break.
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Make no mistake, a 33 point loss to Florida State is unacceptable for Carolina. This must be fixed, and it will. Coming into the season UNC was the toast of college basketball. Harrison Barnes, Tyler Zeller and John Henson all decided to comeback James Michael McAdoo decided to join PJ Hairston in Chapel Hill, Reggie Bullock’s all better. All that talent, a great coach, everything’s there. It’s just that this team hasn’t landed yet.
What we saw against FSU was a team that hasn’t quite figured out its identity. Who’s coach hasn’t figured out his rotation. A team yet to have a signature win, yet to have a signature performance by their best player Harrison Barnes. Do you not see it all coming together? Was this loss really all that perplexing? The Heels have been playing Russian Roulette all season long, going into long defensive lapses, at times the team seems to forget they still have to finish out their opponent. They’ve relied on their superior size and talent to win games so far this year. At home, the Tar Heels have been just fine. But on the road, this isn’t working for UNC.
Let’s take a look at some history for a minute
2009: The year Tyler Hansbrough, Ty Lawson and company ripped a hole in the NCAA tournament and dominated their way to the national title. That very same year, UNC was embarrassed when they visited Florida State, suffering a blowout loss, just like this one.
2010: Before UNCs late season rally winning 14 of its last 16 games and advancing to the Elite 8. They were stomped in a 20-point loss at Georgia Tech.
2008: Final Four, Carolina gets dumped by Roy’s old team Kansas by nearly 20 points. The loss shocked UNC, when Hansbrough, Lawson, Wayne Ellington and Danny Green came back. You knew nobody was taking the title away from the Heels.
We shouldn’t be happy with the performance Saturday. But we also need to sit back and allow everything fall into place.
Pencils down, that’s all for this Tar Heel Lesson Plan
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