Morning Heel: UNC Tar Heels Daily News Links
By Matt Hamm
Welcome to another edition of the Morning Heel, a daily feature here at Keeping It Heel. Along with The Hub we want to bring you not only our original content but a collection of all the best UNC news. Have a link to suggest? Send it keepingitheel@gmail.com
Weekend Watch: December 14-16
It’s official: Giovani Bernard will enter the 2013 NFL Draft. Bernard and Tar Heel head coach Larry Fedora will hold a press conference at 2 p.m. today to announce the decision. Congratulations to a young man who has worked extremely hard for everything he’s earned. Men’s basketball hosts Jeff Lebo and East Carolina Saturday at noon. The Pirates are 6-1 on the year. (Tar Heel Monthly)
ACC Basketball Capsules: Jeff Lebo returns to UNC
Jeff Lebo has won a lot of basketball games at the Dean Smith Center. On Saturday, he hopes to win another, albeit at the expense of his alma mater. UNC is coming off of final exams and may get an early test, but the Tar Heels are just too talented to lose this game. Of importance for UNC is to get more of a conventional inside game than it has been in recent outings. Pick: UNC, 87-70 (Fox Sports Carolinas)
Leslie McDonald raising his game, confidence
Leslie McDonald said he stopped worrying about his surgically repaired right knee last summer, a year after he tore the ACL that forced him to miss all of last season. But if you saw McDonald in UNC’s first few basketball games this season, you may have a different opinion. McDonald appeared neither comfortable nor confident in the knee. He wasn’t the same player he was before the injury. (Fox Sports Carolinas)
Gio Bernard To Enter NFL Draft
UNC sophomore tailback Giovani Bernard has elected to forego his final two years of college eligibility and enter the 2013 NFL Draft. Bernard is draft-eligible because he has been out of high school for three years. He redshirted in 2010 and earned first-team All-ACC honors as a freshman in 2011. This season, he repeated as a first-team all-conference selection. (GoHeels.com)
Lucas: An American Tale
He’d lived in Haiti with no running water. He’d sat in a tiny bathroom with his brother and father, all three men in tears over the loss of Gio’s mother. He’d shared an apartment in Ft. Lauderdale with rats. Any one of those events could change a life. They all changed Gio Bernard’s, but they didn’t stop him. (GoHeels.com)
Jeff Lebo brings 6-1 ECU to alma mater UNC on Saturday
Jeff Lebo is bringing his East Carolina program to the same court where he starred for North Carolina under Dean Smith and Roy Williams.Lebo’s Pirates (6-1) are making their first trip to Chapel Hill on Saturday to play the No. 21 Tar Heels, while Lebo is facing his alma mater for the second time in 15 seasons as a head coach. (GoHeels.com)
UNC notes: More free throws needed
North Carolina is averaging only 15.7 foul shot attempts per game, roughly nine fewer attempts per game than last season. It’s a sharp decline for a team that is used to making more free throws than its opponents even attempt. The biggest difference: younger, less experienced big guys. That puts the onus on this year’s experienced wings. (ESPN.com)
Roy Williams says young Tar Heels need early games to gain confidence
Twenty years have passed but Roy Williams still remembers how a difficult pair of opening games cost two of his Kansas players their confidence. The memory came to Williams on Thursday, when asked how difficult it has been to evaluate North Carolina’s performances against less challenging opposition. “There is something to that, there’s no question about it,” Williams said. (Raleigh News & Observer)
Point guard confusion escalates for Tar Heels
Through nine games, a frank assessment must conclude that Marcus Paige has fallen short. He’ll have at least 20 more games to improve, but Dexter Strickland clearly has performed better in his backup point guard role than Paige has as starter. Strickland has doled out more assists and committed fewer turnovers. He’s a vastly superior defensive player and has shot an overall higher percentage than Paige. (Independent Weekly)