Monday, Nov. 09, 2009

UNC loses ton of talent but not its expectations

Four-time All-America Tyler Hansbrough is gone, as are Ty Lawson, last season's ACC Player of the Year, and Wayne Ellington, the Final Four's Most Outstanding Player last spring.

And yet, North Carolina forwards Deon Thompson and Ed Davis can't help thinking the party's not over for this follow-up season to the Tar Heels' national championship.

They admit the subject has come up: following back-to-back trips to the Final Four, what would it be like to lead the Tar Heels to a third?

"We've talked about just trying to get back - and even winning another national title - and how much more another one would mean ...," said Thompson, whose sixth-ranked team opens its regular season tonight against Florida International. "Because we were a part of it, but we weren't that main part of it."

And if "it" is going to happen again, the senior Thompson and sophomore Davis are going to have to play a big part this time.

Heels have tough task ahead

This season, Carolina may have an uphill battle, considering the firepower it has lost. Four starters - Hansbrough, Lawson, Ellington and Danny Green - are now in the NBA, leaving the Tar Heels with only one true point guard and no proven clutch players. But with one of the top freshman classes in the country and a bevy of big men looking to dominate the lane, they still tied rival Duke as a preseason favorite to win the ACC this season and are considered Final Four favorites by some analysts.

"It's unbelievable to me - it really is," UNC coach Roy Williams said of the expectations. "I told our kids [the rankings are] probably because we made everybody look so bad in '06 that they don't want to get caught that way again."

Williams was referring to the last time UNC won the national title. After its top seven scorers from the 2005 championship team left school, the Tar Heels weren't picked by Sports Illustrated to make the NCAA field of 65. With a freshman Hansbrough, that team won 23 games, finished second in the ACC and reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament.

And this time around, UNC appears to have a deeper team than that 2005-06 club, with two-year starter Thompson (10.6 ppg); a preseason All-ACC pick in Davis; and senior defensive stopper Marcus Ginyard back after taking a medical redshirt last season.

The Tar Heels also boast a freshman class led by 6-foot-9 John Henson, who will give the Heels a huge front line by playing small forward.

"There's no doubt we lost a lot of great players," sophomore point guard Larry Drew II said. "But we gained some pretty good ones, too."

Concerns remain, however, in the backcourt, where Drew (1.3 ppg, 9.6 minutes per game last season) is the only true ballhandler. He will be backed up by combo guard Dexter Strickland and Ginyard, who has played four positions in his college career.

Junior Will Graves, who was suspended most of last season, is considered the best outside shooter on the team. But back troubles have kept him out of the shape Williams would have preferred entering this season.

And then there's the biggest question mark out there: Without Hansbrough, Lawson and Ellington, just who is UNC's go-to guy?

"We do have a few more people with Deon and Marcus and Ed who have had some significant playing time, but ... no one on this team has been asked to do it at crunch time," Williams said. Because of his team's relative inexperience, Williams, who has been to the Final Four five of the last eight years with Kansas and UNC, said he doesn't know if it's realistic to think that the Tar Heels will get back for the third straight time. But he admits "it would be fantastic."

Thompson and Davis aren't through talking about it. But now it's up to them to help their team follow the three-peat ways of Duke, Kentucky, Michigan State and UCLA.

"Every team wants to be the best, and that's what we're aiming for," Davis said. "We want to be No. 1."