Tar Heels Season Review: From Champs to Chumps

What a difference a year makes...the Tar Heels Basketball team can tell you better than most. They are 16-16 and an NIT bubble team just a year after winning the National Title. The Heels season been uglier than Gerald Henderson's cheap shot on Tyler Hansbrough, uglier than the Final 4 loss to Kansas, uglier than losing by 32 @ Duke, uglier than a Roy F-bomb in a presser, as ugly as Haiti after the earthquake (Roy said it well or sort of) OR.. ok sorry Heels Fans I will stop there.

First the obvious needs to be pointed out; they lost 4 starters to the NBA (Hansbrough, Lawson, Ellington, and Green). So no one thought they were repeating as National Champs. However, they were the preseason pick to win the ACC along with Duke; does the media get credit for being partially right? The ACC has announced there will be no open bar until voting is complete in years to come b/c of this embarrassing prediction.

Everyone in ACC country wants to blame someone (key being one) for Heels sorry season, but the truth is there is plenty of blame to go around. The veteran leadership never led, the freshman that were supposed to be the 3rd best recruiting class did not live up to the hype, injuries, no shooters, poor ball handling, poor point guard play, poor defense, Obama healthcare plan, and yes coaching. Add it all up and you have 16-16 and the Carolina Blue Sky is falling.  Coach Roy Williams is taking a lot of the blame, which is part of the job and goes with getting paid the big $$. However, when the Heels won it all last year he refused to take any of the credit, which is part of Roy's aw-shucks persona/charm.

A wise and large Hall of Fame Coach once said be careful what you say b/c those m-fers might start to believe it. The m-fers are the players and in a lot of cases the fans and media. Old Roy has nothing to prove, two national titles at the alma mater, a silly winning percentage (79.4%), and he is in the Hall of Fame already. Yet he has plenty of critics, part of being the Coach of UNC much like the being the Manager of the NY Yankees I suppose.  For those people I would just ask, would you like him running your program?  Only Duke and Maryland fans can argue no in The ACC, the rest would love to have a coach half as successful. 

Don't be fooled by the aw-shucks Huckleberry Hound act. The man is confident and ultra competitive and admitted after Thursday night's lose this is going to hurt and help motivate him for years to come. He will go back to the drawing board, adapt where needed, and get the program back on track. This is North Carolina Basketball they do not suffer long.  Even the Great Coach K has tweaked something’s during his current Final 4 draught to get his program back to where it needs to be. Roy is always going to be better know for recruiting, but guess what that is part of the game in College Sports, a very important part.  He's not going to burn more timeouts and do the look at me crap some other coaches do late in losses just so Dick Vitale can scream, Oh look at him teaching til the final seconds.  So ABCer's enjoy your run while you can because like it or the Heels will be back with Old Roy leading the way.