season preview: North Carolina

North Carolina Tar Heels

Media prediction: 1st

Last season:

Record: 29-8 (14-2) - ACC 1st seed
Postseason: NCAA Elite Eight
KenPom: 12th of 345

Returning scoring: 81.7%
Returning rebounding: 76.1%
Returning assists: 79.2%

2010-11 All-ACC:

1st team: none
2nd team: F John Henson, C Tyler Zeller, F Harrison Barnes
3rd team: G Kendall Marshall
HM: none
Rookie: G Kendall Marshall, F Harrison Barnes
Defensive: F John Henson

(Italics indicate departed player.)

Starting lineup:

PG: Kendall Marshall (So.)
SG: Dexter Strickland (Jr.)
SF: Harrison Barnes (So.)
PF: John Henson (Jr.)
C: Tyler Zeller (Sr.)

Bench:

G Reggie Bullock (So.)
G P.J. Hairston (Fr.)
F James Michael McAdoo (Fr.)
G Justin Watts (Sr.)

Coach: Roy Williams (9th season)

ACC schedule:

Twice: Duke, Maryland, Miami, NC State, Virginia
Once: Boston College, Clemson, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Wake Forest

Last year, when I did my Duke preview, I decided there was hardly any point to it.  So I mailed it in, declaring that Duke was pretty much unstoppable regardless of how you broke it down and if they didn't make the Final Four it'd be a major, major disappointment.  So of course, they didn't make the Final Four.  In an effort to jinx Carolina in a similar fashion, I hereby declare them automatic Final Four material.  You don't really need me to tell you the various ways in which that lineup can kick your ass anyway.  The NBA lockout no doubt had something do with it, as it probably scared Harrison Barnes and various other Heels back to school for another year to ride out the storm.  Now the whole crew is back and they better do something worth doing in the tournament so the ACC doesn't look like a top-to-bottom mess.  Instead of breaking down North Carolina, let's talk RPI instead.

UVA's RPI has oscillated pretty wildly between games, which you'd expect for a small sample size.  After dispatching LSU and successfully navigating the OOC schedule, we now sit at 47th.  If we stay there through the ACC season, is that good enough for a tournament berth?  Yes, because we're an ACC team, not a mid-major one.  Mid-majors at this level are looking at a 50/50 proposition; high-majors tend to be given 8 seeds.

However, it's a precarious perch.  UVA's nonconference strength of schedule is 261st right now, worst among the RPI top 50.  That means no screwing around in the ACC.  My best guess is that an 8-8 record in-conference would send us to Hokieland - that dark place where you sit in front of the TV (or worse, Jumbotron) on Selection Sunday and never hear your name, until the analysts ask the committee member "why not Virginia?"  We don't wanna be Greenberged.

Our schedule does not put us in a happy place, because we get all the crap teams just once.  If you figure that BC, Wake, GT, and Clemson are the four worst teams (I do) and that we can chalk those up as wins relatively safely (I do) that gives us five wins.  (Only Clemson shows up twice.)  And if UNC and Duke are losses, that makes us 5-3 with eight tossups.  Well, not tossups.  We should be better than most of those teams - those teams being Miami, FSU, NC State, Maryland, and VT.  That doesn't mean we'll win all those games, but assuming I'm right about the other half of the schedule, even 4-4 would get us to the tournament.  Worse than 4-4 in those eight games, and you're really sweating Selection Sunday.

In a normal year, 9-7 in the ACC would basically be an automatic selection, but this isn't a normal year, it's definitely a drought year.  And we didn't help ourselves by scheduling mainly middle-to-bottom teams in their respective conferences.  Michigan is the best team we've played, but unfortunately the Big Ten is maybe the strongest top-to-bottom conference in the league.  LSU and Oregon are middling teams.  So are Drake and TCU and UWGB.   George Mason should finish in the top third of the CAA, but the CAA is terrible this year. 

I think the lesson is this: don't bother with the really bad teams.  Take Winthrop.  That is going to be a really bad, bottom-feeding team, in the Big South.  They're 4-10.  Campbell is also in the Big South, and is 9-6.  Would Campbell be any harder to beat than Winthrop?  I doubt it.  But my very rough calculations with the RPI formula tell me that if we could swap the two on our schedule, it'd be worth a jump from 47th to 38th, right now.  Isn't that kind of a big deal?  That's kind of a big deal.  One swap like that would have less of an impact after we double the number of teams on our resume by playing the ACC season, but four such swaps would make a dent in things.  I mean, when a team went 4-26 last year?  Don't put 'em on the schedule.  Just don't do it.

Anyway, that was kind of a tangent.  The hand we're dealt is one that we have to play correctly throughout the season.  As we stand right now, a lot of people are calling UVA the third-best team in the conference.  Play like it, and nobody will care much about the strength of schedule and we'll end up with a nice five seed (I know, I know.)  Don't play like it and we'll be nervously testing the strength of our bubble in March.

game preview: Gauntlet of Doom

If it wasn't before, it's time to get serious now. Put on your war face, lock up the valuables, break out the lucky t-shirt, whatever it takes to get ready for the week ahead. By this time next week, we'll have an extremely good idea about where we stand if we're thinking about dancing.

Honestly, if you're a Virginia basketball fan, and you probably are, could you ask for anything better? Three games to determine our tournament fate, and two of them in hostile gyms against the two biggest rivals we've got. That is a worthy challenge. Tomorrow, a revenge game against Virginia Tech. Monday, equally-despised Maryland in snowbound DC. And Wednesday, back to the friendly confines for the enigmatic Florida State. Because our tournament hopes rest so heavily on this three-game stretch, it's only fitting they all get lumped into one big-ass preview.

A sweep of either variety will seal our fate. Losing all three will set us back to 5-6, and if you think 10-6 is good enough for the tournament, then you'd better hope we can get past Duke, because 9-7 will not do the trick. Winning all three, if I might be allowed to hope against hope we can pull off that stunt, would get us to 8-3, with extraordinarily winnable (albeit road) games against Miami and BC remaining, as well as an already-beaten Maryland at home. Barring a collapse of stupid proportions, we'd be a very, very good bet to get in.

Much more likely is some kind of combination, and, no, 1-2 ain't gonna cut it any better than 0-3 would. Your best hope is a 2-1 split of some kind, landing us at 7-4 with work to do but the finish line clearly in sight.

Joe Lunardi fans will note that it's fitting we start this run off with VT, because check out who the first two teams out of his latest bracket are. As close as these two teams are in the tournament race, if we're going to go 2-1 in this three-game stretch, this is definitely not the game to lose. If we don't make the tournament, the first VT game will be the #1 cause of woulda-coulda-shoulda-itis among loyal Hoos. I still have a hard time believing we're actually a worse team than Tech is, but you wouldn't know it by the way we closed out the halves. The other flaw in that theory is that VT is riding a pretty nice hot streak. Not only did they get their kicks in on UNC like everyone else, they also dispatched NC State and Clemson with prejudice - the latter with a huge assist from the referees. How often does a team score more points from the free-throw line than the field and still win? Anyway, bitching about Karl Hess aside, this is still the most winnable game of the three.

Maryland is next, and it would have already happened if Maryland was interested in following ACC protocol. (Both teams and two of three refs in town? Game on, even if the arena is a ghost town because the city is buried under another blizzard. I wonder who in our administration signed off on a postponement?) Maryland is a fast-paced team with a high-powered offense, and one of the few teams in the league that has someone who can match Sylven Landesberg bucket for bucket. You might want to rip Greivis Vasquez's throat inside out every time you watch him play, but you can't deny he's one of the top all-around players in the conference, and worse, he's got a highly competent supporting cast.

Hate to say it, but Maryland is one of the best teams in the conference. Their low turnover numbers are even more impressive given the number of possessions they generate, they have a lot of players that can beat you, they don't foul much, and their ACC resume is impressive.

In order to beat Maryland on the road, it'll be necessary to slow the game down even more than usual. The Twerps can score from all over the court and with a lot of different players, and they're deadeye shots from the free-throw line, so "snail's pace" doesn't even begin to describe how we want to play the game. If the Hoos win, it might well be the lowest scoring game all season, because we're certainly not winning a shootout. A win here would be a clear upset. To put it in a little perspective, KenPom says our chances of beating Duke at home are better than winning Monday at Maryland.

As for Florida State, argh big men. This is decidedly a frontcourt-oriented team, with bigs Solomon Alabi and Chris Singleton doing the job of putting points on the board. We have no answer for Alabi and he will crush us, because he's seven damn feet tall, and he and Singleton make the best shot-blocking tandem in the conference. The UNC formula is going to be the key here: deny that entry pass like your life depends on it. This may actually be easier than it seems. FSU is a turnover-prone team, and not just because the bigs handle the ball so much. Their guards don't take good care of the ball either, and they also won't scare anyone with their three-point skills. The outcome of the game likely boils down to one very simple equation: the more their guards have the ball and the less their bigs do, the better our chances of a win. And the opposite is the case on the other end. When the other team has shot-blockers, it's obviously more effective if you can just shoot over them from the outside instead of trying to go at them head on.

This coming week in order from easiest to hardest, you've got VT, TFSU, and Maryland. And there's a big gap between the Hokies and Noles. That means that VT is the biggest part of this big week. Lose on Saturday and a tournament-killing 0-3 run will be staring us in the face. Win in a hostile gym and it just might (in my ever-sunny outlook) be the catalyst for an exciting run.