For the second straight season, UNC‘s Tyler Zeller will miss a substantial chunk of the college basketball season. Fortunately for Roy Williams, the Tar Heels are loaded on the inside again. Unfortunately for Roy, Ty Lawson is not walking through that door. Playing in a deep Tar Heel rotation, Zeller had managed to put up 9.6 PPG (on 56% FG) and 4.6 RPG, but his production had tailed off in the last few games after a strong start. It appears that this might have been an injury that Zeller tried to play through before it forced him to miss UNC’s blowout loss at Clemson on Wednesday. While the Tar Heels will miss Zeller, they are deep enough on the inside not to be affected by the loss as much as many other teams would. The injury does mean that Zeller will almost definitely return to Chapel Hill for his junior season, which is probably be a good thing for him since he is a 2nd rounder at best at this point, but it does raise questions about his future having suffered serious injuries in both of his seasons as a collegiate so far.
Tyler will have plenty of time to sign autographs
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This is a far bigger loss than people realize. UNC has not been playing very well so far this season, and the two pleasant surprises had been Zeller and Dexter Strickland. Carolina's other two main interior players, Deon Thompson and Ed Davis, have actually been disappointing this season with their inconsistency. It will make it that much harder for UNC to turn their season around.
They need to do well in ACC play to get a solid seed in the tournament, and at this point they are looking like a middle of the pack team in the conference. They need a good seed if they are going to make it to the sweet 16 this year.