Here are our observations after North Carolina crushed Wake Forest, 105-72:

1. UNC will be an extremely difficult out in March. This shouldn’t be too much a surprise after their early season victories against Michigan State, Louisville, and Kentucky, but for much of the season the Tar Heels were dogged by the perception that they were inconsistent and for good reason. Mixed in with their big early wins the Tar Heels also had some awful losses–at home against Belmont and Miami and on the road against UAB and Wake Forest. Since their loss at Virginia on January 20, the Tar Heels have won nine straight and are starting to display the type of consistency that they will need to make a run in the NCAA Tournament. Some of their win streak can be attributed by the current weak state of the ACC, but it also includes wins against Duke and Pittsburgh. Current bracket projections have the Tar Heels being anything between a #5 and #8 seed after this week they should be somewhere near the top of that range.
2. Jeff Bzdelik needs a real estate agent. I know that the Wake Forest administration showed a lot of faith in Bzdelik by firing Dino Gaudio, who had taken them to back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances, to hire Bzdelik, who was 36-58 in three seasons at Colorado. With nearly three seasons in the books in Winston-Salem, Bzdelik is approaching 30 games under .500. Ron Wellman talked about culture when he hired Bzdelik, but we doubt that he was thinking of this type of culture at the time. At this point we would be shocked if Bzdelik returned next season so the question really is who will replace him. The two names that get thrown around for every power conference vacancy are Bruce Pearl and Ben Howland, but we cannot see either of them going to Wake Forest with the options they will have in front of them. Perhaps the most interesting potential candidate we have heard is Jeff Capel, who has experience at Oklahoma and knows the ACC well sitting alongside Mike Krzyzewski. We obviously have our reservations about hiring a retread who went 27-36 A.B. (after Blake Griffin departed), but he would be a relatively safe hire and one with some decent credentials.
3. Roy Williams seems much more relaxed. Early in the season there were rumors that this might be Roy’s last year. Those were obviously premature particularly with what appears to be an outstanding freshman class coming in. Still everybody who followed the Tar Heels could clearly tell that this team and this season was taking a toll on Roy. The turnaround in how the Tar Heels are playing has led to Roy’s mood to improve significantly (shocking). Although Williams is certainly not young at 63 years old, we would be looking at some of his colleagues in the ACC to retire before we would expect Roy to do so.

Quotable.

• “Stars and the moon align properly” – Roy Williams explaining why his team shot so well from the free throw line (24-29 overall and 16-17 in the first half)

Sights and Sounds.

• “We want biscuits!” – North Carolina students with five minutes remaining in the second half. The game was so out of hand midway through the second half that the 100-point mark, which is the threshold where a Bojangles biscuit promotion kicked in, was all that was in doubt.

What’s Next?

• UNC has three games that it should win (only a trip to North Carolina State looks like a potential stumbling block) before a rematch against Duke in Cameron on March 8.
• The season cannot end soon enough for Wake Forest and its fans. Fortunately they only have three home games (one against Duke) and a trip to Miami left before the ACC Tournament and probably one more game there before they can start looking to the future.

nvr1983 (1398 Posts)

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 22nd, 2014 at 1:48 pm by nvr1983 and is filed under Regular Features, rushed reactions. Tagged: jeff bzdelik, north carolina, roy williams, unc, wake forest. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.