Wha?..huh?...oh yeah...basketball

Ok, I havnt said much about UNC basketball as of yet. Partly (and mostly) because Im lazy and partly because im still in football mode. I took a break from trying to figure out why in the hell Clemson is going to the Gator Bowl to sit down and watch God's team last night. All day i was shocked in my own calm mood about the UNC-MSU matchup. Usually, I am stressing out all day and waking up in the middle of the night thinking about the Lucas-Lawson matchup. But not with this team.

I remember my sophmore year watching the 2005-2006 Tar Heels struggle at first, then engineer some great basketball going off nothing but raw, young talent and the heart of David Noel. Those Tar Heels remain my all-time favorite team, it was stressfull, it was hard, and when they lost to George Mason it was heart-breaking, and it was the miost fun I've ever had watching a basketball team. But it was a team you could get behind with everything you were. They wernt expected to do much, and they did more than almost everyone else...just ask J.J. and Sheldon.

Fast forward a to now and you'll see (remarkably) alot of those same players out there. Now UNC is expected to do everything. In a way we are the antithesis of the 2005-2006 team, with alot of the same personel. Watching the Heels last night was surreal. Look, MSU gave up in the 2nd, and the score ballooned as a result of that. But if you just look at the first half, MSU gave a hell of a fight. But UNC never faltered, never got antsy, and kept hitting clutch big shots...to put them back up by 11 or 12.

The play (and the shooting) of Green and Lawson in particular has been great and i think its what really seperates us from the everybody else. Put it this way, with Tyler playing like Tyler we can be in every game. With Ellington playing ok, Ed David being there and the new Deon we can win every game. With Green and Lawson playing like pros, like they did last night, we wipe the floor with everyone...EVERYONE.

Fans tend to get too high after a win and too low after a loss. This happens in football every game yet also in basketball when there is a performance like this. UNC has beaten two top-15 teams (ND and MSU) by a combined 50 points. Granted neither of those teams were at full strength. It's really hard to find any weakness in UNC this year. The only thing you might have to worry about is front court depth combined with foul trouble and an off-night for Wayne, Lawson and/or Green. But still, UNC is playing very good defense right now, and if that continues to imporve, we might be able to survive even that unlike teams past.

I'm not saying we are going undefeated. We wont, but after last night this team is on my short list of best teams I've ever seen play. And apparently it's on Tom Izzo's too.