A Dadgum Heckuva Problem to Have for Roy Williams, Tar Heels

Roy Williams' vernacular of curses runs somewhere just to the conservative side of Beaver Cleaver. And if a particularly ill-tempered nun were to hear an expletive in a room occupied solely by Williams and the Pope, you can bet your funny hat it'd be the Pontiff with soap in his mouth.

So Roy, we give you full permission to let loose the most virulent stream of quasi-curses you can manage as your Tar Heels sit winless in the ACC.

And Roy you'd be right. It's a gosh darn heckuva dadgum consarnit shame.

And with that, feel better.

Or try this. Yes, the Tar Heels are 0-2 in the ACC. Yes, they've got the exact same winning percentage as the Detroit Lions, and have one win for each of the strip clubs Pacman Jones has passed only to think his time could be better spent helping others. And yes, you're somehow looking up at 0-1 N.C. State, Harvard-victim Boston College and Virginia Tech. It's hard to imagine, we know. We just had to type it.

But it's not the end of the season.

And, Roy, even with that loss, these Heels may be even dadgum better than last year's edition.

There are reasons to be concerned after back-to-back losses in the conference, not the least of which was that the Tar Heels played all Sunday with the enthusiasm of a dyspeptic Wal-Mart greeter. While Wake Forest whooped it up and hollered, the Heels looked like they were debating whether to schedule the cable repair guy for Wednesday or Thursday. If the Heels cracked one smile, it was probably a frown that, like every shot they tossed at the rim, went horribly wrong.

There's the defense that both Wake Forest point guard Jeff Teague and Boston College point guard Tyrese Rice turned into a bag of pretzels. There's player of the year Tyler Hansbrough's only-good-as-a-batting-average 9-of-27 shooting in the two games. There's the Heels continuing adventures behind the 3-point arc, and at times North Carolina's shot selection couldn't have been more random if they were selecting shots and distances out of a barrel of ping pong balls.

And if perception counts for anything, if there were ever a Mount Rushmore for game coaches, Williams might get a full pat down just for trying to buy a ticket.

But the good news is most of its fixable.

Hansbrough's reliable 20-plus-point output is less statistical trend than law of nature; you'd be completely forgiven if you thought Newton documented it somewhere between falling apples. ACC coaches may have figured out how to handle the school's leading scorer, but just beating him to the block won't keep Hansbrough off the charity stripe or keep him from averaging less than 20 per game the rest of the way. The senior needs to step slowly away from the 3-point line (Hansbrough was 0-for-2 against Wake, is now 3-for-his-last 20, having missed every attempt in ACC play since his freshman year against Duke, and we can only assume is being green lit by a coach who confused basketball with hockey), but in the paint, Hansbrough is as guaranteed as it comes in college basketball. According to stats guru Ken Pomeroy, Hansbrough ranks fourth in the nation among players using 24 percent of a team's possessions and has been remarkably efficient in all four seasons. It's hard to believe two games are a better picture of the center than three-plus seasons.

Defensively, outside of Teague's all-you-can-eat buffet in the North Carolina paint, the Tar Heels weren't terrible against Wake Forest. The Demon Deacons finished with an adjusted offensive efficiency of 103.3 points per 100 possessions. That number might not make Dean Smith stand up and cheer (Smith, one of the early proponents of a raw points-per-possession metric, wanted his Heels to score better than .85 points per trip while holding opponents to .75 points in raw efficiency), but it's an improvement on Wake's usual 110.4 per game.

Their fast break offense was even worse.

Prior to the Boston College game, the Heels played every bit like the well-oiled machine they were slated to be after last year's dominant run to the Final Four. But Against the Eagle and Deacons, they might as well have left the engine in the garage and left a few bolts loose on the wheels. In neither loss did the Tar Heels create turnovers. They forced turnovers at just an 18.1 percent clip against Wake Forest and a 13.3 percent clip against Boston College. Even more surprising, Teague, who coughed up eight turnovers against Richmond, turned the ball over just three times and made every play like he was working off a script the Heels just didn't have, on the way to a career-best 34 points.

So man, up Tar Heels. The guy had a career night. Clap him on the back. Buy him the non-alcoholic beverage of his choice and realize sometimes these things happen. You're North Carolina. You get everyone's best shot. And with a player of Teague's caliber and a team as good as Wake, that's an awfully big shot on the chin you're going to take.

But, this too is fixable.

In fact, the answer may be directly under Williams' nose, depending how close Marcus Ginyard sits to the Heels' coach. The senior, who has been slow in returning from an ankle injury, is North Carolina's top on-the-ball defender. He doesn't add the same offensive element as the Heels' other defensive ace, Danny Green, but with at least four NBA draft likelys already reaching for the ball, this might be his best attribute.

(And if there is any real cause for concern, Williams not being able to get Wayne Ellington, Ty Lawson and Danny Green, who each burned their testing-the-waters card last year, plus Hansbrough on the same page, could be one. This too might be remedied by Ginyard, one of the team's most vocal leaders. Ginyard could also bump Green back to a sixth-man role, which he's likely best suited for).

Even if Ginyard opts to redshirt this season, a decision he'll have to make before playing in another game, North Carolina's defense could still be mended. And if's not exactly the '85 Bears in Alexander Julian shorts, North Carolina's defense is fairly passable for a championship contender. Acccording to Pomeroy, the Heels have the 16th best adjusted defensive efficiency. Every Final Four team since 2004 has ranked 25th or higher and the champion 2005 Heels were also 16th in the nation. Defense is more a matter of commitment than skill. Point guard Ty Lawson may not be the quickest player laterally, but he can certainly keep the guy in front of him from scoring 34.

All you have to do, Roy, is get them to give it a dad-gum whirl.

And maybe, just maybe, the Heels' problems are more timing than anything. Maybe, after a middling non-conference schedule, the Heels weren't ready to walk directly into a big ball of Wake anger, a team anxious to prove itself after three seasons in the wilderness. And maybe Boston College was nothing more than the kind of fluke win by a fringe NCAA Tournament contender like Maryland last season (which, perhaps not coincidentally, also featured a silly Hansbrough 3-pointer, this one on the final play.) Welcome to the ACC, North Carolina. It's never easy, no matter what your press clippings say.

But after enough ink on the Heels' deficincies to fill a New York phone book, Yellow Pages included, North Carolina lost on the road against a top-five opponent with a career night from the opposing point guard, a can't-buy-a-bucket-even-in-this-economy 35 percent shooting effort and against a long athletic team that's about as bad a matchup as the Heels could ask for.

And they lost by three points.

These are problems plenty of teams would love to have.

College basketball is just a hard game to win. Last year, the Heels came within a few bounces of starting 1-3 in the ACC, needing overtime to beat Clemson, beating Georgia Tech by two and losing to Maryland. And that team worked out just fine.

Figure that these Heels have a better three-point shooting threat this year (Green is a 48.5 percent 3-point shooter thus far; only little used Will Graves topped 40 percent last year), increased depth in the paint with freshman Ed Davis and an improved Deon Thompson and a little bit of humility to toss in the mix and you might want to get your barbs in now.

And if nothing else, North Carolina has history on their side. The last time the Tar Heels started 0-2, and fell all the way to run-the-coach-out-of-Chapel Hill 0-3, was Dean Smith's final year in 1997. You probably don't need to consult Wikipedia to remember that team went to the Final Four with Antawn Jamison, Vince Carter, Shammond Williams and Ed Cota, before losing to eventual national champion Arizona.

Those Heels wouldn't figure it out overnight, falling to 3-5 at the ACC turn following the school's first loss to Duke since 1994. But after that night, their losing streak was over. Their season wasn't.

Everything, as it turned out, was fixable.