The No. 19 North Carolina men’s basketball team sits at 10-3 on the season, but is still in search of consistent play heading into its ACC opener. Saturday night’s matchup against the 8-4 Clemson Tigers in the hostile atmosphere of Littlejohn Coliseum will be no easy hurdle to clear.

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The Tar Heels are still uncertain with what exactly they’ve got.

So far this season, they’ve shown bursts of the kind of athletic offense and lock-down defense that could rival nearly any team in the country, but then UNC has also displayed vulnerability that the players and coaching staff says is stemming from a lack of focus and intensity.

Brice Johnson extends for the dunk (Todd Melet)

Brice Johnson extends for the dunk (Todd Melet)

There could be no better time for Carolina to begin locking in for a full forty minutes of basketball than conference season.

Sophomore forward Kennedy Meeks, who’s been the most reliable performer on an inconsistent squad up to this point, says he’s bracing himself for the ACC grind ahead.

“That’s the toughest part of the year, honestly. It’s just a grind seeing the same teams twice. They’re figuring out your plays and being a lot more aggressive on defense. It’s going to be hard, but we just have to overcome and keep playing every play,” Meeks says.

Meeks even goes so far as to say the ACC gauntlet is tougher than having to face the undefeated and unanimous No. 1 team in the land, Kentucky.

“It’s definitely tougher. Like I’ve said, the grind of back-to-back games or seeing teams twice – that’s as hard as it gets seeing a team twice in a month and a half or so,” Meeks says.

The Tar Heels have seen a lot of zone defense so far this season and will likely be seeing a few more teams adopt the formation against Carolina in the conference slate.

UNC head coach Roy Williams says the big men like Meeks and Brice Johnson need to be more active inside to free up shooters like Marcus Paige and Justin Jackson.

“I said at the start of the year that I thought we’d get better as shooters. I think we have. We got to do a better job of moving against the zone. Kennedy and Brice got to do a better job for sure. Then the zone has to worry about those guys a little bit and then, we’ll have more open outside shots as well,” Coach Williams says.

The Tigers boast a trio of players averaging in double digits per game, including talented freshman Jaron Blossomgame, but UNC may get a heavy dose of Rod Hall, who’s been knocking down 50 percent of his shots from behind the arc.

Roy Williams hasn't been pleased with UNC's inconsistency (Todd Melet)

Roy Williams hasn’t been pleased with UNC’s inconsistency (Todd Melet)

Junior forward Brice Johnson says he’s under no illusions and knows any team in the ACC is capable of taking the Tar Heels down if they don’t give every opponent their full attention.

“It’s a whole different ball game once you start ACC play. Every night you have to bring it and if you don’t you’re going to get beat. We have to play with a lot more consistency than we have. We have to get ready for it,” Johnson says.

Coach Williams says he had hoped the sloppy mistakes and turnovers would have been all cleaned up by now, but nevertheless, there’s still plenty to focus on at practice.

“I think we’ve gotten better, but we made more mistakes tonight [vs. W&M] than I would hope we’d make. I would hope that we’d get rid of those mistakes four days before the first conference game. It will be a bog challenge for us in practice to focus on the things that we need to focus on to get a heck of a lot better,” Coach Williams says.

With games against Top-25 ranked Notre Dame and Louisville on deck after the Clemson excursion, the Tar Heels are running out of time to get in peak form.