Art’s Angle: Wounded Heels

For starters, you can call the Carolina-Duke game Saturday night the Battle of Wounded Knee. Roy Williams (probably) and Mike Krzyzewski (definitely) will undergo knee replacement surgery after the season. The two hobbling head coaches have joked about at least rehabbing together, since Roy will have his knee (or maybe both knees) done at UNC Hospitals, K for sure at Duke.

For Williams, it is also a game to win back some Wounded Pride after the cagey comeback staged by Duke in the first game in Chapel Hill. Squandering the eight-point lead over the last six minutes kept Carolina from already having clinched the ACC regular season title and likely first seed in the NCAA Tournament that would mean opening the Big Dance with two games in Raleigh.

The Tar Heels can still accomplish that by upsetting the Blue Devils and ruining Senior Night for Marshall Plumlee (injured senior Amile Jefferson may seek a medical red-shirt), the same way they did to brother Miles in 2012, DeMarcus Nelson in 2008, and J.J. Redick, Shelden Williams and Sean Dockery in 2006. Few would be surprised if UNC won, and few would be surprised if the Heels led most of the way and lost in the final minutes – just like this year, last year in Durham, and 2012, also at the Smith Center.

For all the heat Williams and his team have taken this season, they can still finish with a 14-4 ACC record and in first place, as predicted by ACC pundits. That will mean Carolina would have won 25 games and lost six by a total of 22 points with a team that has one player, Brice Johnson, likely to be picked in the first round of the NBA draft this June. In a word, the Tar Heels were overrated before the season ever tipped off – basically the same team that lost 12 games a year ago less one talented, if sometimes erratic, starter, JP. Tokoto.

Why the preseason praise over a Virginia team that had won the last two ACC races and lost only one key offensive player, Justin Anderson? Besides the truly underrated Malcolm Brogdon, the Cavaliers do not have as many recognizable names as the always over-hyped Heels – Johnson, Marcus Paige, Justin Jackson, Kennedy Meeks, etc.

So six losses to date isn’t so bad. It’s HOW Carolina lost those games. Giving up a 16-point lead at Northern Iowa, control of the game at Texas, a second-half advantage over Louisville and the lead for 30 minutes at Notre Dame. And, of course, the choke job against the Blue Devils. The Tar Heels are what they are at this point of the season, not quite tough enough when the going gets tough. Yet, they don’t get enough credit for routing 11th-ranked Miami right after the Duke debacle, turning a 13-point deficit at N.C. State into a 12-point victory and holding off a hot and confident Syracuse team on their own pressure-packed Senior Night.

Today’s unbalanced conference schedules clearly give some teams a distinct advantage by who they play, where, and how many times. No. 12 Indiana, for example, won the Big Ten by two games over second-ranked Michigan State because the Hoosiers played a far easier schedule. Carolina’s brutal back-loaded slate cannot be an excuse because it gave away some games that have made its RPI look like a pin ball. This team can be called UNC’s best in four years only because recruiting has fallen off due to the impending NCAA punishment; a good team, these are not your father’s Tar Heels and maybe not even your granddad’s.

The wobbly Williams should feel some pain. He’s been sliced and diced by critics all season, never more so than for not stopping Duke’s rally 16 days ago. He’s still in reach of winning 30 games for the 11th time in his career if the subtle changes he has made take full effect heading into the post-season. Paige will play more with the ball than without it and Isaiah Hicks won’t start but he will finish playing more minutes than Meeks.

Jay Williams, the former Duke star, had his career ended by a motorcycle accident after his rookie year with the Chicago Bulls, tragic for more than one reason. He was a far better basketball player than a sports announcer. “Jay Will” is trying to make a name for himself above the ever-increasing noise of cable TV. He does a cheap imitation of TV legend Lee Corso by unbuttoning to show the t-shirt of the team he predicts to win that night. Cheesy.

Williams (Jay) infuriated Williams (Roy) when he held up a sign before the Syracuse game that said START HICKS. And he has defended himself on talk radio ever since by asking naively, “Am I not entitled to an opinion? Even some Carolina fans agree with me.”

If so, Jay Will and the fans are in the same uneducated lot. They haven’t been to practice and in team meetings and still don’t realize that the oncoming Hicks remains the most foul-prone regular in the ACC. Ol’ Roy wants him in there at the end, and he doesn’t want to lose what is left of Meeks’ slipping season. Plus, the highly amped Hicks would rather come off the bench. Ask him.

Jay Will and the ESPN Game Day band of brothers will be at Cameron Indoor Saturday night because even though the Blue Devils are destined for the No. 4 or No. 5 seed in the ACC Tournament, it is still the biggest game on the planet. That takes years of being digested, dissected, and picked over like a two-day-old turkey.

What would have happened if Mark Gottfried’s 15-15 Wolfpack hadn’t escaped some of his really bad coaching by even worse defense from Boston College in winning that game Wednesday night at half-empty PNC Arena?

The answer: nothing. Because nobody cares. That so many over here do is both the blessing and curse of Carolina Basketball.