Roy Williams can’t be happy with the late switcheroo to Kentucky.
He won’t say it because that’s the kind of guy he is, but Ol’ Roy has to be a little toasted with the change announced Wednesday afternoon for the CBS Sports Classic Saturday in Cleveland.
On face value, the Tar Heels are no longer playing 20th-ranked Ohio State at 4 pm and will now face 1-4 Kentucky in the 2 o’clock first game. That seems to favor Carolina, right? No so fast, like Lee Corso says, as Williams had already begun preparing his team for OSU.
The Buckeyes of coach Chris Holtmann are good enough to be one of six Big Ten teams in the Top 25. They are 5-1, including a win at Notre Dame and a loss at Purdue. But THE Ohio State doesn’t have the size to match up with Carolina on the boards, where the Heels would have maintained just about the only advantage they have over opponents so far this season.
Kentucky, one of the youngest teams in the country, is loaded with highly ranked recruits who have not come close to gelling. The Wildcats have lost at home to Richmond and Notre Dame and at Georgia Tech, all unranked, and played their best game so far in a three-point loss to No. 7 Kansas on a neutral court.
John Calipari’s Cats have almost similar size to UNC, led by 7-foot Wake Forest transfer Olivier Sarr and a pair of 6-7 freshman forwards and leading scorers Brandon Boston and Terrence Clark, plus leading rebounder Isaiah Jackson, a 6-10 freshman who pulls down nearly 10 boards a game.
So, you get my drift? Kentucky has too much talent not to put it together eventually, and playing Carolina Blue instead of UCLA blue is probably all the motivation needed to kick start its season.
The last time the Wildcats started 1-4 was way back in 1985, when they had All-American Kenny Walker, the only double-figure scorer on the team, and rallied to finish 18-13 with a loss to Final Four-bound St. Johns and Chris Mullin in the NCAA Sweet Sixteen.
So Carolina probably needs to find its A game, which has been mostly absent so far in this 4-2 season. These two traditional running teams are almost running in place, the Heels averaging 74 points a game and the ‘Cats 66. So, could it be defense that wins this one?
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