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November 26, 2006
The Pre-Season NIT
Well, pre-season tournament week is over, and it seems clear that there will be no anointed ones anymore: even overhyped Florida fell.
Let's recap the Heel's wild and sick ride through the latter, fatal stages of the Pre-Season NIT. On Wednesday, Butler beat the Vols, while the Zags beat the Heels. That made the title game the Battle of the Bulldogs, which are usually long, protracted and vicious affairs where the winner is the dog that manages to stagger out of the ring and collapse dead in some quiet place out of the limelight. But not this time: Butler simply had the Zags.
Then UNC went on to beat the Vols, and in an old-fashined ass whipping kind of way.
So what does this prove? We beat the team (the Vols) that lost to the team (Butler) that beat the team that beat us (the Zags).
Most old-timers would argue that if UNC ever goes on to beat Butler (say, in the sweet hereafter known as the post-season), we'd have the Bracketology equivalent of a Mexican Standofff on our hands. It also means that if UNC does win the big one, Butler will have the kind of satisfaction that sustains generations. (Think of the kind of endorphins the French are still getting out of their early victories in the Napoleonic wars.)
I suspect what is really going on behind all of this is the old truth that transitivity is a meaningless concept in the Holy Game. Just because A can beat B, and B can beat C, A's triumph over C is not assured. It's all about matchups, which are a strange and a fickle kind of thing.
Which is probably the way of this world even beyond the Holy Game. For instance, we beat Imperial Japan in WWII, and they beat Thailand, but if we had matched up with Thailand...well, you never know. They had Muay Thai and endless bolts of premium silk; we had B-17s and 150mmm howitzers. It's hard to see how a matchup like that shakes out.
Here are some thoughts about the Heel's NIT experience:
1. The Heel's loss to the Zags was not much of a loss. Until the last 40 or so seconds, when UNC had to start fouling them, the Zags were up by maybe 2-4 points. If Brandon Wright had been able to shoot halfway decently from the line in the second half, the celebrations would have been in the Southern Part of Heaven. For that matter, if Frasor had hit just one more 3, I think the Zags would have lost. Into the last minute, momentum was with the Heels, and so I think Carolina would have had a "down to the wire" advantage. But alas, Wright did not hit his shots from the line and Frasor drew nothin' but air from the perimeter, and so it never did get down to the wire: UNC was forced to start fouling.
2. The really good news is that Brandon Wright showed something on defense. That may be very good news for the Heels: if Hansborough and Wright can coordinate effective Big Man D, it will basically leave teams no inside game option against the Heels.
3. In victory and defeat, the Heels were pretty disorganized, and that is worrisome. In the Tennessee game, it showed just how good the Heels are on a talent level. Did they run a single play correctly in the second half? And yet they whipped the Vols. But in the Gonzaga game, the Bulldogs showed that the Heels lack of cohesion can be costly: if you shut down Hansborough with a triple team and sow just enough chaos with the remaining 2 guys (and get really lucky and catch the Heels on a poor foul shooting night), you have a shot at beating this team.
The good news of course is that under General Roy, the Heels will find cohesion as the season progresses. Or he'll kill them. Hard to tell which way it will break.
But with the Heels operating as they did (like a disorganized mob of stinking drunk dockworkers) and still playing as effectively as they did (overall) against the Zags and Vols, I think we may have a national champion on our hands if they ever do find that mystical level of cohesion.
Posted by dag at November 26, 2006 10:06 AM