Aging Disgracefully

From what I have been able to see, Carolina clearly has the best array of athletes of any team in the NCAA. The sixth through tenth guys on their ten-man rotation would be the starting five for a legitimate top 25 team. It's clear to me that in terms of fundamental talent they do exceed the Tar Heel team that won it all last time. For instance, either Hansborough or Wright are fundamentally more talented and promising than May, and I believe that Lawson will eventually exceed Felton at the point. And the shooting guards ensemble is better (I'm not sure Rashad McCants would routinely start on this team). The role players are far better this time. This years Heels are that good.

And yet there are the nagging problems:
1. Our outside shooting remains inconsistent, despite a bevy of excellent outside shooters.
2. Brandon Wright simply is not dependable from the line when it counts, and at some point come March it will really, really count. For instance, I don't think that we would have suffered either of our losses this year had Wright not gone into "clank" mode when the Zags or Hokies decided to interrupt our inside offensive rythm by going into "Hack-a-Brandon" mode. He just doesn't make teams pay for that strategy at crucial points in tough games.
3. Ty Lawson is as fast as hell, but he just doesn't shoot enough. This limits the threat he poses. And when he does shoot too often it is a drive-by lay-up. To be sure, he needs to do that more often, but he also needs to take (and make) mid-range jumpers and threes more often.
4. This is a team that is often sluggish out of the starting blocks. There have been games this year where, had they set for the whole forty minutes the pace they set in the last twenty five, we would have scored 125 points. (!) So far that hasn't hurt us (both losses have come in games where, interestingly, the Heels did in fact come out swinging), but against really good teams (the kind that can run up a 20 point lead in the opening 15 against a sluggish Heels) we could dig ourselves a very deep hole.
1a. Not only do we not have enough of a three point game, we also do not defend well against the other guy's trey.
At this point two years ago, I felt pretty good about the Heels odds of taking it all (only Villanova even came close to them in the Dance, and that was as much due to questionable back court refereeing as anything else). This year's team exceeds that national championship squad in virtually every respect in terms of fundamentals. And yet this year's team has me a lot more nervous: Felton and the gang were better executors, whatever the basic talent gap.