Heels again deal with lofty expectations

North Carolina’s basketball team won’t be sneaking up on anybody this winter like they did the last time the Tar Heels were coming off a national championship back in 2005-2006.

Quite to the contrary, this year’s UNC squad is getting heavy national attention as a potential top five program, and at this past weekend’s Atlantic Coast Conference Media Day in Greensboro (N.C.), the Tar Heels tied with Duke for first place in the media’s preseason poll.

“There’s definitely a difference in the way people are looking at us (compared to 2005-2006),” said UNC head coach Roy Williams.

For Williams, it’s starting to become an annual ritual this time of year for both he and his team to be forced to deal with unrealistic expectations.

Last year it was the talk about the Tar Heels going undefeated and being one of the greatest teams in the history of college basketball.

This year it’s the notion that a largely unproven UNC squad is worthy of consideration among the nation’s top schools without having done anything yet to prove it.

Although the officially recognized national polls for college basketball haven’t yet been released, Williams has read multiple national publications that have the Tar Heels ranked as high as No. 4 in the country, which the longtime coach feels is very presumptuous at this point in time.

“I thought last year was somewhat unrealistic when they said undefeated, best team ever,” Williams said. “Now I’m sitting here saying we’ve lost four of our top six scorers and I see a magazine that says fourth in the country and another that says fourth in the country, and I’m thinking that’s unrealistic.”

“I get those magazines and I look at those because I’m a fan like everybody else,” Williams added. “I get one of these magazines, and it has the 25 best players at every position, and my math is good. Five times 25 is 125, and we have two of those 125 players and then I turn a few more pages over and we’re ranked fourth in the country—-I mean, that doesn’t make sense, okay?”

While Williams admits that it wasn’t unrealistic to project the Tar Heels as a favorite to go all the way and win the NCAA title this time a year ago, the media did go a little too far in saying there wasn’t a team in the country capable of beating them.

“How unrealistic was last year? It was a little unrealistic to go undefeated and be the best team ever,” he said. “Was it unrealistic to expect them to win the National Championship or hope that they win it? No. That wasn’t unrealistic.”

“I thought it was silly to talk so much about going undefeated. I personally just do not think that’s going to happen in college basketball. It was silly to say the ‘Greatest Team Ever.’” Williams added. “It was not silly to say, ‘If you play well, you have a chance to win a national championship,’”

This year Williams believes the Tar Heels are being unrealistically ranked because of the unpredictability of playing a lot of freshmen, along with the presence of lesser-known players such as William Graves and Larry Drew—-unproven commodities that will play a major role in how the season shakes out.

“To me, the unrealistic expectations are now, because these guys haven’t done anything. So in some ways this is even more difficult,” Williams said. “Last year you (the media) said, ‘You guys are going to be really good,’ and I said, ‘Yeah we are. Now what degree of really good?’”

“Now you guys say ‘You’re really good’ and you know what I’m going say? ‘I have no idea,’” Williams added. ‘But when somebody comes in now and says, ‘We’re picking you the No. 4 team in the entire country,’ that is silly.”

Williams made a golf reference to illustrate his point that even with all the influx of young talent of the freshmen on this year’s UNC team, it’s unrealistic to expect them to be capable of coming in from Day One and being the best in college basketball.

“That’s like saying these three guys that are going to join the PGA Tour next year are going to beat Tiger (Woods) in all the Major championships,” Williams said. “I mean, that’s being silly. They can have all the potential in the world, but they are not going to do that. In some ways this one is more unrealistic to me (than last year).”

Unrealistic or not, it’s evident that North Carolina, coming off yet another NCAA title, has the nation’s respect.

It’s now up to the newest members of the Tar Heel roster—-along with those returning members of the team—-to find a way to justify the lofty preseason expectations.

If they are successful, it could very well be another magical season in Chapel Hill.