UNC - MSU

Big win by North Carolina over MSU last night.  Did you watch?  Reminded me of Louisville game in a lot of ways, except not quite as impressive.  MSU's crappy play (lots of missed 3s, ailing big guys) seemed to be a larger factor in this game than Louisville's in that game.  Same good and bad things stood out to me about UNC  - just not quite to the same degree, at least with regard to the good.

- Paige - even on a bad shooting night the transformation he's made continues to amaze.  It seems like all the skills were there at the end of last year and he just realized that he was good enough to use them all.  He plays like he knows he can be an all-american.  Trying to think of a good comp for him - not super athletic, but lanky and skilled, crafty-quick and a good shooter.  ha. basically he looks like all the combo guards on virginia tech and florida state et al. all these years about whom I've always complained that UNC never has guys like that.  Well, we do now.  Maybe Roy will realize that it's ok if other people besides your point guard are competent ball handlers.

- McAdoo - his terribleness continues to amaze. I try to fight the urge to jump to conclusions about guys early on, bc, as this year is a prime indicator, even high recruits (and particularly ones Roy recruits) can take a year to develop and will all of a sudden turn into a player that you didn't even see at all the first year - but McAdoo is a junior.  He is who he is at this point:

An athletic tweener, decent defender, shoots passing lanes really well, blocks some shots, good in space where he can showcase his athleticism, but....can't play with contact AT ALL which contributes to a) no advanced offensive game to speak of, b) terrible finishing ability inside, and c) him basically exclusively shooting turnaround jumpers unless wide open which he does not make a good percentage of.  He's always shown an ability to occasionally make them, but he also has horrible misses - including on free throws.  Not the kind of misses a natural shooter would make.  (i think defenders press up on him knowing he's not driving, which leads to tougher and tougher shots.  but that doesn't explain the free throws.)

He's taken a complete back seat to the younger and better bigs offensively and his usefulness seems almost purely based on his athleticism.  Though in true Harrison Barnes style analysis (i.e. formulate an inaccurate opinion about a player as an incoming freshman and then only talk about him in those terms for the entirety of his college and nba career - bonus points if those terms solely relate to psychological and intangible matters and not, you know, actual basketball abilities) the non-Jay-Bilas announcer did say "if McAdoo started playing like the monster we KNOW he can be, watch out."

Meeks/Johnson - still love these guys.

Conclusion - don't want to keep wildly changing expectations game to game, but I sort of think that if Hairston and McDonald come back this team could resemble the 2011 team (post Kendall Marshall insertion as a starter) in that over the course of the year the individual talents of a bunch of freshman and sophomores develop to the point that it is a pretty good team.  But without those two, they are way too reliant on Paige - as in I only slightly misuse the word literally when I say that he is literally the only person on the team who can hit 3s right now.