By Eddy Landreth
Staff Writer
Friday at 7 p.m. EST North Carolina will open basketball season in the most unusual of places: on the deck of a U.S. aircraft carrier.
The Tar Heels will play Michigan State on a ship docked in San Diego, Calif., with the president of the United States attending the game.
“This is one of the biggest thrills of my coaching career,†coach Roy Williams said. “It’s really as neat a deal as you can possibly imagine.â€
UNC enters this unique game ranked No. 1 in most, if not all, preseason polls, thanks to the return of 7-foot tall Tyler Zeller, 6-8 Harrison Barnes and 6-11 John Henson, who plays more like 7-4 because of his wingspan.
“We’ve got some guys who can block some shots and change the game around the basket,†Williams said. “We have to make sure we use that and make that really important.â€
One of those guys is freshman James Michael McAdoo. He gives the team another future professional along the front line.
In the Tar Heels’ exhibition victory over UNC-Pembroke, sophomore Reggie Bullock made a huge contribution with his hustle and effort on defense. He came to UNC known as a scorer, but his shot did not drop with regularity last year before he suffered a season-ending knee injury.
Carolina is down a shooter in junior Leslie McDonald, who suffered a season-ending knee injury this past summer. But the Tar Heels added freshman P.J. Hairston, an outstanding outside shooter.
His shots are big, arching rainbows. In the exhibition game, he made four of six tries from 3-point range.
Carolina is the favorite to win the national championship because Barnes, Henson and Zeller all decided to return. Given the wingspans that Bullock, Hairston, McAdoo and freshman forward Desmond Hubert possess, if this is not the overall longest team in the nation, there cannot be many ahead of it on the list.
Last year’s team started slowly as Williams tried to fit the pieces together. Larry Drew helped when he transferred to UCLA in the middle of the conference season. Point guard Kendall Marshall became an instant success as the starter, and his teammates all improved because of his consistent ability to pass the ball to them in the spots from which they like to score.
That team eventually finished first in the ACC regular-season standings and made it to the Elite Eight.
Such experience should make all the difference this season.
“Our team is very, very unselfish,†Marshall said. “We have no players who are talking about getting to the NBA. They turned that down for a reason, for a team concept, to win a national championship. You have no players who are concerned about becoming first- or second-team All-Americans or ACC Player of the Year.
“All of our goals are team-oriented,†Marshall said. “We want to become dominant. We want to win games. We want to be the number-one team in the country.â€
This group knows what it takes to excel at this level consistently.
“I think we got that just through experience,†Barnes said. “We know what it takes. It’s a matter of letting our freshmen know how we do things around here, and being consistent every night by bringing the same intensity, the same focus and the same execution.â€