And yes, Pomeroy’s system is still a month away from decent reliability, but we do basically know that Illinois, Kentucky, OSU and Syracuse have all been Final 8/Final Four programs during this decade and are generally tough games.

To me, evaluating the relative merits of Roy’s reloads in 2006 and 2010 certainly will have to come after the season. He certainly has placed himself in a situation where the expectations are much higher this time, whether fair or not.

Roy’s 2006 season, to me, ranks with Dean Smith’s 1971 and 1977 seasons, and Frank Mcguire’s 1957 season as the greatest coaching jobs in school history.

One difference may be that this year Roy has Zeller, Davis and Ginyard back which sounds like three fifths of a fairly good and highly recruited team, plus all the new guys. In 2006, Terry and Noel were probably equally good but flew in under the radar. Wes Miller was unbelievable too, but the basic story was that Roy and the freshman had to take over. 2006 really wasn’t a Michigan Fab Five kind of team in reality, though. The two juniors and the senior Noel bore a heavy load.

So, I think that I and others are merely talking about what we have seen in the first five games. 4-1 is not a terrible record, but I think the Heels have had real problems in all three second halves after the first two cupcakes.

And really, I doubt anyone here is saying that they expected to do nearly as well in 2006. I was shocked that they beat UK at Rupp. I did think they would beat USC, but that was a Christmas West Coast road game which is always tough.

But I distinctly remember being prepared to lose to NC State and was simply shocked when we beat them, even at home. For me, things starting getting really interesting after the State win. We also took out Arizona at home and and annihilated Maryland and Virginia and beat Duke on senior day. BC seemed to have our number, though, and the post-season performances against BC, Murray State and GMU were not inspired. So they peaked too early. Maybe the current crop will peak later.

So far this season UNC has played two teams in the top 100 and by season’s end both of those will easily be top 50 in all likelihood. UNC still has MSU, UK and Texas all of which could make the Final Four. There is also GW, Nevada, Rutgers and a road game at College of Charleston. Like I said we will see how it bears out but I think when we get to January and look back we will find this to be a tougher schedule than 2006. Probably not ten times worse but I think it will end up being tougher.

I think the 10 days matters some. Not sure how much but when you are dealing with new players and players in new roles, every bit of practice you can squeeze is bound to help. Plus UNC is having five ranked teams dropped on them in a short span. That is a hard thing to do for any team, especially a young one.

Both teams started out 4-1. Both teams started out with three creampuffs, although the creampuffs in 2006 were marginally harder. Gardner-Webb was a tough win, but it also was a local rival that had something to prove to the in-state goliath. This year’s Valpo result wasn’t much more impressive.

Aside from that, this year’s team beat OSU on a neutral court and lost to Syracuse on a semi-neutral court badly.

The 2006 team lost to a very good Illinois team at home in a close game and then beat Kentucky in Rupp Arena. Both of those opponents(actually UNC as well) made it to the second round of the NCAA tourney that year.

So no, absolutely not. The current team has not played a schedule that is ten times harder. At best they have played an equivalent one. It may be true that the earlier season start is having an effect here, provided that the NCAA did not push back the legal practice date as well. That point could be valid but we are still only talking about ten days.

Finally, to my knowledge, no one on here has questioned any freshman as being overrated. People have questioned whether the class as a whole might be overrated and whether the team as a whole might be overrated. Analysts and fans do that at every juncture of the season, and before and after. If you have a problem with that, then you probably have a problem with polls in general and the ranking of recruiting classes, but that is an issue of your own.

Vince Carter had otherworldly skills from the first day he stepped on the court at UNC and it was apparent whenever he was on the court. He might have had defensive issues, which was often the reason Smith held players back, but using Vince Carter as an example here doesn’t cut it. There might be a better one, but you always have the other example of Curtis Hunter, who was a great guy and Tar Heel but never came close to being the second Michael Jordan, and some people might have felt that way about Brian Reese.

But I will agree that it is way too early to make good judgments about freshmen in terms of their future, and things can work both ways. Bobby Frasor was probably the second most important member of his class in 2006 but certainly due to injuries and/or failure to improve, was only the fourth most important player from his class during the 2008 season when all four clocked a season.

Questioning whether a freshman is overrated after 5 games is absurd. And acting like that at this point of the season in 2006 every Carolina fan knew they were watching a team that would finish 2nd in the ACC is just not true. Plus, pretending that Frasor was a ball handling wiz his freshman year and the 2006 team never got flogged in public is even more BS.

This team has already played a schedule that is 10X the schedule the 2006 team played, and has faired rather well except for a 10min stretch against Syracuse where they went brain dead. Also, look at the minimum practice time that this team has had up to this point. This year’s team has already played 5 games (soon to be 6), and by comparison last year’s experienced team had only played 2 games. Wait until January before you make your judgments.

Also, before you question the freshman class, go back and look at tapes of the 1996 team and you will see a lost Vince Carter on the court at this point of November. You can’t evaluate the prospects of John Henson when he only sees 9min of PT a night wait until he finds his niche and understands what is expected of him to earn more PT then you can make a proper evaluation.

Obviously the season is not over and not one single person on here said it was. Syracuse is usually decent but they were not supposed to be especially good this year. Nobody knows yet. I seem to recall the 2005 title team losing to Santa Clara in their first game and Santa Clara was no good at all.

In up years like 2005 and 2008 and 2009, UNC won regular season titles without worrying about the level of competition in the ACC. In 2006 and 2007 and probably this year, to win 11 or 12 games in conference is probably going to be fairly taxing and I think expectations may be unfairly high. Wes Miller was huge from outside in 2006, as was Terry and Green, and David Noel was decent as well when the team need a three pointer.

I don’t know if this squad will have anybody shooting from outside in the same league as Miller and Terry who shot over 44 percent and 38 percent respectively from three point range. It is also too early to tell what the results of the unbalanced schedule will be but we all know that can make a two or three game difference during the regular season conference play in terms of record.

I also doubt we will see any newcomer as good as Hansbrough was that year. That is not a knock–that is simply reality. Wes Miller finished second in the country in offensive rating, actually ahead of Hansbrough. Reyshawn Terry and David Noel were both excellent players.

Roy has basically started anew twice before with a new crew at UNC and this will make the third time. His results in 2004 were fairly pedestrian, although the team did lose a slew of close games, so some of it could have been bad luck.

His results in 2006, to me, at least, were shockingly good and maybe the best coaching job that I have ever seen at UNC, although I think the unbalanced schedule seemed to go UNC’s way that year.

As an aside, this pattern of lucky/unlucky has been an interesting sideline during Roy’s UNC tenure: In 2004, 2007 and 2009 UNC lost many close games they could just as easily have won. In 2006 and 2008, UNC seemed to win a lot of the close ones, either in overtime or on clutch last second shots by the likes of Wes Miller. The 2005 team seemed a bit more neutral in terms of its luck, aside from not having Felton and McCants healthy at times.

In terms of sitting back and enjoying the ride, I mean sure, no one is talking about boycotting the season. I highly doubt this squad can match the 2005 or 2007-9 squads in terms of being fun to watch. They certainly seem to have the ability to meet or exceed what the 2006 team did, which is why people do expect more. But many people come to this site because they love to talk strategy and techniques and how teams can improve or to discuss some of the interesting developments in how Williams uses his players. I don’t want to passively sit back and watch. To me, the fact that people are engaged is what makes it interesting.

Nevertheless, it was basically a blow-out. UNC hit a couple of junk shots at the end to bring the margin down from 21 points. Carolina doesn’t usually lose games by 21 points to anybody and yes, I can remember a few, a couple against Duke and a couple against Maryland and Wake Forest, but once again scores can be somewhat deceptive.

When Carolina lost to Wake Forest by 25 or so in 1993, Wake hit five or six three pointers in a row in the second half, I believe. Nothing like that happened here. UNC simply could not move the ball and position itself to get a decent shot for the first 9 minutes of the second half and surprisingly, with all that height, couldn’t even get a tap-in or follow.

There is no point in whitewashing it. That was almost certainly the worst ten minutes of basketball of Roy’s tenure at UNC. The team looked disorganized and chaotic.

I didn’t see the Valpo game but it didn’t sound as though the effort was particularly distinguished at the end of that game either and obviously, the second half against OSU was very poor. That makes three very lackluster second half performances in a row. I can’t imagine they are getting tired. Hopefully it is just a fluke.

I do think we are looking at a squad with some similar talents and weaknesses, but in 2006, Carolina had Hansbrough, Terry and Miller as go to guys who could all score. Somebody is going to have to step up on this year’s team and fulfill that role. I would have thought it would be Zeller and Davis and perhaps Ginyard, but that remains to be seen.

If I had to predict based upon what I have seen so far, I would say that we might end up with about the same record as UNC did in 2006, although with probably more losses in conference and overall, since that team only played 31 games. That was probably the worst team that Roy has had at UNC, going out in the second round, after languid performances against Murray State and GMU.

The 2004 team was just as unimpressive in the post-season and had a somewhat worse record, but had to play a balanced schedule and lost three games in overtime, plus three nail-biters and four games overall to Duke and GIT, both of whom made it to the Final Four, as well as fluky losses versus Clemson and Florida State, where they lost a twenty-something point lead(add that to the list of Roy’s bad halves).

There is a little video on the UNC site http://tarheelblue.cstv.com/inside/roywilliams/ under special features which has the players and coaches admitting they cannot tell them apart either. The coaches joke about forgetting who has which number.

This team is of course radically different than last year.

So I don’t see commenting as evil or an attempt to unseat anyone. Rather it is fun to speculate about what is happening. JB and I were making a couple of Wear comments.

The Wears are interesting to me partially because they were not annointed as strong players, and even though I cannot tell them apart it has been (and will remain) fun to watch them and read their comments as well.