I wonder whether national media writers hate doing stories on a team on which everyone has done the same freaking story and drawn a similar conclusion. Anyway, it is Mike DeCourcy's turn to churn out the standard boilerplate on UNC Basketball: 2009-10 that can be summed us thusly:
"UNC lost players, blah, blah, blah, has talent, yada, yada and there are questions...DEAR LORD SO MANY QUESTIONS !!!! Oh yeah, it all rests on Larry Drew...in case you didn't already know that."
Maybe I need to cut back on the caffeine.
Drew is a former McDonald's All-America with a year of backup experience. He is different, though. The McDonald's game is supposed to contain the absolute best of the preps, but most scouting services rated him between 50th and 70th in the 2008 class.
Williams, though, provided a strong endorsement merely by offering a scholarship. "I think he's a quarterback. I think he's a PG," Williams said. "I think he can make plays and make people better."
A summer's worth of training and skill work left Drew with a body that looks like it belongs in a UNC uniform. He is longer than Lawson or Raymond Felton, though not nearly as fast. He must make better decisions after penetrating and play on the run without committing an excess of turnovers. If there is a strength to his game, Drew said, it is passing skill.
"I have the ability to get the ball up and down the court," Drew said. "More so, my way would be distributing the ball with the pass – push-aheads, drive-and-kicks. Either way it goes, we're still going to be a fast-paced team."
Interesting notion raised here and it is something I have heard trickling out for a few days now. Whereas Ty Lawson pushed the ball using his otherwordly speed on the dribble, Drew will rely in making passes down the court to achieve the same effect from a pace standpoint. The problem you run into there is I think the risk of turnover is greater relying on passes versus Lawson's Well Fargo-type ball security. That and the fact Lawson could actually score on his own using his quickness, something I am not sure Drew is capable of doing until I actually see it. The "quarterback mode" if you will also relies more on teammate production just like a QB in football relies on receivers. To use a cross sports analogy, the question is whether Drew is 2008 T.J. Yates versus 2009 depends greatly on the how is teammates perform. If Ed Davis, John Henson and Marcus Ginyard(just to name three) are Hakeem Nicks, Brandon Tate and Brooks Foster then Drew is going to be an excellent PG. If not then it still won't be as bad as Yates but it won't be a national title winning offense either.
One other note from the article and that is Decourcy makes zero mention of Will Graves while discussing the Heels' three point shooting. Either he knows something we don't or he simply ignored Graves and his potential impact. If it is the latter the Duke homer accusations will come hot and heavy I'm sure.