Probably the most debated meaningless scrimmage of the season. Despite that, the scrimmage is the only thing from Late Night worth discussing. I mean, it is not like the Tar Heel players are out there doing movie parodies that are really, really uncomfortable to watch.
From Inside Carolina:
Whether dancing or dunking, it was hard to miss 6-10 Henson, the player most assume will make an early contribution, despite the Tar Heels’ already-strong corps of returning forwards. Henson scored the first points of the night’s scrimmage, threw down a couple of impressive dunks, and wowed the crowd with his length and leaping ability. He finished his first unofficial outing in front of the Dean Dome fans with 10 points.
"It’s hard to describe," Ginyard said of his new teammate. "He can do some interesting things out there. We’ve just got to let it play out and see what he does. But there’s no question he’s going to be a big help to this team."
Junior Will Graves hit three straight 3-pointers early on the way to a game-high 12 points, leading the Blue team to a 36-32 win over a White team featuring Henson, Deon Thompson, and Larry Drew II. Ed Davis added 10 points for the Blue team, showing some of his off-season improvement with a nice face-up jumper to accompany strong rebounding and shot blocking.
What people tend to do when looking at a scrimmage like this is put stock in the positive performances while blowing off the negative ones. Since it was only a scrimmage not dissimilar to the pick-up games these guys have been playing all summer I am going to refrain from assigning any value to it whatsoever. Of course that does not mean you should not hop. You hope Will Graves plays like this against live competition and you hope John Henson is as good as he was Friday night. The same goes for Ed Davis and Travis Wear who had good games as did Marcus Ginyard and Larry Drew. Tyler Zeller and Deon Thompson did not play particularly well, at least according to the unofficial stats posted at IC. They were a combined 2-8 from the floor. You hope that does not happen again. And you hope the other three freshman, who were mostly invisible, are not when it matters.
The title defense begins in 22 days...