How uneventful was this game? None of the wire photos have gotten their way to us. I almost stuck more comic book covers up here until I thought better of it.
Anyway, St. Francis is not a very good basketball team. So you can't make too much of eight players making it to double figures, or the good shooting, a lot of which came at the expense of an opponent unfamiliar with the concept of transition defense. The trends from recent games continued – Dexter Strickland has abandoned the three-point shot, and Leslie McDonald has come to love it; the team can still dominate the boards against smaller opponents, and the free throw shooting is still abysmal. Other than that, the only thing you can tell from this game is that everyone on the team is still ambulatory, and no one was left behind in New York last week. Good to know.
Oh, and Kendall Marshall surpassed Larry Drew in playing time, because Drew took himself out of the game with the tired signal a couple of times. Both played well, with only Marshall turning the ball over at all. Both played excellent defense, and Marshall had eight assists while Drew had ten points. Anyone advocating for one over the other got something to bolster their case, but there's no evidence that anything's going to change in the way Williams plays them come conference season.
UNC doesn't take the court again until next weekend at Virginia, when they finally join the rest of the ACC in conference play. Now's when things get serious, but it looks like the team is well-prepared, if far from flawless at this point. Luckily they get an easier opponent to start; we'll see how that goes.