Written by Zach Harper | 06 April 2009

By Phillip Barnett




It was never close, the last game of the college basketball season that is.

Going into Monday night's college basketball championship game between the University of North Carolina and Michigan State I figured I would write the story from one of two angles; either a) Michigan State found a way to put the previous 35 point loss to that very team in that very stadium in the past and find the mental resolve to beat the team that almost every pundit predicted to be the national champion during before the season even started, or b) North Carolina was able to fight off an inspired Michigan State team who played motivated enough by their embarrassing loss in their previous meeting to keep the game close, but Carolina's depth was able to hold off the Spartans.

Obviously, neither of these things ever happened, so writing an insightful, unique story about a blow-out national championship game became harder than expected just 10 minutes into the game when UNC had tripled the Spartans score with a 33 to 11 lead. Just 10 minutes later the Tar Heels went into halftime with two national championship records - the most points scored in the first half of a national championship game (55) and the largest lead going into halftime of a national championship game (21). Needless to say, it was not a fun game to watch.

However, watching this game reminded me made me realize that there might be about 938,475 stories about the parallels of North Carolina's team that took the title in 2005 with this year's team, but they'll probably do this for all of the wrong reasons.

They'll talk about the quickness of the point guards (Raymond Felton in 2005 and Ty Lawson in 2009), the ability for the off guard to score in bunches (Rashad McCants in 2005 and Wayne Ellington in 2009), the forward who seemingly did everything (Reyshawn Terry in 2005 and Danny Green in 2009) and the ability of the heralded big man to operate on the block and create shots for his teammates (Sean May in 2005 and Tyler Hansbrough in 2009).

Not only that, but they'll mention the freshman who NBA scouts drooled over even though he came off the bench (Marvin Williams in 2005 and Ed Davis in 2009), the frustrating back up point guards who both, ironically, wore the number 11 (Quintin Thomas in 2005 and Larry Drew in 2009), the teams' respective depth (role players like Melvin Scott, Jackie Manuel, Jawad Williams, Wes Miller and David Noel in 2005 and Deon Thompson, Bobby Frasor and Tyler Zeller in 2009) and even how they ironically beat a Big 10 school to win the title (Illinois in 2005). This much I know.

However, "they" will all miss the bigger picture, and the bigger picture is this: the last two North Carolina championship teams will have produced nothing but decent to mediocre professional basketball players.

Of the Tar Heels who are in the NBA now, only Williams' career (playing for the Atlanta Hawks) is shaping out to be decent. Raymond Felton's career feels like it should be somewhere between mediocre and decent, but some will argue that the previous statement would almost be glamorizing a career. Rashad McCants' (who I foolishly thought would have a somewhat good NBA career) career thus far has been mediocre with an occasional game where he showed off the knack he once had for putting points on the board, but in reality, his career has been somewhere between really bad and exceedingly average.

There were also the role players who are either a) playing in the NBA's D-League or b) have dropped off the face of the earth, and I fear these are the exact same things that will happen to this years North Carolina team. Ty Lawson will end up in a situation like Sacramento, be forced into a starting role that he's not ready for and turn the ball over too much. Wayne Ellington will end up somewhere like Indiana and come off the bench for a team that gets no national attention and lose his shooting touch and Tyler Hansbrough will end up on the Clippers and have an injury plagued career or to Portland and never work himself into the rotation to get hurt. However, Ed Davis will come out after this season, way too early, and (probably) get drafted by the Houston Rockets and put up semi-decent numbers his third year in the league when he gets some professional weight on him.

The saddest part about all of this is the fact that North Carolina is becoming Duke, just the hipster version because Michael Jordan went there. There was nothing intrinsically similar about North Carolina's national champion teams from 1982 or 1993 and definitely not the 1998 team that made the Final Four. Dean Smith coached those teams, and all of those teams had a different personality. Since Roy Williams has taken over, I haven't seen anything markedly different about his first team (2003) when compared to every team he's coached since then.

Williams has become the more tolerable version of Duke's Coach K in the sense that he has a system, and that system will give every team he coaches the same identity. There is nothing different about Duke this year than there was about Duke in 1991 in the same way there hasn't been anything different about North Carolina in seven years - the only reason the Heels get away with it is the fact that casual college basketball fans have been culturally socialized to understand that North Carolina is a cool team to like (unless, I guess, you casually like the Duke Blue Devils).

In the title game North Carolina was great and dominate, and I whole-heartedly congratulate them on their victory. However, the bigger story here was how predictable they were - and much more - how predictable they're seemingly going to be as these current guys start playing 82-game seasons and new Tar Heels find their way to Chapel Hill.

I guess I kind of knew all of this all along. I mean, as someone who used to follow the Tar Heels religiously, I kind of didn't care about some of the losses suffered this season because this team didn't really mean anything to me - and I'm guessing this is how Duke fans have felt for almost three decades now. At this point, I think I'm done with the Tar Heels. I kind of had to stay for this last year because I was still a die hard fan when Hansbrough's class and the Lawson-Ellington class first got to Chapel Hill, but knowing that each team for now on is going to be the same as the 2009 and 2005 teams, I think it's time for me to move on. However, I kind of feel like that older college guy who picks up freshmen girls just to dump them weeks later because I'm finally getting that Sports Illustrated subscription - and I guess that's all I really wanted anyway.

< Prev		Next >