CHAPEL HILL -- Deer season ended New Year's Day, but Tar Heel season has only just begun.
Georgia Tech became North Carolina's sixth conqueror yesterday, blowing a 20-point lead yet still surviving 73-71 for two elemental reasons. The Yellow Jackets put better players on the floor, and they made better plays with the game on the line.
Carolina committed 26 turnovers during a 19-point fiasco at Clemson and 17 against softer Georgia Tech pressure, some at the worst possible moments. It took the performance of Will Graves' lifetime -- 24 points on 5 3-pointers -- to rescue a low-voltage offense and remove a lifeless crowd from a dome-sized ventilator.
Georgia Tech is always the Ramblin' Wreck, but right now Carolina looks like a train wreck. Coach Roy Williams, wearing a blue mood under his pink shirt, sped through a litany of shortcomings and put exhausted confidence at the top.
"I'm not used to coaching Jayhawk basketball or Tar Heel basketball or biddie-league basketball without any confidence, but we've put ourselves in this spot and we've got to figure out a way to dig out of it," Williams said. "We can go belly up, but I choose not to do that, and I told them that in the locker room."
Graves partly disagreed. "We have too much confidence, maybe, in my eyes," he said. "We just expect everything to be handed to us."
Williams traces the declining confidence to Carolina's collapse against College of Charleston, which rallied from 11 down in the last 4:02 and forced overtime on a prayerful 3-pointer that grazed the sky.
"When we didn't execute at the end of that game, I think that probably shook us more than anything," Williams said. "But our attention to detail is just ..."
His mind flashed to a play with about seven minutes left. Carolina had cut Tech's lead to three, but frantic point guard Larry Drew dribbled across the key and stunned the trailing Graves with an absurd pass. The ricochet fed a dunk by 30-point scorer Iman Shumpert.
"You turn the ball over to a guy sprinting down the court, throw a pass to him on the side of his head from four feet," Williams said. "What that is, is lack of confidence. You're tentative or too excited or whatever it is. I don't lack in any confidence, so I can't tell you."
He fumed a bit and concluded: "You can't expect things to be given to you. In the ACC, people don't give you wins. In the ACC, you have to play and you have to take things. You have to compete and you have to compete with your brain."
No more Lawson
By the time the Tar Heels reached the Final Four last year, Williams could count on superstars Ty Lawson and Tyler Hansbrough, and he could count on shooting stars Wayne Ellington and Danny Green. Sometimes, he could count on blossoming star Ed Davis and whirling Deon Thompson.
Carolina suddenly has no stars, just a long roll of hesitant role players. Williams lost seven of his top eight guys in 2006, after his first NCAA title, but holdover David Noel became the vibrant leader of the 23-8 transition team. The vast freshman class included Hansbrough, a relentless achiever who defied his age and emerged as a player for the ages.
Trumpeted recruit John Henson doesn't qualify as the next Hansbrough. He's as thin as a 7-iron and half a step out of step. Drew carries a load far heavier than his repertoire can support. The freshmen aren't ready for prime time. Senior Marcus Ginyard plays like someone staggering out of mothballs, not Noel for the defense. Tyler Zeller's hurt.
Practice reconvenes Monday.
"You don't try to kill people," Williams said. "I could kill Tyler Hansbrough. He didn't care, because he thought he was better than you today, tomorrow, next year, next month. And, if you come back in the second life, he thought he was going to beat you then, too."
As you might have noticed, Tyler Hansbrough doesn't play here anymore.
lrawlings@wsjournal.com
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