Who left the team again? Ellington Hansbrough Lawson When 3 of the starting 5 leave your team, you think you'll repeat as national champ? Hansbrough was one of the two best players last year (Griffin), and Lawson was just amazing at the 1. Ellington was a superb 2, so when you lose all three star players at once, your team will undeniably take a hit.
You look at someone like Zoubek at Duke and see the kind of impact a true big man can have. On the other hand, the West Virginia's and Butlers of the world still made it pretty far without. College basketball (and basketball in general) is increasingly a perimeter / slashing athletic wingman game, so I think the recruiting focus is in the right spot...BUT still you have to have at least some inside presence. UNC was a preseason top 3 (top 5, don't remember which exactly) team. Clearly, that was wrong, but you can't ignore the fact that most prognosticators thought the Tarheels would go far this year. You can't blame all of the season on Roy Williams. All in all he is a very good coach. But it's also not surprising that when he has the more talented team he does well and when he is short on talent he doesn't do as well. Still, it was definitely a sub-par coaching performance. The UNC team was definitely talented enough to make the tourney at least. Sure, Duke had a lot more experience and savvy players, but on a pure talent basis, the gap wasn't as large as it ended up being, imo. Which is one of the reasons why Coach K is widely regarded as such a great coach. He certainly got more out of this year's squad than I expected.
Well, the man can recruit, let's see if he can loosen the reigns and let the young guys grow this year. DD
