Notes and Quotes: UNC gearing for rivalry game with N.C. State

Before the basketball season began, many hoops prognosticators had N.C. State pegged as the ACC’s top team.

Dexter Strickland wasn’t one of them.

“They talk those guys up every single year and we beat them every single year,” the North Carolina guard told reporters in October. “They are the least of our worries. Beat us one year and then they can talk smack. Until then, you can’t put them in the mix.”

Now, the time has come for Strickland and his teammates to walk the walk.

The Tar Heels (13-5, 3-2 ACC) will tangle with No. 18 N.C. State (15-4, 4-2) in Raleigh on Saturday, where they’ll look to extend their series winning streak to 14 games.

That recent one-sidedness might have led some players — like Strickland — to downplay the rivalry. But for coach Roy Williams, the matchup is still as important as ever.

“My guys, they think Michael Jordan invented the game. That’s as far back as they go,” Williams said Friday. “It means a lot more to me because I grew up in this state. I went to school here, and some of my close friends went to North Carolina State. But kids don’t look at history like that. They could care less about what happened 25 years ago.”

This year, the rivalry could take on a different feel, as an unranked UNC team will face a ranked N.C. State team for the first time since Jan. 20, 1990.

Coach Mark Gottfried’s crew boasts five players in double-digits in points per game and is third in the nation in field-goal percentage at 51 percent. Compared to the young Tar Heels, N.C. State is led by veterans C.J. Leslie, Richard Howell and Scott Wood, and has a point guard in Lorenzo Brown that leads the league in assists.

That group could bring some added motivation into Saturday’s game after falling to Wake Forest earlier in the week.

“They have a great team. They have great players,” junior Reggie Bullock said. “And I know tomorrow they’ll come out ready to play a lot hungrier than they did in that Wake Forest game.”

Because N.C. State has so many scoring options to turn to, the Tar Heels will have to be especially sharp on the defensive end.

“If we wanna win this game, we have to play defense for 40 minutes,” Bullock said. “They have five great players in every position. We’ve got five great players in every position, so it’s just going to be a battle on the defensive end of the floor.”

While N.C. State will be coming off a loss, the Tar Heels will travel to Raleigh riding three straight conference wins. After beginning ACC play 0-2, Williams said his team’s confidence has soared.

“It takes time to get those guys out of the doldrums and get them to be a little more confident and understand that it’s just college basketball and the world hasn’t ended,” Williams said. “I think we are playing better. We’re practicing better, and I think that transfers to the court, too.”

As for Strickland’s confident boast before the season?

“I probably wish he hadn’t done it,” Williams said.

“I like it when you back it up.”

McAdoo’s finding his groove

Sophomore James Michael McAdoo hasn’t yet lived up to all of the hype that surrounded him in the preseason, but Roy Williams said that’s no fault of his own.

“It’s sort of like Marvin Williams: He didn’t choose to be the second pick in the draft, and he’s having a pretty darn good pro career,” Williams said. “Everybody’s saying, ‘Well, he was the second pick in the draft.’ Well, he didn’t choose to do that. Just like James Michael didn’t put out, ‘I wanna be a top-five draft pick.’

“It’s these other experts, and now they’re trying to back up. They’re getting closer to common sense instead of being idiots themselves.”

While McAdoo hasn’t necessarily played like a top-five pick, he’s still been one of UNC’s most consistent performers. He leads the Tar Heels with 14.7 points per game and 8.3 rebounds per game, and he’s come on strong during UNC’s three-game winning streak.

He’s also playing with a much larger target on his back than he did a season ago.

“He’s a guy that played as a freshman, played like a freshman” Williams said. “And he had a four-to-six-game stretch there where he was asked to do more, and he did more, and he was successful at it.

“But the defense was never aimed at him. We still had Harrison Barnes and Tyler Zeller and John Henson, and those guys, and it’s a lot easier when the defense isn’t aimed to stop you.”

A near changing of the guard

Roy Williams said “there’s no question” that he’d like to see his guards shoot better.

UNC’s starting guards Dexter Strickland and freshman Marcus Paige are scoring 7.9 and 6.7 points per game, respectively. Paige in particular has struggled to connect at times, shooting 32.6 percent on the season.

Because both guards have delivered in other aspects of the game, they’ve remained in the starting lineup.

But Williams did consider making a change in the last few weeks.

“Three or four games ago, I told them I was getting ready to substitute for them before the game started, take them out of the starting lineup because their defensive grades were so poor,” Williams said. “And since then, their defensive grades have been very good.”

Though the numbers may not show it, Williams said he believes Strickland is shooting better than he did a year ago. As for Paige, Williams said the best is yet to come.

“Particularly with a freshman like Marcus, you’re not going to have everything,” Williams said. “Every now and then you’ll get a Tyler Hansbrough, but they’re few and far between.”

Odds and ends

• Reggie Bullock said he’s been pleased with the team’s freshmen. “We’ve been seeing a lot of great things out of Marcus, J.P. (Tokoto), Joel (James) coming in giving us good minutes, Brice (Johnson) coming in bringing energy, and I believe that their confidence is just starting to build,” Bullock said.

• Roy Williams has some concern with how his young frontcourt will match up with N.C. State veterans C.J. Leslie and Richard Howell. “C.J. and Richard are much better — they’re more mature, they’re more experienced, they’re more aggressive on the offensive end,” Williams said. “They’re a lot better, and we traded guys who were in the top 17 picks in the draft for two freshmen, and that’s not a very good trade.”

• Williams had some thoughts on the state of the ACC and college basketball. “In the ACC, once you go into conference play, you never know what happens. We’ve had teams score 100. We’ve had teams score 30. I don’t think there’s any way you can explain it. I think it’s just college basketball. It’s kids playing college basketball. You guys don’t like the word ‘parity.’ We don’t like the word ‘mediocrity’ that we have to listen to, either. But that’s the bottom line, that’s what it is. There’s a lot of parity in it,” Williams said.

• One more note from Williams: Rankings? What rankings? “I never look at the rankings unless it’s right there in front of me. And that’s not just this year. I’ve been trying to find out where we’re ranked in baseball because somebody told me one poll picked us one and one poll picked us five. I care about that, but I don’t care about it in basketball,” Williams said.