ESPN Men's Basketball

Right about now Roy Williams has to feel like a frantic shopper on Christmas Eve.

With the recruiting window all but closed on the class of 2010, the North Carolina coach suddenly finds himself in need of some big men.

The surprising announcement that Travis and David Wear were leaving Chapel Hill leaves the Tar Heels with a gaping hole inside. With Ed Davis and Deon Thompson gone, North Carolina now has a roster that includes just two experienced big men, Tyler Zeller and John Henson and a whole lot of players under 6-4.

Williams landed the most coveted recruit in the class of 2010 in Harrison Barnes, but the 6-7 Barnes as well as Reggie Bullock and Kendall Marshall won’t solve the Heels’ inside woes.

(A suggestion: call Jay Wright. He knows how to win with a bunch of guards).

“We are extremely disappointed that David and Travis are leaving the program,’’ Williams said in a statement. “I love both kids and they would have been very important parts of our team next season. It is a significant blow to our team as we had four post players and now we are down to two. They are quality kids and will be quality players.’’

In any season this sort of late development would be difficult to digest.

On the heels of UNC’s disastrous run, it’s even more of a blow. After an NIT-padded 20-17 finish, and a more telling 5-11 mark in the ACC, North Carolina has little wiggle room. The Tar Heels need to get good again and get good again fast.

The Wear brothers could have helped that cause. Theirs was a case when the numbers didn’t tell the whole story. Travis, hobbled midseason with an ankle injury, averaged just 3.5 points and 2.2 rebounds and David averaged 2.9 points and 1.7 boards. But the two McDonald’s All-Americans clearly had talent. In their limited minutes both were aggressive and showed a good basketball IQ.

The brothers are headed back to California to figure out their next move.

“Our coaching staff will look at whatever options are available,’’ Williams said. “But it’s hard to replace two quality players at this time.’’

Indeed Williams will be searching for a pre-Christmas miracle, the hoops equivalent of finding the hot toy sitting undiscovered on a shelf.

GREENSBORO, N.C. – Some halftime thoughts:

We’re halfway to our third straight upset in the ACC tournament first round. The 10th-seeded Tar Heels are outscrapping the seventh-seeded Yellow Jackets, following a trend started by No. 9 Virginia (which beat No. 8 Boston College) and continued by No. 12 Miami (which beat No. 5 Wake Forest).

What the Tar Heels lacked in elegance that half, they made up for in effort. After falling behind 13-7, they went on a 17-0 run that was spurred by an assault on the offensive glass. Carolina outrebounded the Jackets 26-18 for the half behind an energetic half from John Henson (four rebounds), Tyler Zeller (five) and Deon Thompson (five).

In the first half, Georgia Tech got another in a series of sketchy performances from its backcourt. Brian Oliver, Iman Shumpert and Mfon Udofia were a combined 0-for-9 from the field, and Tech was 2-of-11 from 3-point range.

Tech’s big men, Derrick Favors and Gani Lawal, need more shots. They got a combined six in the first half, though they did get to the foul line for eight of Tech’s nine free throws in the half.

There are thousands of empty seats in the Greensboro Coliseum, a solid indicator that the Carolina fans have largely given up this team. Those seats normally would be filled with powder blue.

North Carolina got embarrassed on "College GameDay" Saturday, with Duke's 53 first-half points besting the 50 points the Tar Heels scored for the game.

And there at Cameron Indoor Stadium to rub it in was their famous heckler, Brian King, a Presbyterian fan who was ejected from the Dean Dome after yelling "Miss it, Deon" at Deon Thompson during a game.

Roy Williams pointed King out in December, and one has to wonder if Williams noticed the same guy wearing a blue Presbyterian College shirt -- this time sitting in the front row with the Cameron Crazies -- to watch UNC get routed and use his line on Thompson again.

According to The News & Observer:

He was invited, he said, by the students.

"I had a lot of people reach out to me after what happened ... and now that time has passed, this just looked like fun," he said.

King, who is from Concord, attended Presbyterian but grew up a Duke fan; his family even had season tickets to games, "although this is a lot better seat," he said, smiling.

CHESTNUT HILL, Mass. -- North Carolina coach Roy Williams scanned his team's schedule Friday night and saw a potential path to the NCAA tournament.

Beat Boston College on Saturday, rip off four more wins in a row to get to 8-8 in the ACC and the Tar Heels would be right there for an NCAA at-large bid.

"I thought we'd get on a run and be in the NCAA tournament," said the Hall of Fame coach. "Now we have to readjust and get it done Wednesday [against Florida State]. I've never been in this position. I've never cared if we were a one seed, two seed or a three seed. But I thought that if we win five in a row, get to 8-8, that would get us in, but we didn’t get the first step."

Despite having multiple chances to beat Boston College, the Tar Heels once again couldn't finish a game, losing to the Eagles 71-67 at Conte Forum. The loss dropped UNC to 3-9 in the ACC, 14-13 overall, and left it dangerously close to playing itself out of the NIT (it's unlikely UNC would pay to play in the CBI) and, gasp, finishing last in the ACC.

The Tar Heels have the tiebreaker with last-place NC State (3-10 in ACC play) after sweeping the Wolfpack. But if the Tar Heels were to fall so far as to finish last they would, per league rules, not participate in next season's ACC-Big Ten Challenge, just like Georgia Tech this season. That would have been unheard of a few months ago.

After the game, it was BC sophomore Reggie Jackson (17 points), not anyone on the Tar Heels, talking about winning out and finishing 8-8 in the league and possibly winning the ACC tournament and bursting a team's bubble. The Eagles now stand at 4-8 in the ACC, 13-13 overall.

"Everybody knew that this could be the start of five wins in a row," said Tar Heels senior guard Marcus Ginyard. "We were excited. We felt like we had a great attitude, a great practice and it didn't equate to the type of play we needed to win. We've got to play with more pride. That's the bottom line."

Don't blame Williams for projecting a possible NCAA tournament bid. He hasn't missed the NCAA tournament since 1989 -- his first season at Kansas -- and that was because the Jayhawks were on probation after Larry Brown's 1988 national championship season.

This is new territory for this group of Tar Heels as well as Williams. And it's hard to fathom for all of those involved.

North Carolina beat Ohio State -- with Evan Turner -- in New York in November and took out a healthy Michigan State team in the Big Ten-ACC Challenge in Chapel Hill, N.C., in December. The Tar Heels also beat the ACC's second-place team, Virginia Tech, at home, even after losing at College of Charleston in a game in which they were missing Ginyard and Will Graves to injury. Tyler Zeller missed 10 games with a stress fracture in his foot. He returned Saturday to score nine points and grab seven boards in 16 minutes, but he missed seven shots. Travis Wear missed his fourth game with a sprained left ankle and David Wear nearly missed this game with a hip injury. And, of course, double-double threat Ed Davis missed his third straight game with a fractured left wrist.

But these aren’t excuses. The Tar Heels still have talent (just watch John Henson as he scooped up a loose ball and snapped in a jumper while getting fouled or as he picked up a steal and flushed a jam). UNC has seven McDonald's All-Americans on its roster.

The Tar Heels were just 1-of-8 on 3-pointers, missed 32 2-point shots and were outrebounded by four by the smaller Eagles. Their guard play has been inconsistent, to say the least. Larry Drew II, Dexter Strickland and Leslie McDonald were unable to find a smooth stroke. Graves was 1-of-5 on 3s.

"It's been the most frustrating time I've had in coaching," Williams said.

Williams said the Charleston and Clemson losses shook UNC's confidence. He said prior to that he thought "we were really going to be good."

Williams said there was one point during the BC game when Drew looked at him after a turnover and said "my fault."

That didn’t wash well with Williams. Overall, he said the Tar Heels need to "freakin' play," since their backs were against the wall.

"You’ve got to go out and fight until you frickin' die," said a heated Williams, who has been coaching with a sling for a few weeks after undergoing shoulder surgery this season and is now dealing with a bad head cold.

The mood in the Tar Heels' locker room was somber. Remaining games against Florida State, at Wake Forest, home against Miami and at Duke all seem difficult at this stage.

Said UNC senior forward Deon Thompson, "I guess I know how other teams feel now."

That emotion may not subside until the season ends.

CLEMSON, S.C. -- Roy Williams said he was sorry for being a little late coming down to the postgame news conference.

He had to deal with travel issues as North Carolina couldn’t fly back to Chapel Hill because there wasn’t a de-icing machine handy at the airport in nearby Anderson, S.C. The Tar Heels had to instead bus back so the players could be in class Thursday morning.

But being tardy for the media, something the punctual Williams is almost never accused of, was hardly the only thing he had to apologize for Wednesday night.

The Tar Heels were embarrassed by Clemson 83-64, UNC's worst regular-season loss ever under Williams.

“I just coached a poor game,’’ Williams said. “They had a tremendous sense of urgency and tremendous passion. We went down 7-0 and I almost called a timeout and I have never done that in my life.’’

Williams went on to detail how the Tar Heels had seasoned players who couldn’t pass or catch. He talked about how the Heels played with little poise. He was dead on.

Clemson dominated Carolina so much that you would hardly believe that it was UNC, not Clemson, that was picked to challenge Duke for the ACC regular-season title.

In the first half, UNC’s bigs of Ed Davis and Deon Thompson had one field goal. They finished with a combined four.

Williams was so frustrated at one point in the second half that he benched the five starters and put in his five freshmen. Williams spent the entire time the freshmen were on the court (about 91 seconds of game time) coaching and teaching his veteran players their press offense, never once looking at the court where the freshmen were competing. Assistant coach Steve Robinson handled that duty.

“I was drawing up our press offense because we had guys going the wrong way,’’ Williams said. “I have run the same press offense for 22 years and I love for teams to press because we run right through it, but we had guys going the wrong way.’’

The Tar Heels committed an alarming number of turnovers (26) on the night and allowed Clemson to shoot 57.6 percent in the first half.

This is the second time the Tar Heels have been in the state of South Carolina in the past two weeks and they've lost both games, the first at the College of Charleston (sans injured Marcus Ginyard and Will Graves) and then at Clemson (without injured Tyler Zeller, who had his right sore foot in a walking boot for precautionary reasons).

“Clemson showed what aggressive means,’’ said Williams, who was quite despondent in the postgame media room, about as down as I’ve seen him in recent years. “They had a great sense of urgency and poise and we need to play with that type of aggression and poise. I know that I keep saying the same thing, but I just don’t have a lot to say.’’

UNC has been a drastically different team at home versus on the road this season. The Tar Heels are 11-0 at home, scoring 88.5 points, given up 67.6 and shooting 52.6 percent at the Smith Center. Away from Chapel Hill, they’re an eye-popping 1-5, scoring 74.5 points, giving up 82.7 and shooting just 42.6 percent.

The numbers don’t lie. UNC has become average away from home, a shocking statement in itself. The Tar Heels, now 1-1 in the league, looked rather pedestrian after running past Virginia Tech in the second half Sunday night at home. The ACC is available for the taking, but only to those who can win on the road.

Heck, projected last-place Virginia is the only team undefeated at 2-0.

“The league is very good right now,’’ Williams said. “You have to protect your turf at home and get wins on the road. We have to play with more poise and I have to coach better.’’

North Carolina’s question from the preseason on was going to be its ability to score and defend on the perimeter.

On the eve of the ACC, the Tar Heels haven’t been able to solve that issue confidently. Not having starters Marcus Ginyard and Will Graves against the College of Charleston on Monday night meant the Tar Heels were down their top perimeter defender and their top 3-point shooter.

What that did was give Charleston the green light to launch 3-pointers. And the Cougars didn’t hesitate, making 13-of-32 in a thrilling 82-79 victory over the Tar Heels to create a worthy court-storming at Carolina First Arena.

Meanwhile, the Tar Heels made just 1-of-6 as guards Dexter Strickland (2-of-11) and Larry Drew II (3-of-10) struggled mightily from the field. Without Ginyard and Graves the Tar Heels just don’t have the personnel to defend someone like Andrew Goudelock, who has speed and the ability to launch shots over taller defenders. He did that in making 10 of 20 overall and 4 of 8 3s, including the game-tying, overtime-inducing 3-pointer with 2 seconds left on the Cougars’ final possession.

As ESPN researcher Jason McCallum pointed out, the Charleston starting backcourt outscored its UNC counterpart 52-17. Carolina's starting guards scored or assisted on just 11 of the 27 shots the Heels made. Yikes.

North Carolina can’t win the ACC unless Ginyard and Graves are healthy, and even with them, the guard play hasn’t been as consistent as say rival Jon Scheyer and Nolan Smith at Duke. Charleston should be in the mix for the Southern Conference title as projected in the preseason. The Tar Heels were considered an ACC title contender and a possible Final Four-bound team. If the guard play doesn’t improve, then the potential of big men Deon Thompson, Ed Davis, Tyler Zeller, John Henson and David Wear won’t be enough for UNC.