Does Bojangles still offer free biscuits when the Tar Heels score over a hundred points? Because Tuesday’s game against St. Francis marked the third time in four games Carolina has entered the rarified air of sending their fans straight to Biscuitville.
Wait. No. I think I may have just broken some kind of trademark law there.
Moving on.
When you’re cracking the hundred-point ceiling with regularity, as Carolina is now, the highlights are often too numerous to discuss, as these games become an exhibition in basketball prowess, so we’re just going to focus on one.
This ridiculous Kenny Williams-to-Nassir Little alley-oop.
Let’s set the scene. Carolina jumps out to an early and commanding lead, but St. Francis just won’t go away. They’re fighting and clawing and knocking down buckets, eventually putting together a 7–0 run to come within ten points of the Heels. Their momentum is building slowly but surely and, for an instant, it appears that this game might not be as easy a cakewalk as everyone had presumed.
Then Carolina jumps on a loose ball and fast breaks the length of the court, eventually finding Kenny Williams just outside the arc. Williams throws a nearly thirty-foot lob to a soaring Nassir Little, who, if just for an instant, looked something like Vince Carter, like he might actually jump out of the Dean Dome.
The Heels stayed around ten points up for much of the remainder of the first and well into the second, but St. Francis never could quite get close enough to threaten Carolina, which eventually pulled away in earnest with about eight minutes to go in the game.
But it’s early. We’re not even at Thanksgiving yet, which means few elite programs can put any credence in the wins they’ve racked up this far. For the big teams, these games are meant as a warm-up, to knock whatever rust has accrued since March off of the proverbial wheels. For the little guys, these games are a way for them to get televised, sometimes in front of a national audience, to make some scratch for their program and to pit their far less talented rosters against blue chips.
The big teams—the Carolinas, the Dukes, the Kansases, the Virginias—are supposed to win. And they’re supposed to win big.
Thus, in sticking with the prescribed format, Carolina has won each of their five games by an average of more than thirty points. They’re beating lesser teams and they’re beating them bad.
With marquee matchups on the horizon, however, those games the Heels can sleepwalk through are about to come to a swift and violent end. Late next week, Carolina plays a very good-looking Michigan team that currently sits two spots behind them in the national rankings, at ninth. Then, after an early-December matchup with UNCW, they have home games against third-ranked Gonzaga and tenth-ranked Kentucky.
Here’s hoping the rust is thoroughly knocked off.
