In just the second ACC contest of the year, North Carolina is facing one of only two teams predicted to finish ahead of the Tar Heels in Chapel Hill Thursday night.

Virginia Tech, picked by ACC writers to finish second in the league to Duke, has won six games in row including a 71-59 ACC win over Florida State Saturday. All-ACC selection Malcolm Delaney is leading the way offensively and Jeff Allen is the leading defender and rebounder.

Carolina stands at 11-4 including an ugly win in Virginia Saturday.

“Our losses were against good teams but we just didn’t play as well as we needed to play,” UNC coach Roy Williams said during a teleconference Monday. “I think now the guys are understanding that we gotta step up and play. We’re going to get everybody’s best shot Nobody is going to roll over just because we’re North Carolina.”

Williams said he was proud of the tenacity it took of coming from 11 down against the Cavaliers when things weren’t going well for them.

“Just because we haven’t played well the last six minutes doesnt mean we can’t play well the next six minutes,” Williams said, adding that coaches try to get the players to focus on the next play. “I told them at halftime (of the Virginia game) ‘that’s about as bad as we can play.’ I told them at the 10 minute mark ‘we’ve been awful but we’re still here and have a chance.’ That’s been important to our team and will continue to be important.”

Now that the ACC season has begun, don’t expect NC State coach Sidney Lowe to change the way he’s playing his point guards. He says both are getting better and settling in.

Many observers had expected freshman Ryan Harrow to have replaced senior starter Javier Gonzalez by now but it hasn’t happened even though Harrow is averaging about two more minutes a game than Gonzalez.

“It’s going to take both of those guys to play well for us,” Lowe said. “They have to be ready to go and provide some direction on the floor and keep the push going. I’m very pleased with both of them right now.”

Harrow has 52 assists compared to Gonzalez’ 32 assists and is averaging 11 points a game compared to 5 points a game for Gonzalez. Still, Gonzalez has started every game.

Perhaps some senior leadership and the sense of paying dues plays into that decision. Lowe says that Gonzalez is pushing the ball up the floor better of late so, unless Lowe is playing possum, don’t expect Harrow to start anytime soon.

The State team left early today to avoid weather on its trip to Chestnut Hill to play Boston College Tuesday at 9 p.m.

The TV announcers kept talking about what a good game the UNC at Virginia game was. And I normally like lower scoring, fewer possession games. But this was not a good game.

It was a good 62-56 win for the Tar Heels, who rallied from 11 down in the second half to win a road game to start the ACC season. But this was not a good game.

This was a game that was tied with 2:56 to go and was a one-point game with 38 seconds to go. But this was not a good game.

Neither team shot very well. And while it was close at the end, the game didn’t really seem close throughout. Carolina had a big lead early and Virginia had a big lead in the second half.

The 12-minute stretch during the middle of the game when Carolina scored just two points was like watching paint dry. Despite the futility, the Cavaliers came out of the 12 minutes with only an eight-point lead.

The game did show that Carolina can hit free throws – especially with John Henson on the bench as the Heels canned 14 of their last 16 from the line.

And the game did show that this Carolina team, when it gets behind, is tougher than last year’s team. This team is willing to grind it out and keep playing its game until something breaks for them.

For more on the Virginia game, please click here.

With a little time on their hands during break, the North Carolina Tar Heel players have been pulling pranks on one another.

One of the latest comes at the hands of the subs who come in at the end of games to mop up to a chorus of “shoot, shoot” from the Carolina students living out their George Plimpton-like dreams. The victim was John Henson whose car was covered with 2400 sticky notes. Click here for video.

The players – Daniel Bolick, Stewart Cooper, DJ Johnston, Patrick Crouch and David Dupont – have dubbed themselves “Blue Steel.” Henson thought the culprits were Larry Drew and Justin Watts who had earlier been the victims of pranks themselves.

A retaliation attack of cotton balls, baby powder and Saran Wrap was made on Johnston’s car today.

Players and coaches alike seem to have enjoyed the hijinks and say that this team has good chemistry. The Tar Heels take on Virginia to open the ACC season at noon
Saturday.

Just nine months ago the feds closed an 18-month case against the Orange County Schools for supposedly shortchanging girls athletic teams. The U.S. Office for Civil Rights investigated gender equity in the district’s athletics programs and found the complaint to be groundless. Again, it took a year and a half for them to investigate and find the complaint groundless.

Now the feds are coming after the Wake County Schools based on an accusation from the National Women’s Law Center that Wake and 11 other school systems across the country have failed to provide high school girls with equal opportunities as boys to play interscholastic sports.

Title IX was a commendable venture when it started in 1972. There were few opportunities for girl athletes. Now that there are lots of opportunities, radical feminist groups like the National Women’s Law Center are unnecessarily politicizing Title IX and pushing it to the extremes.

What they and the feds don’t want to admit is that men and women are different. While women outnumber men about 60 percent to 40 percent in society, men care more about athletics in general than women. They watch sports more and they play sports more. They have more interest in sports and they are generally better at sports than women. Take the best male athlete and the best female athlete in any sport and compare.

Colleges are especially hurt by Title IX today. Many more women are attending universities today than they did in 1972. So, the percentage of women’s teams have had to increase yet men remain more interested in athletics than women. Over a 15-year period in the ’90s and ‘2000s, something like 6,000 opportunities for women were added while something like 20,000 opportunities for men were lost.

Schools are forced to field women’s teams at the expense of men’s teams because of overzealous social engineering. Benefitting a handful of female students at the expense of a bunch of male students doesn’t seem fair to me. And Title IX was meant to be about fairness, wasn’t it?

Fielding women’s teams where there is no wide interest of potential players or little interest of fans creates a financial burden on athletic budgets.

If a high school or college has 60 percent females, do they really need 60 percent of the athletic opportunites? If you take 100 women and 100 men and ask them about their interests, I bet more than 90 percent of the men would include sports in their first two or three interests whereas I bet the number of women including sports would be half that, especially when you are talking about playing sports. Yet females have to have more of the sports opportunities?

A 10-year-old case against the Tacoma, Wash. school district has been recently settled. Someone wasn’t happy that while the school district had 51 percent males, 57 percent of athletes in the district were males. Today, athletic participation by males is 50 percent. So, you would think that men and women are equally interested in sports. In order to placate the feds, girls’ teams are now fielded in water polo, wrestling and, get this, bowling. There are 12 girls’ athletic teams now and 10 boys’ athletic teams. Really? So, are girls now suddenly more interested in sports than boys?

I haven’t seen the big drumbeat for women’s wrestling but I guess if you dress ’em up like the ones on TV, you’ll at least have some male fans showing up to watch.

At my son’s preschool, not one teacher or administrator is male. I assume this is because of a disproportionate interest of females to have those jobs and not some plot against men. But maybe I should call the feds in for an 18-month investigation just to make sure.

University of North Carolina sophomore outfielder Brian Goodwin will transfer to Miami-Dade Community College for the 2011 season. The Rocky Mount native started all 60 games last year, batted .291 and was a Louisville Slugger Freshman All-America.

Goodwin had been suspended from the team this season due to academic reasons. By playing at a community college, he would be available for the pro baseball draft in June. He could also opt to transfer back to a four-year school after the spring semester. No word if either UNC or Goodwin would be interested in his return.

Despite the griping and moaning about North Carolina being the beneficiaries of late-game breaks, the Tar Heels not only deserved to win the Music City Bowl they rightly won the game.

The pro-Tennessee factions on the Internet are claiming that Volunteer defender Janzen Jackson should not have been called for a personal foul for leading with his helmet in hitting UNC receiver Todd Harrelson late in the game. Please look at the attached photo above and judge for yourself but, unless you’re in denial, you’ll see it’s obvious that Jackson led with his head.

Then they argue that Harrelson didn’t have possession of the ball following Jackson’s illegal hit until he was out of bounds. Having looked at the replay several times, not only is there no indisputable evidence that it wasn’t a catch, to me it looks as if his right shoulder hits down in bounds. There certainly was nothing in the replays that would overturn the officials call that Harrelson had possession of the ball in bounds.

Then they argue that Carolina’s poor time management at the end should have cost them the game. Funny thing is that a late hit perhaps should have been called on Tennessee’s LaMarcus Thompson following a Dwight Jones catch. That would have moved the ball to about the 12 yard line and stopped the clock. Had that happened, as perhaps it should have, there would have been no clock issues at the end. Volunteer fans have a point that UNC’s Ryan Taylor made contact with Thompson but clearly to me it wasn’t enough to make Thompson pop Jones like he did.

I certainly could forget about that late-hit call except for the fact that some argue that when TJ Yates alertly spiked the ball with one second left, Carolina should have been called for a 15-yard illegal participation penalty rather than a 5-yard too many men on the field call. If the late hit had been called and the illegal participation penalty had been called, the final field goal still would have been from approximately the same distance.

Even if a 15-yard penalty had been assessed, Casey Barth very well could have hit a 49-yarder to send the game into overtime. Not only has he missed just one field goal from longer than 40 yards this year, he’s hit a 49-yarder this season.

Then they argue that, by rule, the official should have stood over the ball as time expired in order to allow the defense to adjust. Now can you imagine the uproar if time ran out because an official wouldn’t get out of the way so Carolina could spike the ball? To me that would have been a much bigger injustice.

Yes, it was rather stupid that the Heels had players running all over the place in the final seconds. But would the NFL’s 10-second runoff rule really have been justice. Carolina was rightly penalized – should they have gotten the death penalty for confusion?

I may be the only person alive that doesn’t like the NFL’s 10-second runoff rule – when an offensive foul occurs in the final 10 seconds, the game is over. The game should be played until it’s over, especially if the ball is spiked or otherwise time is legally stopped (running out of bounds, incomplete pass, etc.)

David Parry, who oversees college football officiating for the NCAA, said that he anticipates that the NCAA rules committee would discuss moving to the NFL 10-second runoff rule. He also correctly said that under current college rules (which both teams had to play by I might add) the officials, as bad as they were (my words and you can read more about that here), correctly adjusted the clock to one second.

What everyone seems to be forgetting is that the penalty didn’t give Carolina another play. The legal spike by Yates gave Carolina another play. Again, the Tar Heels were appropriately penalized on the play.

Then the pro-Tennessee factions say that as soon as Carolina lined up for the field goal, the clock should have started and that one second is not enough time to snap the ball. If one second isn’t enough time to snap the ball, then games should end a second earlier. I’m not sure I follow that logic. Of course you can snap the ball as soon as time is started and it appears that’s what Carolina did.

While everyone is focused on the last 31 seconds, perhaps more attention should be paid to some other factors. For instance, Carolina held Tennessee to 27 yards rushing. UNC held the lead for most of the game. UNC blocked a PAT that allowed for the last-second efforts. Plus, Tennessee got away with several taunting and excessive celebrations after touchdowns.

If you wanna get specific
If you really want to get touchy, Tennessee often had linemen or backs moving on the snap of the ball on key plays and it was never called. In addition, tackle Ja’Wuan James, on most obvious passing situations, lined up off the line of scrimmage, meaning there weren’t enough players on the line. He sometimes lined up a yard and a half to two yards off the line of scrimmage. This gives a lineman a pass protection advantage.

To be specific, on a third-and-two play on the opening drive, Tennessee receiver Gerald Jones went into motion and as he came to a stop he went forward a half yard. You can’t move forward before the snap of the ball. The Volunteers converted that key play.

On a third-and-one play in Carolina territory in the first quarter, Tennessee’s left guard Jarrod Shaw started early. It wasn’t called. The Volunteers converted. Later in the same drive, on third and 10, James once again lined up well off the line of scrimmage and then came out of his stance before the snap of the ball. Neither was called. The Volunteers threw for nine yards, went for it on fourth down, got it, and then threw a touchdown to tie the score.

In the second quarter, on a second-and-10 play from their own 15, Tennessee tight end Mychal Rivera moved early. It wasn’t called and Rivera caught a pass for a first down.

On the play where UNC’s Kendric Burney intercepted the ball and then fumbled it right back, James was lined up in the backfield. Instead of Tennessee getting a fresh set of downs, had the penalty been called, the Volunteers would have had a second-and-19 situation at their own 21-yard line.

On Tennessee’s 45-yard TD pass play in the second quarter, while a beautiful play, tackle Daniel Hood could very easily have been called for holding UNC’s Jared McAdoo.

On Tennessee’s key third-and-18 play on the fourth quarter scoring drive to put them ahead, the Volunteers passed for 20 yards down to Carolina 8 yard line. Good thing for Tennessee that the officials didn’t see James move a tad early once again.

Yet on the ensuing Carolina drive the officials, having not called any of the motion penalties pointed out above, had the nerve to call a phantom illegal shift on a play where the Tar Heels went 25 yards into Volunteer territory with four minutes left. Then a couple of plays later, when Tennessee was offsides, the Tar Heels should have gotten a free play but officials wrongly blew the play dead.

But the same eagle-eye officials saw UNC’s Dwight Jones apparently step on the chalk on a play where he had picked up a key first down. Instead a penalty was called on Carolina for illegal touching.

Two plays later the officials charged UNC’s TJ Yates with intentional grounding because the ball didn’t make it to the line of scrimmage. Of course that’s pretty hard to do with defensive players hanging all over you.

Carolina, suddenly dealing with stickler officials, failed to convert on a fourth-down play with 1:36 to play and the game appeared to be over. But Tennessee played it conservatively and couldn’t get a first down, punting it back to UNC with 31 seconds to go and setting up the wild finish.

With 31 seconds left in the game, Carolina had 10 penalties and Tennessee had five. Late in the game and in overtime, Tennessee self destructed with three key penalties.

My point is that the game could have changed on any number of plays throughout the game, and that officials generally did not favor Carolina as some post-game analysts have suggested. In fact, if anything, the officials, who you remember wrongly called the game over and thus gave Tennessee the win when there was really a second left, hurt the Tar Heels more than the Volunteers.

Senior leader Tracy Smith is finally back in the lineup to help out the three freshmen that have led the way for N.C. State and the Pack is excited about the prospects.

“We’re coming off a good showing,” Wolfpack coach Sidney Lowe said of State’s 76-54 win over San Diego. “Last game we had Tracy Smith back and obviously we’re excited about that.”

Smith has been out for all but three of State’s games because of a knee injury but he scored 16 points against San Diego and looked in midseason form.

Smith had been concerned about coming back too early but with only one nonconference game left Wednesday against Elon, the Pack needs him for the ACC run.

“He was a little hesitant to give it a try even with little slight discomfort,” Lowe said during his weekly media teleconference. “It’s a matter of him going out and understanding that there will be some discomfort but that the injury is gone.”

Smith told Lowe during the game that he felt great and wanted to stay in the game. As a result Smith played more minutes than Lowe originally anticipated.

So far, so good, Lowe said. “We’ll see if there is any further discomfort,” he said.

Despite more consistent play from a number of players over the last few games, UNC coach Roy Williams isn’t sure if his Tar Heels are ready for ACC play.

“You don’t ever know if you’re ready until you get out there and play the games,” Williams said, adding that the Heels have done what they can to prepare by playing a good schedule and playing good teams on the road.

“I would have like us to have played better in some of those games,” Williams said, especially pointing to the loss in Greensboro against Texas. “We did some nice things in the Texas game but we needed to win that game.”

The Heels led the Longhorns by seven with less than six minutes to play but ended up losing by two.

“We didn’t finish out the Texas game. You always have that in the back of your mind, wondering if you’ve gotten rid of that completely,” Williams said during his weekly media teleconference.

But Carolina’s defense has improved of late and that’s resulted in a pair of blow-out victories. “I don’t know that I’d say we’ve turned the corner by any means but we are getting better,” Williams said.

Williams said the work ethic, desire, efficiency, intensity and concentration is all there and gotten better during the season. “As long as you have those things, you have a tremendous opportunity to improve,” he said.

“We’re a work in progress but we’re excited to start ACC play.”

The Heels travel to 8-5 Virginia Saturday for a noon tipoff.