By: JJ Lanier

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

At the beginning of the season there were basically two expectations I had for the North Carolina Tar Heels.

The first one was that I figured due to a lot of the experience they had coming back they would be able to start the season off on a hot streak and be one of the better teams in the country.

The second thing was that as the season progressed, and really once the conference schedule started, they would begin to regress back to the mean a little bit. For the most part the first expectation took place. I’m still waiting on the second.

(Before I go any further, I do realize what I’m about to say will sound odd considering that Carolina just got Nancy Kerrigan’d by the Hurricanes down in Coral Gables. However, I do think their loss to Miami was more along the lines of them just having a bad game as opposed to it being an indication of what to expect for the remainder of their season.)

I’ll admit that predicting a fast start to the season wasn’t exactly an example of me going out on a limb. Even though Carolina lost Marcus Paige and Brice Johnson off last year’s team, they still returned 6 juniors and seniors that played major minutes last season.

Those guys are used to playing together so while teams that rely heavily on incoming freshman are building chemistry during those first few months, the Tar Heels were ahead of the game.

The fact they have been this successful, this far into the season, has honestly surprised me. There’s a reason why they have so many upperclassmen playing valuable minutes- none of those guys are/were talented enough to have been high draft picks had they left early.

That’s not to say they’re college’s version of Jackie Moon and the Flint Michigan Tropics from Semi-Pro, but there are probably 8-10 teams that are more talented than the ‘Heels.

As much as it pains me to say, Carolina has been the best team in the ACC, up to this point. I have idea if Joel Berry II has switched to a vegan diet and is having kombucha put into his body intravenously, or if he’s sold his soul to devil, but whatever he’s done to evolve into the player he has become has worked. Anyone who tells you they predicted his game to excel to this level is lying.

You can insert whatever diet joke you want about Kennedy Meeks (maybe he’s on the vegan diet?), but to equate his success this season solely on his weight loss would be doing him a disservice. To drop enough pounds that you could form an entirely new human is one thing, but to take advantage of that new-found freedom to move on the court is something Meeks deserves a lot of credit for doing.

Combine the seasons those two men are having with the emergence of Isaiah Hicks, Kenny Williams, and Theo Pinson, as well as the maturation of Justin Jackson, and you can see why they are poised for a deep tournament run.

Plus, I know Roy gets a lot of crap from his fan base and those on the outside- deservedly so in some cases- but those guys I just mentioned aren’t developing on their own.

On paper, their remaining schedule looks tough. You could even argue in most games they will be the lesser talented of the two teams. But, as Carolina has proven all year, the better team is always the most talented.