UNC at Virginia Tech: Three Things to Watch

Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY SportsThe Heels now sit at 8-9, with their only ACC win having been a season opener that may well have been played a lifetime ago given how different the team looks now than it did then, and sitting on their second four-game losing streak of the season. Roy Williams had only had one streak that ugly in his entire UNC career prior to this. We’ve talked over and over about all the things this team needs to figure out, but games keep being played and we keep seeing the same elementary foibles. This team lacks an offensive creator, most obviously, but also just looks leaderless, on the verge of unraveling at the hint of any tension. You have to believe that Roy Williams has tried everything he can think of to try and get something going for these kids mentally in the absence of the point guard who was at least papering over all of this at the beginning of the season: just in public, he’s alternated between calling himself fireable for this year’s losses and calling out this group of players for their lack of offensive talent, and he’s been a lot more emotional about injuries than in years past: seeing if they’d get it together for his sake, to prove him wrong, or for their fallen comrades. It doesn’t seem like any of it has worked. But we are sports fans, and that means eternally continuing to invest the mental energy of optimism on the hope that things will work out before it’s too late (of course, if you’ve chosen to stop doing this, that is entirely valid too). Next up is a trip to Blacksburg to see the Virginia Tech Hokies. It’s getting hard to do this because we’re seeing the same issues game after game, but here are some things to look for in this one:

…