Tar Heels present good test

BC will see if it passes muster

About an hour before practice and two days before this afternoon's Atlantic Coast Conference opener against Boston College, North Carolina coach Roy Williams was casually fielding questions about his players from the local media.

Williams talked about how much better Tyler Hansbrough has gotten defensively, how much more Danny Green needs to concentrate, how much better a team that turned the ACC into a hardwood relay race last season could get.

He said, "If you don't get better each year, it's either you don't want to, you're not paying enough attention, or the coach is a dummy. And I don't think it's the third one."

And he couldn't have been more serious.

"I'm not the smartest guy," he said. "But I'm sure not the dumbest guy, either."

This season is as much about improvement for a Tar Heels team that had inches to work with as it is for an Eagles team that had acres.

For the Tar Heels, the question is how much better can they be if they were a game away from the national championship contest last season? It's why all five starters returned when most of them had NBA lottery tickets in their hands.

For the Eagles, the question since ending last season with losses in 13 of their final 15 games and only one road win in the conference is how much did a young team learn from the rigors of the ACC schedule?

It's the reason all five of last season's Eagle freshmen stayed in Chestnut Hill for all but three weeks last summer working on their games.

"That was a horrible taste in our mouths," said sophomore forward Corey Raji. "We all knew we had to improve on different aspects of our games. Staying up here together we could help each other out and we could build that bond that we needed to have."

North Carolina's improvement is tangible, from the unblemished record (13-0) to the No. 1 ranking. BC's improvement can only be seen from one game to the next. Eagles coach Al Skinner see today's game at Chapel Hill as a measuring stick.

"They're a very, very good basketball team," he said about North Carolina. "Excellent basketball team. Great basketball team. That's why they are where they are. That's the challenge that lies in front of us. Can we raise ourselves to that level?"

Skinner has a better idea now than he did a year ago, when a lot of the Eagles were first-timers on the ACC circuit. Jan. 31, 2008 marked the first trip to the Smith Center for almost half the roster, and they found themselves in a Carolina blue fishbowl, with 21,000 sets of eyes watching.

Guard Tyrese Rice, now a senior, remembers trying to gauge the pulse of his teammates before that game.

"I'd look around and I'd see a lot of big eyes," he said. "A lot of people looking like, 'Wow, this is crazy. I can't believe there's so many people in here.' But they're not really looking at it like we're here to send these people home with sad faces. Instead of coming in ready to play and ready to try to compete and get a win, more people were like, 'I can't believe I'm at North Carolina.' "

Center Josh Southern, now a sophomore, didn't expect to get in the game.

"I was just thinking, 'All right, I'm at North Carolina. All these historic players played here,' " he said.

Next thing he knew he was on the floor for 21 minutes banging in the post with Hansbrough.

On top of the atmosphere, North Carolina forced BC to play at a track-meet speed most of the Eagles had never experienced. The Tar Heels romped, 91-69.

Today, all the shock should have worn off.

"They should already know what to expect and how to handle it," Rice said.

After seeing the Tar Heels each of the last two seasons, Valparaiso coach Homer Drew is a believer.

"Yes, they are as good as what you hear," said Drew, whose team lost to North Carolina, 85-63, Dec. 20. "They are as good as what you see."

Valparaiso has played the No. 1 team in the nation five straight seasons (North Carolina twice, Greg Oden's Ohio State team, J.J. Redick's Duke squad, and Deron Williams's Illinois team). This Tar Heel team, according to Drew, is as lethal as any of them.

"They're going to be problems for anyone who faces them, because they hurt you so many ways," Drew said. "I'm trying to look for a weakness when we played them, just something to give our kids confidence. We couldn't find anything."

Drew tried slowing down the Tar Heels, but "they're so fast and explosive that one minute it's a tie score and 40 seconds later you're down, 8. That's how fast they can score."

After seeing his team torched for 46 points by Rice at Conte Forum later last season in a game won, 90-80, by North Carolina, Williams will have his players key on him.

"It still starts with Tyrese," Williams said. "You can't stop him, you're not going to shut him out or anything like that. You hope he shoots a bad percentage and you hope that the other guys don't feel as comfortable getting the ball where they want it from Tyrese."

But that's where Skinner feels his 12-2 team has made its biggest stride. Whether it's Rakim Sanders, Joe Trapani, or Raji, Skinner said he is comfortable looking beyond Rice for scoring.

"Last year, it was understood that if you cut off the head, the body would die," Skinner said. "I think this year if you tried to cut off the head, the body wouldn't die, it'd just grow another head."

As big as the game feels, Skinner made it clear that this is where the ACC schedule starts, not where it ends.

"It's an indication of what we've got to get ready for," he said, "because the rest of the league isn't much different."

Julian Benbow can be reached at jbenbow@globe.com.