My eyes deceive me: This can't be North Carolina

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- I must have wandered into the wrong gym. As part of our College Basketball Road Trip for CBSSports.com, we were scheduled to be in one of the meccas of college basketball, Chapel Hill, N.C., for the Tar Heels' battle versus Florida State. However, somewhere, I must have taken a wrong turn because the team I just saw get humiliated 77-67 by Florida State in a "not as close as the score indicates" game simply cannot be North Carolina, can it?

Will Graves and the Tar Heels are an embarrassing 3-10 in the ACC. (AP)

The group I saw on Wednesday night must be imposters. This group of players allegedly claiming to be "North Carolina" bore a strange resemblance to the team playing against Michael J. Fox's juggernaut in Teen Wolf.

They made careless pass after careless pass, allowed nine first-half three pointers, were outhustled to nearly every loose ball and looked so disoriented on offense that they must have just met each other walking into the arena. I know this group has eight players who were considered among the best in their class coming out of high school, but perhaps that was in curling, not basketball.

The coach of this group of players also couldn't have been Williams. While he did have a similar look, this coach went an entire 40 minute game without making any offensive adjustments, threw together substitution patterns as if he had been given a ping-pong dispenser by the North Carolina Lottery and wore a perplexed look on his face as if he had spent the weekend watching Syriana in Arabic on Blue Ray.

And that crowd couldn't have been the UNC crowd. The lower arena had large pockets of empty seats and the upper arena was so empty it looked like it had been booked for a John Mayer concert at the Apollo Theater. The group that remained did make some noise during a late, futile rally by the Heels to make the final score look respectable, but for most of the game, it could have easily doubled as the NPR studio.

It is true that the team I saw play had "North Carolina" written on their chests, but it wasn't the Baby Blue that I am so accustomed to seeing, but rather a metallic, silvery color that can best be described as "hideous." The uniforms were worn to celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Michael Jordan Brand by Nike but his Airness didn't bother to show up, maybe because the combination of the fashion and basketball faux pas would have been too much to handle.

No, you will never convince me that the team I saw suffer the indignity of being on the receiving end of a Seminole War Chant by FSU fans in its own building as clock wound down was the North Carolina Tar Heels, now 3-10 in the ACC.

Maybe I slipped into a parallel universe where John Edwards is giving relationship advice, Carl Lewis is winning Grammy's and Jay Leno is funny. Otherwise my world is rocked, because this certainly isn't Carolina basketball.