Duke has superior guards with Smith, Scheyer, Singler and Dawkins. As stated above, that group of guards trumps Drew, Ginyard, Strickland, and McDonald. UNC has superior bigs. Davis, Henson, Thompson and Zeller will be tough to deal with. Although the quartet of Thomas, Miles, Mason, and Zoubek is vastly improved from a year ago, they still have work to do as a group. The wild card in all this is Ryan Kelly. He is far better than any UNC player not previously mentioned in this post. The guy will be instant offense off the bench and will do most of his damage from the high post area. It doesn't hurt that at 6'10" he is a serious threat from 3 pt land. Having said all that it will be a tight race between Duke and UNC. However, UNC's bigs can't be as effective as Roy would like w/o excellent guards to get the bigs the ball. The nod has to go to Duke. Superior guard play is almost always more important that having a quality bigs. The ideal situation is, of course, having quality guards and bigs...which is what UNC had last year. But last year was last year and last I checked, the NCAA does not start last year's champ off with and extra 10 points on the scoreboard to begin the game. Go Duke!
|