Brendan Marks, the Athletic, gives us his opinion on what he thinks Hubert Davis might be adjusting as the Tar Heels kick off their basketball opener tonight.

Before we get to Brendan Marks of the Athletic because the college basketball season begins tonight.

The Carolina Panthers have made two coaching changes, Steve Wilkes, relieving Evan Cooper, cornerback's coach and defensive line coach Paul Pasquiloni of their duties today. So they're now three coaches down from where they for Matt Ruhl plus whoever was was it uh snow Phil Snow like at some point they'll have no coaches left right they're gonna call me to come over now it'll be Steve Wilkes Holcomb V to the Victoria and that's it there you go that's all we need that is all they will have left isn't that interesting all right Brad Brendan R Marks on Twitter from the Athletic who covers both the Tar Heels and the Blue Devils I don't know how you're going to do that uh let's let's start with what I believe is like an underrated preseason number one is that possible that North Carolina can be number one and still somewhat under underrated yeah totally I and I agree with you because I think a lot of people look at that and sort of apply the same logic as we did this time of year last year with UCLA and people look at it and go well they were so good in the tournament and yeah sure they're bringing back a lot of the pieces and yeah that makes sense but then you know on the contrary all the haters say yeah but they were so bad the whole year and they only got good at March but I don't know I believe that North Carolina is a deserved number one I think really what it comes down to is if you believe in the changes Hubert Davis made at the end of last season or if you think it was just a team that got hot at the right time of year I think both could be true and that that's sort of why I wanted to start with that because I put myself in the camp of people who think that look I think logically UNC has to be the preseason number one they got to the national championship game last year and even though I do think that it was at least in part a hot streak they got to the national championship game and they bring back everybody but Brady manic and theoretically in terms of an athlete and statistical shooter they upgraded at the position with a veteran in Pete Nance so and they should be deeper than they were a year ago so I think you can point to the logic and say yes they should be number one but I do think that some of last year was a hot streak and guys just kind of clicking at the right time rebuilding and sort of getting back to that chemistry I think will be a bit of a challenge. Yeah I would agree with you there and you know look like I I try to rely on the analytics and try to rely on stats as much as I can and for March 1st on Bart Torvick who I like his site a lot a lot of people are familiar with Ken Palm he's similar prior to March 1st Bart had North Carolina as about the 35th best team in the country which I feel like is probably pretty fair like they weren't ranked but they were clearly a tournament team great after March 1st her Bart site North Carolina had the number one efficiency in the country overall I think the reality is probably somewhere in the middle of the two I think that this is a team that yes has a ton of ton of ton of talent Armando Beccat's going to be you know a contender for national player of the year I think Caleb Love could be an all-american like he mentioned Pete Nance comes in I think he's a better overall player than Brady Manic was but at the same time yes they did get into a rhythm and Hubert Davis basically said listen I'm not going to try and force anybody into the rotation that I don't have to I'm only playing the guys that I trust I think this year with the depth yes that's a blessing but at the same time he's got to resort out that rotation and you know Leakey Black sort of said this in jest in the preseason but he's getting used to not necessarily playing 30 minutes a game anymore so I do think there's going to be some adjusting that takes his place there I don't know that we're going to know what the rotation truly looks like until probably January but I think you can make the argument either way it just depends how you feel about North Carolina in general. Brendan Marks is joining us here from the athletic that Tar Heels will open up against UNC Wilmington tonight nine o'clock bothers me that we're playing games in the east coast that start at nine o'clock but that's fine it's all for television and we'll get to the to the Duke seven o'clock game in a minute I know you're a you're a fan of and a colleague of Sam Vasini of the athletic who does most of their most of the sites like draft and scouting work and I think Sam is great been talking to Sam for a long time he called Caleb love his most his favorite player to watch in college basketball he is certainly he runs the gamut like Caleb can be the one of the best players to watch and one of the most painful at times how does he become more of the former than the latter yeah I feel like there's one of these guys in the triangle every couple of years where there's good player and bad player so it's Caleb's turn to sort of settle into that role to me I think the biggest thing and I just worked on a feature on Caleb and got to talk to his trainer Drew Hanlon who you know works with Joel Embiid and Bradley Beal and Jason Tatum the biggest thing for Caleb is decision making you know I think we know that the guy can shoot the ball he's got 36 from three he hits the game winner over Mark Williams that's not a problem we've seen that he is capable of being aggressive and scoring inside we have seen that he is able to you know when there are options around him he's able to find his teammates he's able to make those kick out passes he had eight assists in the exhibition I know take the caliber of competition with a grain of salt but still like he can find his teammates he has talent around him uh the biggest thing is will he that that is sort of the question is is Caleb Love going to make the right decisions in terms of checking himself at times and saying listen I might be able to get a shot off here but xyz player has a wide open three in the corner and I need to trust them um you know I can try and get to the rim here am I sure that I can no uh but I'm going to try anyways those are the decisions that he has to work out of his process and I think he started to do that over the summer but that to me is the biggest thing that's the biggest way that we go from having good and bad Caleb Love to as I'm sure UNC fans hope mostly good Caleb Love. Yeah and I want people to understand that if this is not I don't like him uh this is as a as a player and if I were a Tar Heel fan there are moments where Caleb goes Caleb and he's going to be he goes hero ball and he's going to try to do it all himself and I think that's what you're talking about here but when when the when one goes in you're like oh just keep shooting because it doesn't matter where he is or who's near him as soon as that one goes in and these things seem to be late in late in games he could be 0 for 8 0 for 11 and then he throws one in from 25 and you could just keep giving him the ball because the next five are going in. I think one of my favorite stats about Caleb Love is that he had his three highest scoring performances of the season last year in the NCAA tournament but then also went five of 24 in the national title game like that is him like that is him he doesn't see defenders sometimes that's a beautiful thing and sometimes it's the reason UNC loses games. All right well other than Armando Baycott and I think what North Carolina has in him is the biggest sure thing in college basketball but other than Baycott other than Love who was the dynamic offensive guy for UNC this year? It's going to have to be RJ Davis right like I think we know that you know by this point Leakey Black is not suddenly going to become a 20-point preamp score. Love Leakey but that's that's not his game and Pete Nance is a really good complementary player I just don't know that he's ever going to be better than like the fourth option on the court at any given time you know he can do a little bit of everything but maybe isn't truly excellent in any one category and again that is perfectly fine but to me the biggest question I have about this team going into the season is three-point shooting because while you bring in Pete Nance to replace Brady he is not the pure flamethrower that Brady Manic was you know by the end of last season Brady Manic was averaging almost 10 threes a game and making 45 percent of them. Pete Nance isn't going to do that and quite frankly there is no individual on this roster who's going to do that I think the closest person who can come you know at least somewhat near to what Brady was doing in terms of three-point volume and three-point proficiency is RJ Davis he's the leading returning three-point shooter on the team and so I think for me you look at Caleb Love he's going to be a force driving to the basket Armando is going to be the garbage man inside I think RJ really has to sort of be that dynamic lead guard on the perimeter and be it creating for himself you know be it creating for others I think we saw that the offense sort of took off last season when he was playing as more of a true point guard he's going to have to sort of be the third musketeer for North Carolina to hit its offensive ceiling because while yes bringing in Pete Nance is really nice somebody's going to have to replicate some of that three-point volume I think RJ is probably the best contender. If Pete Nance were smart and I assume he is because he went to Northwestern he would grow an orange beard I would just do that if I were Pete Nance Brendan Marks from The Athletic is joining us all right how long do we give Duke because they're basically a hundred new players playing with Jeremy Roach and there's two of their best missing already how long do we give Duke before we kind of start judging what they look like I think they could be really good but I think it could take a long time. Yeah I agree with you I think that you know at bare minimum we can't judge them until both of the star freshmen who are currently injured or back and I'm not expecting either one of them to play in the opener tonight you know Derek Lively with a calf strain is much closer to being back than Dariq Whitehead is but like we're talking about the top two rated freshmen in the country two guys who are both probably going to be lottery picks they like fundamentally change the composition of this team they fundamentally change how Duke is going to play this year and they still haven't had a full practice with the full roster together like it's not just that these guys are hurt and they're missing games like when they finally come back it's quite literally going to be the first time all preseason or all season that John Shires had his full roster to work with so I don't know that you know Dariq is going to be back in the next couple of weeks I don't know that he's going to be available against Kansas for the Champions Classic next week but yeah I think I'm right there with you I think it's very very feasible that we don't know what Duke looks like in full until mid-January and honestly it could even be later than that they have so much size it's kind of I remember Duke teams that had no size and now they have I mean I can't even say too much but they have they're they're like the old Carolina teams with seven footer after seven footer after seven footer yeah there's there's certainly going to be a lineup later on this season where Duke doesn't have anybody on the court who's shorter than six five um you know you can run a a proctor Whitehead both those guys are or you can run a proctor lineup as your point guard he's six five Dariq Whitehead is six seven Mark Mitchell six eight Kyle Filipowski's you know six eleven Derek Lively seven one you can play all those dudes together um and like I'm just imagining like some of these four non-conference teams like tipping off against them like just looking across at the sheer size they have it's it's pretty foolish but I think that's what John Shire wanted he wanted versatility so he's going to be able to you know sort of plug and play these different dudes in the front court he's going to have a ton of different lineup permutations um you know again we haven't even seen what the the actual starting lineup might look like because these two guys have been hurt and Derek Lively and Dariq Whitehead so it'll be interesting but yeah I think flexibility is the name of the game and having that many bigs who can he he can sort of shift around is sort of the key for John Shire in a way is that I don't know could that work against the first year head coach like part of the part of the beauty of what Hubert Davis was able to accomplish last year was and I'm not saying he couldn't have handled these decisions that I'm I'm not in any way being disrespectful like that but it certainly eliminated the element of you know what combinations do I use I got six guys and they're going to play as maybe even less than that they're going to play as much as they can until I need somebody to sit out now now Shire's got I don't know 10 11 options when everybody's healthy yeah he does and and so I think that's going to be the thing is and that's probably one of the questions that I have and then I think a lot of people have about John Shire this season is like when it comes time to cut the lineup from 11 to 8 or 11 to 7 is he going to be able to do that we saw Hubert Davis sort of struggle with that I think in like January of last year when he was still playing Dawson Garcia when he was still playing Justin McCoy and those guys and eventually he just had to be like look this is not happening I'm making the executive decision and John Shire's gonna have to he's gonna hit that point at some point this season he's gonna have to make that call and you know he's never really had to be that guy before his personality I don't think is you know a lot of people say it's not nearly as fiery so how he handles that crux of having to actually make tough decisions and enforce them I think could be the key to duke season because like you said yeah he can't realistically play 11 guys all the way through lunch I mean it's it's just hard to I remember when John Calipari tried to do the the line change right where here's five here's our next five ultimately that gets that gets shortened as you said eight maybe even seven because when it comes time to winning your best players have to stay on the court as much as humanly possible it's going to be hard to just narrow it down there are so many great players one final thing about duke and then we'll let Brendan Marks go and the season starts tonight blue devils are at home to Jacksonville Caroline is at home to UNC Wilmington the um the way that the blue devils are has always been traditionally has been about defense has that been the singular focus for John during the lead up to the start of this season I think it has been the the biggest focus that he could possibly hope to have um and he's been pretty transparent that unlike last year he doesn't have like the guy this season there's not an overpowering go-to physical presence there's no Paulo there's no Zion there's no Tatum like that guy is not on this roster and so when you know that you can't necessarily just rely on that guy come crunch time and you know that you have this many moving parts and you've had guys who were in and out of the lineup and Tyreese Proctor arrives late and things are constantly shuffling what's the one thing that you try and really really fall back on and so for him it's been team defense and you saw that in the exhibition for a team that has 11 new players seven freshmen only basically one guy back in Jeremy Rose who played minutes last season it was pretty remarkable to see how well connected they already were defensive again grain of salt for the opposition I totally get that um but but I think that has been his number one primary focus because he knows that he's not going to have that one offensive dynamo who does it ever game some games Jacob Grandison is going to be the leading scorer some games it'll be Rose some games it'll be Whitehead some games it'll be lively it's going to change the one thing that can't change this season is that consistency on defense working together making sure that Duke is sound with rotation so so I understand why that's been the focus and you talk to him you talk to any player on the roster they'll tell you the exact same thing all right I'm going to ask you to uh predict an over under and I'm going to give you the over under at uh eight eight and a half games when John says we were knocked back or uses the word verve or any coach k buzzword I'm taking the under and statically I'm slamming it I'm absolutely slapping the under I if if that doesn't come next week against Kansas I'll be absolutely shocked Brendan Marks I appreciate your time man uh should be a lot of fun as we will bug you as much as you will allow us to bug you absolutely I'm excited for the season to start and appreciate y'all having me you got it Brendan Marks Brendan are marks on twitter from the atlantic cover tutorials and the blue devils