The beat, and sweet system of hoops, goes on at UNC

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LONG BEACH, Ca. – Anyone out there care to suggest a college basketball program that can lose four players to the first round of the NBA draft and, less than six months later, still have the “look” of a squad capable of playing in the Final Four?

OK, I’ll add “other than the University of Kentucky”  . . .

Bingo!

The North Carolina Tar Heels lost Harrison Barnes, Kendall Marshall, John Henson and Tyler Zeller when they became almost-instant members of the Young Millionaires Club last June.

Not to worry, though.

Roy Williams is the front man of one of those programs for which “rebuilding” is a relative term.

The Tar Heels returned some high-quality players from their 32-victory season that ended with point guard Marshall on the bench (broken right wrist) during an 80-67 loss to Kansas in an Elite Eight final last March.

Foremost among those is 6-foot-8 James Michael McAdoo, who averaged just 6.1 points and 15 minutes per game as a freshman but would have given the program five first-round picks last June if he had been so inclined.

McAdoo, tabbed on many preseason All-American lists, has played like a strong candidate to be on the post-season lists during the Tar Heels’ first three games (won by an average margin of 15 points), turning in an 18-point, 8-rebound effort Friday night  to help his team pull away from host Long Beach State, 78-63.

Fellow returnees P.J. Hairston and Reggie Bullock (three 3s apiece Friday night) and Dexter Strickland (six rebounds, six assists and four steals) were also key elements in overcoming a jazzed team that was playing in front of the LBSU program’s largest-ever on-campus crowd (6,912 – a healthy hunk of which was draped in Carolina Blue).

The Tar Heels always recruit well.

That was evident early Friday evening, when the best passing high school post player since Kevin Love – Kennedy Meeks of Charlotte – announced he was going to be a Tar Heel.

And then a few hours later, the evidence was on the Walter Pyramid floor, where the program’s four scholarship freshmen combined for 30 points, 20 rebounds, five assists, three steals and three blocked shots.

One of those freshmen, Marcus Paige, was (along with Marcus Smart of Oklahoma State), started Friday night and is already going a long way toward making the loss of Marshall (Phoenix Suns) not quite as painful as it would have been for so many other programs.

Paige, like Marshall, is left-handed, albeit shorter (by about two inches) but a bit quicker and a better, “purer” jump shooter, if not yet the passer that Marshall was for the Tar Heels and will be in the NBA.

And let’s don’t forget the other reason why “slippage”, like “re-building”, is never as harsh in Chapel Hill as it is on other campuses.

The system of play – the quick-hitting and efficient early offense and overall transition attack, and switching, pressure defenses – that Williams assimilated while serving under his mentor Dean Smith at UNC and served him so well at Kansas still thrives with the Tar Heels and will next me on display Monday in Lahaina when they take on Mississippi State in the Maui Invitational.

That’s why Tar Heels will also be threats to win an ACC title and play on the final weekend of the season, no matter how many NBA-bound players bid adieu in the previous spring.