UNC basketball faces No. 1 Spartans

Immediately following the 63-59 loss to Alabama-Birmingham Sunday night, North Carolina basketball coach Roy Williams did something he’s rarely done in his 26 years as a head coach.

Williams verbalized his anger toward his team.

And he continued to hold on to that displeasure in the subsequent practices, even rearranging the team’s travel schedule leading up to tonight’s matchup with No. 1 Michigan State (7-0) in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge.

“I was on their case in the locker room (Sunday), I was on their case today, I’ll be on their case tomorrow, and I’m going to be on their case Wednesday,” Williams said Monday night in his weekly radio show. “They’re going to hate it because we don’t play until 9 p.m. We had a nice little itinerary that had ‘Wake up’ at 11 a.m. and breakfast at 11:30 a.m. I changed it. We’re having a film session Wednesday morning at 9 a.m.

“I’m going to be one of the meanest guys around in the next 48 hours.”

Sophomore Brice Johnson, who played limited minutes after accruing three quick fouls in the first half, said his coach was most upset that the Tar Heels (4-2) simply weren’t challenging the Blazers.

“He was most upset about (us not) competing,” Johnson said. “(The coaches said), ‘You have to compete if you want to do anything good in life, you have to compete.’ We didn’t compete on the backboards, we didn’t have enough energy.”

For a team that lost to Belmont, defeated then-No. 3 Louisville and then lost UAB in the wildest three-week swing in Williams’ memory, the solution to UNC’s puzzling inconsistency isn’t one easily found.

The short answer? Simply put, the Tar Heels need to play much better to capture wins.

“Our margin is really small,” Williams said. “As a coach, what you’d like to have is you could win by 30 or lose by two. That’s the margin that you’d like to have. So I think, right now, our margin isn’t really big and it’s not really good on the positive side.

“We’ve got to play really, really well right now. We did that in a lot of ways against Louisville.”

To defeat the top team in the country, the Tar Heels will have to revert back to the high-energy style of play that aided them in defeating Louisville.

The Spartans, led by the formidable trio of Big Ten preseason Player of the Year guard Gary Harris, senior big man Adreian Payne and senior point guard Keith Appling, lead the country in assists.

Michigan State picked off then-No. 1 Kentucky in the Champions Classic and averages 85.9 points in an uptempo and physical style of play.

Against UAB, sophomore guard Marcus Paige scored only 13 points on a 6-for-16, 0-for-6 from 3-point range shooting effort. By shutting down Paige, the Blazers eliminated UNC’s go-to offensive threats — something that can’t happen against the Spartans.

“The biggest thing is we can’t just be one-dimensional,” Williams said. “Against Lousiville we scored 93 and I guess he had 30-something. We had some other guys who scored for us. That’s what we lacked against UAB.”

UNC has spoiled one perfect season in its defeat of Louisville, and Johnson knows his team needs to elevate its intensity before the 9 p.m. tipoff at the Breslin Center to have a shot at another.

“We beat Louisville on a neutral court,” he said. “Coach always talks about how he likes to go into people’s place and take their brownies.”

sports@dailytarheel.com