Michael Malone Finally Saw UNC Play Complete Game in Blowout Win

North Carolina was finally able to play a much better game on both sides of the basketball on Friday night against Wofford, coming away with a 109-70 win. 

I still wouldn't say that this was a perfect game from North Carolina, as it allowed 14 offensive rebounds, and that's been a problem Mike Malone has spoken about throughout the early stages of the year.

However, this was a much better showing from North Carolina than we've seen throughout the first few weeks of the year, whether it be exhibition games or the regular season. North Carolina shot 52.1% from the field and 40% from three-point range. 

It's pretty evident that Malone wants these guys to get up a ton of threes, and they did a decent job by attempting 25.

But there are some other promising signs that we saw from this game. Not that North Carolina needs to be perfect day in and day out, as that's not a realistic ask for any college basketball team in the country.

But at the same time, the Tar Heels have to be a lot better than they were in the first game of the season against Western Carolina. Malone spoke about why he thought his team played a much better game against Wofford compared to Western Carolina, and a lot of it was just simply the Tar Heels keeping their foot on the gas.

"Not getting bored with success. Something we have been talking about: when you build a lead, when you get off to a good start. Because if you go back to the Western game, we started the game off 10-0. Things were looking great. The next thing you know, it is a two-point game. We started the second half on a four-zero run. We are up 13. They go on an eight-zero run. They cut it to five.

"So we can never pull away because we just were not understanding why we got the lead, or if we did understand that, we were reluctant to stay with that. I thought tonight, something we talked about was to just keep playing the right way, keep building habits, and play as close to 40 minutes as possible, and I was proud of our guys. I kept on reminding them in the huddle, even as the lead was getting bigger: we're building habits,” Malone said, per USA Today.

One thing North Carolina has to realize is that it isn't talented enough to just come out and go through the motions. Beating Western Carolina like that is one thing, but North Carolina doesn't have a chance of beating anybody in the ACC and some of these tough out-of-conference games by rolling over and expecting teams to allow them to win.