So Harrison Barnes isn't the answer for North Carolina, or isn't yet, anyway. It was as unfair to ask him to be as it was to assume he would be.
These Tar Heels, like last year's Tar Heels, have flaws and deficiencies that one player alone cannot fix, no matter how talented, and particularly when that player is navigating his way through a tricky transition to a new level of basketball.
There's no doubt Barnes is going to be a great player - only whether it's a few days, a few weeks or a few months away. The Tar Heels don't have long to wait. Going into a difficult stretch of games that begins tonight at Illinois, they need Barnes to be great now.
"They need that superstar kid to step up and be another Michael Jordan," College of Charleston coach Bobby Cremins said after Barnes scored eight points in a victory over Cremins' team Sunday.
Cremins laughed, then added, "I don't want to say that, but I think they've got a lot of great pieces. They always play team basketball. ... I think they have really strong possibilities, and the freshman, he needs to play like a superstar."
Unfortunately for the Tar Heels, that's the fix they're in right now. They have no choice to saddle Barnes with expectations: to score, to be a leader, to help erase the bad memories of last season. It may all be too much to ask.
For better or worse, and even though they have different roles and play very different positions, Barnes and Duke guard Kyrie Irving will be compared to each other for as long as they're here, the two bluest-chip recruits to arrive simultaneously at these rivals in a long time. Barnes had the edge in the recruiting rankings and all the preseason awards voting.
Much less is being asked of Irving, though, than of Barnes. Without Irving, Duke would still have the core of a national title team. With him, the Blue Devils are in prime position to win another.
Without Barnes, the Tar Heels would be in trouble. He's already the player his teammates look to when it's time to take a big shot, and while he's willing to take that shot, it's a lot of responsibility to ask Barnes to carry, particularly at a place where expectations are as high as they are in Chapel Hill.
It probably hasn't helped that Barnes was voted a preseason All-American before playing a single game, a baffling coronation that could set even someone as level-headed as Barnes spinning. Of course, as much as North Carolina coach Roy Williams has complained about that, he did as much to encourage it as anyone with his "Harrison is more focused than Tyler" comparisons with Tyler Hansbrough as a freshman before the season.
Between the physical edge of the college game - Minnesota, one of the huskiest teams in the country, banged him around for an 0-for-12 shooting night - and the usual freshman adjustment to college life, it's easy to understand why Barnes might be a little bit overwhelmed.
Still, Barnes is light years ahead of where teammate John Henson was as a freshman last year. Barnes is second on the team in scoring at 11.8 points per game but shooting a team-worst 35 percent. That's not bad for someone who just played his sixth college game, but North Carolina needs him to play like someone in his 60th college game.
Until he does, the Tar Heels will be in limbo, because as unfair as it is to ask him to carry that team, no one else has proven he can.
