Which team will follow BC's lead?

Now that Boston College has provided the ACC and the country with an outline of how to beat North Carolina in a game of basketball, the next question is how many other teams are capable of following it?

The answer is not very many, and certainly not in the ACC.

That's not to say the Tar Heels will recover from Sunday's 85-78 loss in Chapel Hill and, suddenly motivated by a defeat, streak through the remainder of the season. They won't. There's no such thing as a waltz in college basketball anymore and likely never will be.

It's a lot easier for the most talented team to win the NBA championship than for the most talented college team to win the NCAA title. Just go ask the 1991 UNLV Rebels or the 1984 Tar Heels.

For almost every obstacle in college basketball, there's a solution. Boston College had one Sunday:

* The Eagles had the better point guard. Tyrese Rice, possession-for-possession, is the best playmaker in the ACC. Carolina's Ty Lawson is plenty good. So are two or three others in the league, but Rice is the man at the point. That's not going to change, even after the Eagles lose five or more times in the conference, which is inevitable.

* With Rice, Rakim Sanders and reserve Reggie Jackson, the Eagles had a huge edge in offensive and defensive perimeter quickness. That's always been Carolina's soft spot. It was magnified Sunday when Carolina defensive stopper Marcus Ginyard wasn't healthy enough to put a lid on Sanders. The Heels aren't going to win the NCAA, maybe not the ACC, with offensive firepower alone. Ginyard is very much a key to the rest of the season. It's going to take a lot of big-game defense to be the last team standing.

* Jackson, off the bench, was more important than all of Carolina's reserves combined, and that's taking into account that Ed Davis and Will Graves had their moments. To really bother Carolina, the key to bench production isn't so much size, strength and numbers. It's quickness. When 6-foot-3 Jackson entered the game, the Eagles only got quicker, and Roy Williams had no countermeasure.

But since Carolina and Boston College have seen the last of each other, at least during regular season, the leading ACC candidates to clone the Eagles' strategy are Clemson and Wake Forest, both of which have quick perimeters and are capable of dinging the Heels in transition and beyond the 3-point arc.

The first reading on that front will come Sunday, when Carolina visits Wake for a one-time-only regular-season meeting. The Deacons are going through a Ginyard-like experience of their own in that speedy guard Ish Smith still isn't completely recovered from a preseason injury. With Smith in top health, the Deacs have almost as much quickness as BC. But the timing is lousy for Wake. The Heels can be vulnerable, but realistically, what are the odds they will start league play 0-2?

UNC will catch a break against Clemson, which visits Chapel Hill on Jan. 21. There will be no second regular-season game in that series, either.

A wild card in the mix has to be Duke, which has made substantial improvements in the low post and in half-court execution. But with Nolan Smith still adjusting to a full-time point role, winger Jon Scheyer lacking the size and quickness of Sanders and no one on the bench with Jackson's explosiveness, the Blue Devils don't yet appear to match up well against Carolina.

The dynamics on both sides could change by Feb. 11, when the rivals meet for the first time this season, and there's always more than one way to win any given game. But by getting bigger and stronger, the Blue Devils have surrendered enough quickness that it will be difficult to match Carolina's speed over the course of 40 minutes.

And while it's too early to accurately predict specific team fluctuations, the schedule is set and it's a bear from Duke's perspective. After that Feb. 11 game against Carolina in Durham, the Devils will be home only twice -- for Wake (Feb. 22) and Florida State (March 3). Five of the final seven games will be on the road, including trips to BC, Maryland and Carolina.

The Heels suddenly have reason to be concerned, but they don't have the market cornered in that regard.