Ken Davis

It might be best not to repeat this, just in case anyone around Chapel Hill, N.C., is listening. But should North Carolina lose to the Texas Longhorns Saturday at the Greensboro Coliseum, the Tar Heels would have four losses already this season — and December is far from over.

Just the possibility makes you scratch your head. Roy Williams's teams are more accustomed to being undefeated at this stage of the season. But this Carolina team lost three times in November. And after starting the season ranked No. 8 by the Associated Press, the Tar Heels enter Saturday's game against Texas unranked and on the verge of being forgotten — again.

How strange.

And what about Texas? The Longhorns are still ranked, but really aren’t much better off than the Tar Heels. Coach Rick Barnes looked on as his team lost a close one to Pittsburgh (68-66) and then, on Dec. 5 in Los Angeles, the Longhorns were stunned by Southern Cal (73-56). A headline in the Wednesday edition of The Austin Statesman read, “UT men in evaluation period.” The commentary went on to say that Barnes is “evaluating effort, evaluating lineups” and “watching how younger players react to certain situations.”

That certainly doesn’t sound like a team ready to challenge Kansas or Kansas State for the Big 12 title.

It’s way too early for Texas or North Carolina to panic. But Saturday’s game does become important from a confidence standpoint. Whichever team ends up losing will be left with more questions and the need for more evaluation. And these proud programs required so much evaluation last season they were on the verge of being hospitalized in emergency rooms.

Texas rose to No. 1 and then dropped so far the Longhorns almost missed the NCAA tournament entirely.

This is what college basketball has become. Top programs are finding it harder and harder to re-load in an age of instant gratification. Coaches who recruit elite players such as Kevin Durant and Ed Davis may get the reward of a deep run in the NCAA tournament but they also must adjust their long-term recruiting plans to replace those players who jump to the NBA after one or two seasons of college ball.

Rosters are getting younger. Recruiting mistakes get magnified. The process of creating chemistry becomes harder when there aren’t enough juniors and seniors to lead by example.

“We’ve got to build from this win,” Tar Heel sophomore Dexter Strickland said after North Carolina defeated Kentucky on Dec. 4. “We want the young guys to get a sense of how it feels, and want to have this feeling after every game.”

That’s hard to do these days.

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Power forward John Henson, like Strickland, is another North Carolina sophomore who has to act mature beyond his years. He showed up in Chapel Hill last season as a McDonald’s All-American and a potential one-and-done player. But he quickly learned he wasn’t NBA ready, as North Carolina morphed from defending national champion to a 20-17 team that finished the season in the NIT.

It was a hard fall.

Williams said again and again that expectations for last year’s team were ridiculously high. Perhaps that’s the case again this season, when most observers felt the Tar Heels were talented enough to get back on a winning course. Freshman Harrison Barnes, a preseason first-team All-American, carries the biggest burden of all and thanks to a slow start — perfectly normal for any freshman — he has been forced to face some unfair questions.

“It’s really hard for the top four or five [high school players],” Williams recently told Dana O’Neil of ESPN.com. “The culture nowadays pays more attention to the decision than to their careers. I have close friends who don’t want to talk to me about whether we should play man-to-man or zone; they want to talk to me about recruiting. It’s hard for anybody to live up to that.”

Williams is right on. The culture has changed everything — especially for the elite programs and elite players.

Give Jordan Hamilton time to do his thing at Texas. He’s only a sophomore. Give Harrison Barnes time to get his feet wet at North Carolina; he hasn’t even completed his first semester of college.

Saturday is important to both teams. But it’s not the end of the season.