Virginia 69

North Carolina 61

In my college basketball preview from Sunday, I stated I had a tough time believing Virginia would lose two games in a row, but chose the Tar Heels anyway in this game. While they went on a nice run about halfway through the 2nd half, leading me to believe I might be right, they collapsed at the end making just one of their last 11 field goal attempts. There were a lot of takeaways from this game for me.

I’ll start with one of the things that worry me most about North Carolina not being able to make a deep run in March, and that’s the capability to get taken out of their style of play. Against teams that like to play fast, Carolina usually does well because that’s also their style of play. But teams like Virginia who rely on their defense and play slow usually have the ability to force their style of play over Carolina, causing the Tar Heels to really struggle. Anytime Carolina gets restricted to largely using their half-court offense, they are in trouble. And that’s how it’s always been under Roy Williams. His teams play best when they run, use their athleticism to their advantage, and also utilize their deeper bench to their advantage by wearing teams down. When the Tar Heels are influenced to run their half-court offense, they start launching threes like there’s no tomorrow, which brings me to my other big worry about North Carolina not being able to make a deep run in March.

For the vast majority of last night’s game, Carolina’s offense consisted of passing the ball around the three point line until someone would finally launch one up from behind the arc. In thirty attempts, they only connected on nine of them throughout the game. It took a LONG time before Carolina even scored from inside the paint because they simply weren’t getting the ball in there. Most of their possessions resulted in “settling.” Thirty threes are way too many, even with capable shooters in Cam Johnson, Coby White, and Luke Maye. Overall, they just looked like they didn’t have a game plan on offense. You can credit the defense of Virginia, because they are really good, but Carolina certainly could’ve helped themselves out more than they did by playing smarter on offense.

I also wasn’t satisfied with the defensive performance last night from the Tar Heels. It was very lackluster for the most part, evidenced by Kenny Williams losing his man on several occasions leading to open baskets. Carolina never guards against three-point shooting well, and Virginia took advantage of that, shooting 11/20 from three-point range. Most of those were wide open threes, which is why they were able to knock down such a high percentage of them. For the life of me, I’ll never understand why they don’t get out and guard beyond the three-point line. Everything starts on the defensive end of the floor, and that’s what has allowed North Carolina to win seven straight games. Their defensive intensity had ramped up from earlier in the season, allowing for more steals and more fast break points. We temporarily saw this last night when Carolina went on that 2nd half run. They turned up the defensive pressure, so obvious that Jay Bilas even mentioned it, which led to a faster paced game and success for the Tar Heels. But then Cam Johnson got injured and Carolina dialed it back and ultimately collapsed.

It certainly didn’t help that Nassir Little had to leave the game (early on) because of injury and Johnson had to do the same at a crucial time in the game. Little has been playing really well of late and could have been the aggressive force they needed getting to the basket. Johnson’s shot making ability was greatly missed during his absence, with a deep discrepancy between his scoring potential and his replacement Brandon Robinson’s. But other players have to step up. Luke Maye had an off-night with just four points. It was clear his struggles were getting to him because he was pressing on the offensive end taking some uncharacteristically ill-advised shots. Kenny Williams also has to contribute more. He had 3 threes, but that was it. He doesn’t attack the basket well and is pretty much limited to his shooting (which he has largely struggled with this season). Kenny Williams played more minutes than anybody last night with 38. You just can’t have your starting shooting guard being so limited on offense and putrid on defense getting 38 minutes in big-time games and expect to win most of them.

My biggest hope from this game is that everyone takes something away from it (coaches included) and is more prepared the next time they play a high-quality opponent. Hopefully Johnson and Little’s ankles will be fine moving forward, and Leaky Black is back in the lineup to provide much needed versatility. While this game showed the weaknesses of this Carolina team, it is certainly no reason to worry if you’re a Carolina fan. Virginia is one of the best teams in the country, and that’s what really good teams do…take you out of your game. But if Carolina is going to be on the same level as those top-tier teams this season, they can’t be taken out of their game so easily and will have to assert their style of play on other teams better. Living by the three/dying by the three rarely is the recipe for long term success. They need to be more aggressive attacking the basket and getting points down low, which will also get them to the free throw line more. Their next game is Saturday against Wake Forest, before heading to Durham to take on the Blue Devils next Wednesday.

Garett

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