An aggressive Dawson Garcia is a good sight for UNC basketball
North Carolina has so many scorers in its lineup its easy for a player to fade into the background and rely on the others to score. Dawson Garcia has found his way into those shadows probably more than the 6-foot-11 forward should.
After scoring a team-high 20 points in the Tar Heels’ 74-61 win over Furman Tuesday night in the Dean E. Smith Center, there are signs that Garcia won’t continue with any passive ways on offense.
Garcia scored in double-figures in consecutive games for the first time this season. He also had a team-high tying 22 points in Saturday’s win over Elon.
“I wouldn’t say it was like a mindset change,” Garcia said. “I’ll just say that I’m making sure that — I’m putting more emphasis on being super aggressive early in all facets of the game because I know that’ll get me up.”
Garcia added 10 rebounds for his first double-double as a Tar Heel. The last time he recorded one also came in the Dean E. Smith Center last season when Garcia posted 24 points and 11 rebounds leading Marquette to an 83-70 upset of the Heels.
There have been too many games where Garcia allowed himself not to be a factor offensively. He followed having a season-high 26 points against Purdue’s formidable frontcourt, by scoring just four in Carolina’s loss to Tennessee. In their win over Georgia Tech, he scored just two points and missed his lone field goal attempt.
Garcia should be a matchup nightmare for most of Carolina’s opponents. There aren’t many players of his size in the nation shooting 47.8 percent from 3-point range.
UNC forward Armando Bacot, who had his sixth double-double of the season with 14 points and 12 rebounds, said Garcia’s versatility may have hurt him early on because he didn’t know where or when to look for his shot within the flow of the offense.
“I feel like starting off, it was just kind of tough for him figuring out where to find his spots and get easy points,” Bacot said. “But I feel like now he’s kind of getting his swag and I think it’s helping him. When he’s scoring to ball like that we’re dangerous team.”
UNC coach Hubert Davis knows that too that’s why he’s made a conscious effort to help establish Garcia early over the past week. Davis said he seems to play better when he’s able to make an impact — it doesn’t have to be scoring — early in the game.
Davis also said Garcia adjusted his game. He moves as well on the perimeter as he does in the post. But Davis said Garcia has made a minor adjustment of looking to score inside first.
“From an offensive standpoint, we’ve also talked about I think he’s more efficient when he starts inside-out as opposed to outside-in,” Davis said. “Sometimes he’ll start from 3 and then try to work his way in as opposed to, ‘Hey, let’s run the floor and score. Hey, let’s get into the post. Hey, let’s get to the free throw line.’ And then step out and knock down that 3.”
Garcia’s first basket against the Paladins was a 3-pointer from the left corner to open up scoring for Carolina. But he followed that by doing all his work in the paint. His next two baskets were layups and he was fouled shooting on another possession.
Garcia had outscored Furman 9-3 by himself in the opening three minutes of the game. And with that, he didn’t float outside to launch another 3 until around six minutes remained in the first half and he had already scored 13 points.
The scoring should be considerably tougher for Garcia and the Tar Heels on Saturday against No. 4 UCLA. But Garcia vowed he’s going to continue to play hard on both sides of the court.
“That’s all you can really control you know,” Garcia said. “Scoring is going to come and go. Everything is really going to come and go besides just playing hard rebounding, doing all those things.”
This story was originally published December 15, 2021 at 7:00 AM.