After NC State game, there are reasons to believe UNC’s road showings will be better
North Carolina’s 100-80 win over N.C. State on Saturday seems a bit like click bait. The headline screams of the Tar Heels’ potential. And the truth is, they’ve consistently played well at the Dean E. Smith Center, where they are perfect in 11 games this season.
Too many times this season, though, the Heels (15-6, 7-3 ACC) have followed those big performances with major letdowns.
Click back to the Michigan win, which remains their only win over a team that was ranked at the time. Then the 29-point loss to Kentucky that soon followed. Or the win at Boston College, that was tripped up by a loss at Notre Dame.
Or the past two weeks, when wins over Virginia and Georgia Tech at home made Carolina look strong, only for losses at Miami and Wake Forest to make them look soft.
“We’ve seen it several times; we’ve played well, multiple times throughout the year, we’ve had good flashes,” forward Brady Manek said. “…We just can’t go back to having to struggle and having off nights and when we do have those off nights, just kind of shutting down. I think we’re headed in a good direction and hope we can keep it up.”
That question will be answered Tuesday. The Heels, after playing one of their most dominant games of the season against the Wolfpack, take to the road to face Louisville.
Carolina knows all too well what it feels like to be on the opposite side of the beatdown it put on the Pack. The Heels lost to the Hurricanes by 28, and to the Deacons by 22, which made four of their six losses by 17 points or more. All of their losses have come outside of Chapel Hill.
But there are reasons to believe Carolina won’t just be serving up empty content against the Cardinals.
It starts with having a glimpse of the program’s history and tradition right in front of them on Saturday. As much as coach Hubert Davis has talked about how hard the Heels need to play and what it means to play for North Carolina, sometimes it just hits differently coming from a different voice.
That voice, in their postgame locker room celebration, belonged to basketball legend Michael Jordan.
“The man was right there in front of us, so we were all just starstruck,” senior Leaky Black said. “…Pretty much he was just telling us when our coach has more passion than we do when we’re out there playing, that’s a recipe for disaster. So he was just telling us just to feed off this energy and basically play with emotion have fun.”
Carolina has had to adapt this week while missing sophomore forward Dawson Garcia, who started 12 of the first 16 games this season. Garcia has been on indefinite leave at home in Minnesota, dealing with a family illness.
His absence leaves the Heels with just Manek and Armando Bacot in the front court. They’ve had to play smaller the last three games when they go to the bench. It hasn’t been a detriment so far.
The Heels have won at least three games in a row for just the third time this season. They pieced together their best three-game performance in defensive efficiency, according to Ken Pomeroy, against major conference competition.
When UNC needed stops in a close game against Virginia Tech, it held nation’s No. 2-ranked team in 3-point shooting percentage to just 2-for-8 shooting in the second half and pulled away late for the win. In an ugly game offensively against Boston College, where the Heels shot a program-low 29 percent in a win, they held the Eagles to 16 points in the second half. They smothered the Wolfpack in the first half, holding them to 30 percent shooting from the field and recorded seven of their season-high nine blocked shots.
“My hope is is that it carries over and my hope is that it builds,” Davis said. “I was really emotional after the (N.C. State) game and I was emotional because I was just really proud of the guys. Just last week, they were taking a lot of heat after losing to Miami and in Wake Forest and the manner in which we lost.”
After beating the Pack, Carolina would rather focus on the manner that it won. The Heels 3-point shooting returned to the tune of a season-high 15 3s.
“It’s just really good to see how we came out and played (against N.C. State), it’s exciting,” Manek said. “I do think we keep playing like that and we have several other games this year, I think we’re going to be really good.”
This story was originally published January 31, 2022 at 6:45 AM.