Losing to Stanford is the kind of resume blemish North Carolina and the ACC can’t afford
Published:
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – Jaylen Blakes might be wearing a different color uniform these days after transferring to Stanford for his final college basketball season. But beneath that cardinal jersey, there’s a lot of Blue Devil blue running through his veins.
“I still have Duke blood in me,” the senior guard said.
That only made his heroics on Saturday all the more noteworthy.
Blakes barely got off the bench during his first 3 trips to North Carolina’s Smith Center as a lightly-used reserve for the Blue Devils. His only court time came during the final 3 minutes of garbage time as a freshman in 2022.
It took 4 years and 2,800 miles, but he finally got his opportunity to make his mark on his old rival’s home court. His fallaway jumper with 1.5 seconds remaining was the winning margin in a 72-71 upset that gave Stanford its first win in 14 tries against the Tar Heels.
And Blakes plenty of personal satisfaction.
“I would be lying if I said I didn’t think about this moment the night before the game,” the senior guard said. “I was in my hotel room thinking about Austin Rivers’ shot (that beat UNC for Duke in 2012) and I was hoping I’d have a moment like that.
“God works in mysterious ways. I’m grateful my coach has trust in me and my teammates trusted me to have the ball at the end of the game. It’s a big win for Stanford.”
It was just as big a loss for UNC. And by extension, the ACC.
The Tar Heels had seemed to finally figure things out after a rocky start by winning 4 straight and nestling into a spot only 1 game behind Blakes’ old team in the conference standings.
While their resume was still lacking good wins, their greatest asset was their ability to avoid bad losses.
Until Saturday.
It’s not as if Stanford is the dregs. The Cardinal feature the ACC’s top scorer and rebounder, Maxim Raynaud, and are over .500 in both overall (12-6) and in the conference (4-3). But because they were only No. 85 in the NET rankings coming into the game, the loss qualifies as a Quad 3 blemish on UNC’s record.
It’s going to take a lot of Clearasil to cover that up by Selection Sunday.
And that’s the problem. Not just for the Tar Heels, but for all of the ACC’s other top teams not named Duke.
This isn’t the SEC, where literally every road game besides South Carolina qualifies as a Quad 1 opportunity.
Because those games are so few and far between given the depressed state of the ACC this season, “bad” losses can do far more damage to a team with NCAA Tournament aspirations than “good” losses can help.
So if you’re Clemson, Louisville, Wake Forest or Pittsburgh, you’d be wise to avoid laying an egg against any of the league’s many bottom feeders.
Or in the case of UNC, any more of them.
That’s a tall order with more than half the conference schedule still to play.
Pitt is already playing itself into bubble trouble. The Panthers appear to have been broken by a 30–point loss at Duke 2 weeks ago, losing 3 more since then – including a double-digit setback at Florida State.
And the Tar Heels (12-7, 5-2) could be in similar danger with challenging road tests at Wake Forest, Pitt and Duke coming up in the next 5 games.
“We have to understand that each game matters,” UNC star RJ Davis said. “This is a tough one to understand. But we can’t let it hinder us in other games. There are still a lot of games left and an opportunity to get better. So we have to regroup.”
Regrouping and correcting some of the little mistakes that contributed to a Stanford rally that saw the Cardinal score 11 of the game’s final 16 points is the right approach to take. But even that can’t fix some of the structural defects the Tar Heels managed to mask during the 4 game-winning streak.
They don’t rebound well. They have trouble defending the post against athletic big men like Raynaud because of their lack of size while encountering even greater difficulty finding points of their own in the paint. That’s forced them to rely too heavily on 3-pointers, which they’re making with only 28% accuracy in their 7 losses.
Including a 5-of-18 performance on Saturday.
This isn’t close to being a classic UNC team. But then, this is far from your father’s ACC.
The best thing that Hubert Davis’ team has going for it right now – other than the experience and scoring of RJ Davis, the streakiness of point guard Elliot Cadeau and the explosive potential of freshman Ian Jackson – is the fact that beyond Duke, everyone else in the conference is as flawed as it is.
Award-winning columnist Brett Friedlander has covered the ACC and college basketball since the 1980s.
