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North Carolina avoided disaster on Saturday afternoon, edging out Boston College in overtime at home to dodge what would have been a third consecutive loss in ACC play.
In addition to the close call vs. Boston College, the Tar Heels are coming off of defeats to Stanford and Wake Forest. While those games were close — both losses came by a single point — a program of Carolina’s quality shouldn’t be consistently struggling with teams who are outside the top-70 in KenPom.
So, what’s going on here, exactly?
There are issues on both sides of the ball, as you might expect. Let’s start with the offense.
The Tar Heels have been underwhelming both in the paint and on the perimeter. Hubert Davis did not bring in a true 2-way center to replace Armando Bacot this past offseason. Instead, the Tar Heels have largely gone with a combination of Jalen Washington and Ven-Allen Lubin in that spot.
Washington and Lubin are good players, but they aren’t centers in the way that Bacot was a center. Carolina could run its offense through Bacot — and did to great effect for several years. His scoring, rebounding and passing covered up a lot of sins for the Tar Heels during the first few years under Davis.
Washington and Lubin simply don’t command that much attention on the low block. And when they do get the ball, they have a much lower assist rate and a higher turnover rate than Bacot did. Their screens are less impactful, too. That’s been a problem for both RJ Davis and Elliot Cadeau.
Davis has played over 500 offensive possessions with Washington so far this season. Per EvanMiya, UNC’s offensive rating on those possessions is just 106.3. With Davis and Lubin on the floor together, the offensive rating is 112.8. That’s down considerably from the numbers Davis and Bacot put up together in 2023-24 (117.1).
Cadeau has proven himself to be masterful as a passer so far this season, but it hasn’t translated to good offense with either Washington or Lubin, either. UNC’s offense is also averaging well under 1.1 points per possession when Cadeau is playing with either big.
Carolina’s lack of a true post threat has allowed teams to pick their spots. Defenses are more likely to stay attached to shooters instead of crashing down onto the block. That’s had a detrimental impact on North Carolina’s spacing and thus its success from beyond the arc.
UNC is shooting just 32.3% from 3-point range, which ranks just 243rd nationally. In 9 ACC games, that number has slipped further to 31.3% — only good enough for 14th in the league. Davis is shooting a career-low 29.5% from 3. Seth Trimble’s numbers are down from a year ago. Cadeau has improved as a shooter, but he’s still under 30%. Cade Tyson, brought in from Belmont to shoot 3-pointers on the wing, is hitting just 28.6% of his long-range attempts and is only playing 9 minutes per game.
Another huge problem for the Tar Heels on the interior is the lack of offensive rebounding. That was a strength of the Roy Williams era — UNC finished 1st nationally in that category in Williams’ final season at the helm and was often in the top 10 throughout his tenure. Carolina has regressed into the top-60 or so under Davis and has never been elite.
But now, without Bacot or any other bruising big man, Carolina enters Sunday’s game ranked 252nd in offensive rebounding rate.
The bottom line: UNC can’t score in the post, doesn’t make 3-pointers at a high clip and is terrible on the offensive glass. Even with a roster that’s littered with veteran guards, that’s a recipe for having an underwhelming and drought-prone offense.
Is there a fix? Not a full one, no — not this season at least. Carolina would be wise, though, to lean on Ian Jackson more in the coming weeks. He’s having a pretty special season. Jackson has a true shooting percentage north of 60% and is the only player on Carolina’s roster with a respectable 3-point percentage on any real volume of attempts.
It would also be ideal for Carolina if it could get Tyson going from long range. It seems he’s falling out of the rotation — he’s only played 8 total minutes in UNC’s last 3 games — but he’s a career 43% 3-point shooter and UNC’s offense badly needs some help on that end. Despite Tyson not hitting shots this season, he’s been UNC’s third most-valuable player this season per EvanMiya’s BPR metric. At some point, Carolina may not have a better option than hoping for some positive regression on Tyson’s jumper.
UNC’s offense has only been part of the problem, though.
North Carolina’s defense has also fallen short. The Tar Heels are just inside the top-50 in defensive efficiency this season, per KenPom. A year ago, they ranked in the top-10.
UNC plays 2 small guards in Davis and Cadeau. Trimble and Jackson are also under-sized for their roles at 6-foot-3 and 6-foot-4, respectively. Per KenPom, that duo accounts for the vast majority of UNC’s small forward minutes.
In addition to not effectively replacing Bacot, Carolina also doesn’t have a natural replacement for Harrison Ingram. That shows up in a big way in Carolina’s defensive numbers. He was a co-leader (along with Bacot) in defensive win shares and had a stellar defensive rating of 97.6 last season. At 6-foot-7, Ingram was the ideal power forward to put next to Bacot and Carolina’s smaller guards.
This season’s version of that player is Drake Powell. While Powell has had a good season considering his age, it’s tough to expect him to equal Harrison’s production as an undersized power forward (6-foot-6, 195 pounds) during his true freshman season.
The lack of a defensively-versatile front court has rendered North Carolina’s small-guard back court to be rather ineffective. The 3-guard lineup of Davis, Cadeau and Jackson has a raw plus/minus of +1 in well over 400 possessions together. Their defensive rating is 102.6, per EvanMiya. That’s a disaster for the Tar Heels.
Rebounding is also a concern on this side of the ball. The Tar Heels were 10th on the defensive glass last season, now they’re 76th.
From a pure profile perspective, there’s nothing that stands out too much regarding UNC’s defense year-over-year — everything is just marginally worse. Carolina is giving up slightly more 3-point makes, slightly more 2-point makes, slightly more free throw attempts and it’s blocking slightly fewer shots. All of that adds up to a defense that is meaningfully worse than it was a year ago.
Back to the central question: Is this fixable? Like with the offensive side of the ball, I have my doubts for this season. Carolina has 3 players with the requisite size to play in a front court spot, and none of them can shoot 3-pointers. That makes it difficult to play more than one of them at a time, which leads to a situation where they’re playing undersized on defense.
It’s possible to win while playing small, but teams that do typically are either strong offensively or create a lot of turnovers on defense. Carolina is far from elite offensively and is dreadful at forcing turnovers (297th nationally).
North Carolina can still make the NCAA Tournament this season, but this will be a crucial week for its chances to do so. The Tar Heels have 2 Quad 1 games this week: at Pitt and at Duke. Carolina needs to win at least one of those matchups — it only has 4 Quad 1 opportunities remaining and 2 are against the Blue Devils. UNC is 1-7 in Quad 1 games so far this season.
FanDuel currently has Carolina priced at -120 to make the NCAA Tournament. If the Tar Heels do miss the Big Dance, it would mark the first time the program has done so twice in a 3-year span since the Matt Doherty era.
UNC will face Pitt on Tuesday night at 9 p.m. ET.
Spenser is a news editor for Saturday Down South and covers college football across all Saturday Football brands.