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The North Carolina Tar Heels will gladly take a win over the Duke Blue Devils, especially in Cameron Indoor Stadium, anytime they can get one. Winning at Duke — as it often does for UNC — gives the Tar Heels a noticeably better chance of winning the regular-season ACC championship and getting a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Barring a collapse, this win solidifies Carolina’s place on the 2 line. Last year’s team found its way to a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament after some struggles. This team did not look anywhere close to a 2 seed coming out of non-conference play.
That Roy Williams fellow can coach, something which keeps being underappreciated on a national level even though people in the ACC have never doubted that assertion.
Now comes the next challenge for Ol’ Roy: Getting the young guys on his team to be the men who will step up for Carolina in March.
But wait, you might counter — and not without good reason: Carolina made the 2016 national championship game and won the 2017 national title because of seasoned, veteran leadership and players who learned how to play together. This is a team which needs Maye and Johnson to be its best players next month.
It’s a fair point, especially in Johnson’s case. Johnson possesses a measure of all-court dynamism Maye lacks. If Johnson wants the Tar Heels to climb on his back and he can bring it every night, it might work out. The scenario is not something I would deem likely, but it’s hardly preposterous to imagine.
Maye, though, is not a climb-on-my-back player. Before February, he was the player who needed to climb aboard the train in order to make the Tar Heels better. He did so at Louisville and he did so again — in even more emphatic fashion — against Duke. Yet, Maye is not quick or powerful enough to be what another famous “May” was for UNC 14 years ago.
Luke Maye is a very fine college player. Sean May was a great college big man. Jim Nantz’s words still linger in the minds of Tar Heel fans who reveled in the school’s first national title under Roy Williams: “The 2005 NCAA Tournament began in March. It ended in April, and it belonged to May.”
Luke is not the “Maye-Day” player Sean was. I can accept the notion that Cam Johnson can become a supernova, but I can’s see it with Maye. This doesn’t mean Maye won’t be hugely important to a title run — he obviously will be — but Maye’s job is to defend and rebound, and then score when the flow of a halfcourt set puts him in position to make a basket. Elite opponents will have highly athletic bigs who will challenge Maye and make life difficult for him when Carolina has the ball. Maye needs to be a defensive monster, which he wasn’t last year against Texas A&M and its hulking frontline in the round of 32 loss which bounced the Heels out of the Big Dance.
After North Carolina beat Duke on Wednesday despite 16 turnovers and just 2-of-20 3-point shooting, the point of urgency for Roy is to get Coby White to a place where he can be consistently strong. This will be an important part of Saturday’s upcoming game against a surging Florida State squad. It will be important at Clemson next week. It will be important in the rematch against Duke. It will be important in the ACC Tournament, and into the NCAAs.
What does it mean for White to go from a young pup to a big dog, and for Nassir Little to do the same? Maybe some of you are reading this and expecting me to say that White needs to be throwing down 20-25 points and handing out 10 assists. That is an understandable answer, but it’s not quite what I am looking for.
North Carolina needs Coby White to not screw up, for starters. He coughed up six turnovers against Duke. The game — at that end of the floor — was too big for him. White and Little combined for only two free throw attempts in 39 minutes. Their shots weren’t falling at all, so the next time UNC plays Duke, and when UNC plays in the NCAA Tournament, White (and Little) must be able to play in a mature way and not give away possessions. They can miss shots, but they can’t surrender the ball or fail to get to the foul line. They need to make responsible plays which stabilize a team and prevent opponents from ripping off a quick 9-2 run to either create distance or reduce a large deficit.
Coby White and Nassir Little don’t have to score in bunches, though that would be great. They have to make winning plays on a consistent basis and do enough at both ends of the floor to force opponents into working exponentially harder to keep up with them. They need to regularly make their presence felt, instead of disappearing at one or both ends of the floor.
If White and Little can become dependable players — not necessarily spectacular ones — this team can make the Final Four and win it all. The worst-case scenario for UNC is not Luke Maye getting contained by an athletic big man — that will probably happen at some point in March. The worst-case scenario is Maye getting contained while White and Little aren’t ready to shift the competitive calculus in Carolina’s favor.
Coby White and Nassir Little were baptized by fire against Duke. Their veteran teammates carried them on Wednesday. In the next month and a half, however, White and Little need to elevate their games — not necessarily to the extent that they score most of UNC’s points, but to the extent that opponents realize they aren’t going to flinch in the spotlight.
If the young pups can grow into big dogs, this Carolina team might hunt all the way to Minneapolis in early April.
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