Give @MattZemek a twitter follow and check out his musings on college sports at https://www.patreon.com/Zemek.
I wrote earlier this season at All Sports Discussion that if North Carolina was going to do big things in the NCAA Tournament, the young pups — Coby White and Nassir Little — would have to become the big dogs on the Tar Heels’ roster.
Friday night, they both struggled.
North Carolina lost and lost big to Auburn.
The notion that North Carolina was not equipped to win on nights when White and Little conspicuously and profoundly struggled was proved to be entirely accurate. This is not a criticism of White or Little, because just about every team has an NCAA Tournament game in which prominent players struggle. The champions of NCAA Tournaments get those unexpected pick-me-up efforts from members of the supporting cast, but this UNC team simply wasn’t built that way.
This team depended on Luke Maye to rebound and post double-doubles. It relied on Cameron Johnson to shoot threes. It relied on White to drive to the basket, become a lethal force in the open floor, and become an individual wrecking crew. Little was the energy guy with an NBA body who needed time to fit into the rhythms of the season and the nuances of the roster.
When you look at those four players, Maye and Johnson had the much higher floors, meaning that even when they weren’t playing well, they could still provide hidden value on defense and use their leadership to provide more cohesion. White and Little are “lower-floor” players in that when THEY weren’t playing well, they wouldn’t find ways to make those more intangible (non-box score) contributions.
Maye in particular needed some time to improve this year. He picked up the pace in early February, which accompanied Carolina’s sterling ACC regular season. Nevertheless, Maye is still someone whose game had a smaller variance between its best level and its worst level. Johnson was probably Carolina’s most relentlessly consistent player this season.
White and Little, on the other hand, had a very large gap — maybe not a canyon, but certainly an eight-lane highway — between their A-game and their worst level of performance. When they hit or came close to hitting those rock-bottom levels of performance, Carolina simply did not function well. It wasn’t built to function well.
Why? We know why — this was not the traditional North Carolina roster makeup. This was not the team with a pair of low-post studs akin to Kennedy Meeks and Isaiah Hicks. This was not the team with a true Roy Williams point guard in the mold of (take your pick) Joel Berry, Kendall Marshall, Raymond Felton, or Ty Lawson.
White wasn’t a deficient player so much as he wasn’t the traditional Roy point guard who lends cohesion to an offense. White was the engine of this team, and he DID create opportunities for others, but he did it primarily with his speed and skill, not so much as a classic floor general. In the post and at the point, Carolina didn’t have its normal or desirable makeup.
Roy Williams maxed out this team’s potential in the ACC season. He needed time to put the pieces together in the fall, and eventually found the right formula in February, but I think we can agree that this team was never a true colossus the way certain UNC teams under Roy have been.
We know this, right? Certain teams have the look and feel of a giant, a stone-cold killer which ought to be playing in the Final Four, probably for a title. Roy’s 2016 and 2017 teams were like that. The 2012 team was like that, but the Kendall Marshall injury derailed that team’s progress. The 2008 and 2009 teams were like that. 2005 was like that.
The 2018 was not a giant. This one wasn’t, either.
We know when teams punch above their weight in the regular season but are not fully equipped to handle March. We know when teams pace themselves in the regular season but know they have the goods this time of year.
2019 North Carolina was the former, not the latter.
No regrets — this wasn’t the classic roster composition which normally leads to a Carolina March of glory. It did as well as it reasonably could have been expected to achieve.
We’ll see about next year.
Make sure you follow the All Sports Discussion Twitter account at @AllSportsDACC and please like our Facebook Page
Leave a Reply