Lucas: Rapid Reactions

By Adam Lucas

1. Good win to take into the break and to wash away the memories of Wednesday night's game against Wofford. Carolina didn't play great, but played well enough to take an 86-72 win over Ohio State.

2. It was a very unusual tale of two very different offensive outputs for Carolina. The Tar Heels were three-point happy for most of the first three-quarters of the game, attempting 24 of the first 49 shots from three-point range. But when they needed to close out the game, Carolina went much more traditional, taking just one three-pointer over the final eight minutes.

3. One of those three-pointers came from Theo Pinson as the first UNC basket of the game. That set the senior off on a career-high tying performance of 19 points. Pinson did a great deal of his damage at the free throw line, where he was once again clutch in the final minutes.

4. Luke Maye didn't have a great first half, but his aggressiveness played a role in Carolina taking a big halftime lead. It was Maye's drive to the basket that drew a big second foul on Ohio State leading scorer and rebounder Keita Bates-Diop. The Buckeyes tried to get a couple more minutes out of Bates-Diop, but when he sat the final 7:46 of the half, Carolina was +15 and went on a 24-9 run. The Buckeye star finished with 25 points, and if he'd played a usual amount of minutes in the first half, likely would've had at least 30. Getting Bates-Diop out of the game early changed the entire course of the game.

5. With no nonconference games remaining and Cameron Johnson seeing his second action of the season, we're starting to get a little better glimpse of what the rotation might be in ACC play. Johnson and Sterling Manley were the first two Tar Heels off the bench Saturday, checking in before the first media timeout. Add in Jalek Felton, who tossed in three first-half three-pointers, and that looks like a strong top eight, with Andrew Platek and Brandon Robinson providing spot minutes.

6. Carolina dominated the glass against Ohio State. The Buckeyes did not get an offensive rebound in the first 20 minutes and finished with just one in the game. Carolina won the overall rebounding battle 38-23.

7. The Tar Heels were again too loose with the ball for segments of Saturday's game. Carolina committed 15 miscues in the game and again had an issue with some of the miscues being careless.

8. Kenny Williams drew three charges and very nearly had a fourth that was changed to a block. That's three possessions he took away from the Buckeyes with nothing more than hustle and being in the right place while being willing to sacrifice his body.

9. Big minutes from the UNC bench, and especially offensive output from Felton, in helping Carolina hold a 28-6 advantage in bench points. The freshman point guard, who had to play some important early minutes in relief of Joel Berry when Berry was hit with foul trouble, hit four three-point shots and also had five assists, a couple of the sparkling variety.

10. The CBS Sports Classic is an interesting event. It's about as close as you can get to an NCAA Tournament environment in terms of all the surroundings of the game--a neutral site, good opponent, lots of CBS requirements and responsibilities that are done in a way that's very similar to the NCAA Tournament. But New Orleans is not a college basketball hotbed and was a questionable choice for this year's event. It was announced today that next year's iteration will be played in Chicago on Dec. 22 (Carolina will face Kentucky rather than UCLA, because the Tar Heels could face the Bruins in the 2018 Las Vegas Invitational and didn't want to replicate that matchup), which is a much better location and should be a good atmosphere. The four participating schools are a combined 4,392 miles from New Orleans, with Kentucky the closest at 744 miles. They'll cut that combined total by almost 1,000 miles next year, including two schools (OSU and UK) fewer than 400 miles from Chicago.

11. Saturday was the 3,000th game in Carolina basketball history. The Tar Heels are now one of only five programs to reach that mark. Two of them (Duke and Kansas) you can probably guess. The other two (Washington State and Oregon State) might require a little bit of research.

12. So Carolina goes to the Christmas break at 11-2. Would you have taken that in October, knowing that there would be no Kennedy Meeks, Isaiah Hicks or Justin Jackson, and that Cameron Johnson would miss the first 11 games with an injury? Probably so--the Tar Heels have plenty of room to get better, and certainly have some areas to improve, but they're solidly in position to compete in a loaded Atlantic Coast Conference and make a strong case for a solid NCAA Tournament seeding.

Players Mentioned

Jalek Felton

Cameron Johnson

Sterling Manley

Luke Maye

Theo Pinson

Andrew Platek

Brandon Robinson

Kenny Williams

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