Lucas: January

By Adam Lucas

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.—It's January.

It's January it's January it's January.

Oh, sorry. Didn't see you there. Just sitting here in Charlottesville repeating my mantra after Saturday's 61-49 Virginia shellacking of Carolina. The Tar Heels played poorly offensively, turned the ball over too much, never got the running game going, and have now lost two games in a row for the first time since 2016.

And from all of that, we can draw one very important, indisputable conclusion about the 2018 Tar Heels:

It's January.

That's it. That's all we know, at least in terms of final assessments of this year's team.

Oh, there will be plenty of attempts to tell you exactly what is wrong with the Tar Heels and exactly how unfixable it is. They don't have enough post presence. They commit too many turnovers. They get beaten off the dribble too much.

All of that is correct. In January. Which no one will remember two months from now.

Here's what you have to remember in January. It's completely fine to assess how the team played on a particular Saturday. There's nothing wrong with saying Carolina needs to shoot the ball better or be tougher defensively. What tends to get people in trouble in January is when they take the result of one game, and then extrapolate it to the rest of the season. "Carolina wasn't good enough to beat Virginia" is fine. "Carolina wasn't good enough to beat Virginia and therefore they will get crushed by _____ and won't make the NCAA Tournament" is silly.

Here is the sum total of what has happened in the past week: Carolina lost at a ranked Florida State team by one point. The Tar Heels had the ball and a chance to win the game at the end, didn't make the play, and hopefully will learn from it the next time they are in a similar situation.

Carolina also lost at Virginia, a place they have now lost five times in a row. The last time the Tar Heels won here, Kendall Marshall was the starting point guard.

The Tar Heels probably aren't going to win the Official January Championship, just as they didn't in 2013 (lost three straight ACC games, ultimately went to the ACC title game and the round of 32) or 2009 (lost two straight ACC games, ultimately won the national title) or 2006 (lost two straight ACC games, ultimately turned into one of the most fun Carolina teams to watch of the Williams era).

This Carolina team most likely has more in common with the 2013 or 2006 squad than the 2009 group, which isn't a coincidence since the 2006 team was playing in the shadow of the newly hung 2005 title banner and the 2013 squad followed a 2012 team that was one Creighton hatchet job away from at least the Final Four. This year's group has some flaws which the great coaching, scouting and talent in the ACC have exposed. Virginia's entire existence is predicated on frustrating opponents defensively. The Tar Heels aren't the first or the last team to have that kind of afternoon against the Cavaliers in John Paul Jones Arena. It's very difficult to win road games against the best teams in the ACC. Carolina didn't play nearly well enough to do so on Saturday.

"It was a big ol' butt-kicking," Roy Williams said. "That's all it was."

He meant "that's all it was" as in that was the best way to describe it. But he could have also meant "that's all it was" as in that's, really, all it was. We have learned Carolina struggles to score against the two best defensive teams in America, Michigan State and Virginia. That probably shouldn't come as a surprise, not with this year's group. If the Tar Heels have to play the third-best defensive team, you should probably expect baskets to be hard to come by. Otherwise, it's very unlikely Carolina will face as committed a defensive team as Virginia the rest of this season.

Williams is very clearly still searching for the right combination. Theo Pinson saw some minutes at the center spot, and the head coach also paired Jalek Felton with Joel Berry in the backcourt in the closing minutes for one of the first times this year.

"We have to make some changes," the head coach said in a fairly eye-opening comment after the game. "We have to make some tweaks, do a few things."

It's unusual but not unprecedented for Carolina to be in tweaking mode three games into the ACC schedule. But we've also been a little spoiled the last couple of years. And if Berry's final shot bounces a little differently off the rim on Wednesday night, the mood right now is completely different. One shot. One bounce. That's the difference between "Well, gee, Virginia is tough defensively and could do that to anybody on a given afternoon" and "Oh no everybody panic two losses in a row maybe we could make the Smith Center into a lecture hall because clearly this basketball thing isn't working out."

Here's a little-known fact: if you have to make changes, better to do it as the defending national champion than as…well, than as anybody else. Luckily, Roy Williams doesn't tweet or call in to radio shows or post on message boards. He just coaches, and the results say he's better at it than most anyone else in the United States of America.

Saturday afternoon, Berry already knew what his coach had in store for him.

"I expect him to come out and go hard on us," the senior said. "He will come out and give us a pretty hard practice."

Minutes may change. Roles might diminish or grow. As we sit here with the Tar Heels 12-4 overall, 1-2 in the ACC, there is only one thing that at this moment we absolutely, positively know for sure about the 2018 Carolina basketball team:

It's January.

Players Mentioned

Jalek Felton

Theo Pinson

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