Lucas: A Passing Contest

By Adam Lucas

The gauntlet has been thrown.

Or perhaps more appropriately, passed.

Theo Pinson scored just two points on Saturday night against Pittsburgh and yet had one of the most spectacular games of the season for the Tar Heels. Not with his vicious one-handed follow dunk in the second half, but with his eight assists, some of which were—he isn't going to like this—darn near Kendall Marshall-esque.

The highlight was probably the ball that he rebounded off a Cameron Johnson miss in the first half. Well, hold on. He didn't rebound it, not in the way you think of with two hands on the ball and the ball at your chin.

He controlled it, is what he did, with one hand, for less than a second. And in that same motion he tipped it to Luke Maye, who was wide open and converted a layup. It was the kind of play you had to watch on replay just to make sure it really happened the way you thought it did. Did he...I think he did...He did! I saw it!

"I saw Luke for a second when I was going up," Pinson said. "But if you ask Coach Williams, I do it all the time in practice. I work on that even when we're doing dummy offense. I always try to tip it to someone and work on something."

(By the way, credit to the Smith Center stat crew for catching it live and immediately crediting Pinson with both a rebound and an assist. Even Pinson himself said he wasn't sure he would get credit for both, but he did).

But there were plenty of others to choose from. He threw a no-look pass across four bodies to Garrison Brooks for a layup midway through the first half. He threw a completely absurd hit-ahead to Andrew Platek that was millimeters from the fingertips of a defender and led to another layup. He had another gorgeous diagonal pass to Brooks in the second half.

Even his non-assists were notable; two minutes into the second half, he threw a beautiful bounce pass to Johnson under the rim, but Johnson fumbled it. In some corner of the sold-out Smith Center, you could almost hear the echoes of Dean Smith saying, "That's an assist the way we keep it."

The official stats were history-making. Paired with his 13 rebounds, in fact, it may have never been done before. UNC stat wizard Jody Zeugner has Carolina basketball data going back to the 1993 season. In those 25 years, he couldn't find a Tar Heel who had 13 rebounds and eight assists in the same game.

But don't hand Pinson the title of best Tar Heel passer just yet. The current best passer in the Roy Williams era is Kendall Marshall, who played two seasons for Carolina and put together some ridiculous highlights tossing assists to John Henson, Harrison Barnes and Tyler Zeller.

Marshall is back in school at Carolina. Just a couple days ago, Marshall and Pinson began a discussion in the Tar Heel locker room about who was/is the better passer. Marshall went to the ultimate source—YouTube, obviously—and began cycling through his Tar Heel career highlights. It's an impressive reel.

Except to Pinson.

"I was like, 'Kendall, there isn't one pass you made that I haven't made,'" Pinson said. "He kept showing me clips and I was like, 'Kendall, I'm sure I've made that pass.' So every game I'm trying to show him what's up."

Eventually, although Pinson didn't want to admit it on Saturday night, Marshall did eventually find an assist that even Pinson conceded he hasn't duplicated—yet. It was a pass in transition against Miami, and knowing Pinson's love of film study, he immediately filed it away and will find an opportunity to eclipse it sometime in the next month.

How good was it? So amazing that even Pinson himself said, "OK, I haven't done that one yet."

That last word is the key word. Pinson now has eight assists each in two of the last three games in which he's played a full allotment of minutes (in the third game of that stretch, he had 22 points and 15 rebounds). It's not just for style. His passing is indisputably one of the keys to Carolina's success. The Greensboro native now has 86 assists and 34 turnovers (a 2.5 assist/turnover ratio) in UNC's wins, and 19 assists and 19 turnovers in the losses.

But he doesn't measure himself by those numbers. For Pinson, there is only one true measurement.

"Every pass I made tonight," Pinson said with his ever-present grin, "I was like, 'Yep, Kendall, that's another pass you can't make."

Players Mentioned

Garrison Brooks

Cameron Johnson

Luke Maye

Theo Pinson

Andrew Platek

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