University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: A Purpose To His Game
January 7, 2012 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Jan. 7, 2012
By Adam Lucas
One of the most insightful quotes about the Tar Heels from Saturday's 83-60 win over Boston College came from an unlikely source: Eagles head coach Steve Donahue.
The second-year coach spent a decade at Cornell, so it's not surprising that he'd take a cerebral view of the game. This is what most of us said about Harrison Barnes, who made 10 of his 15 shots from the field, three of four from the three-point line, grabbed five rebounds, made four steals and scored 25 points: "Wow."
But listen to what Donahue said: "There's such a difference when you watch film and watch his body language out there. First of all, his body is different. He looks a lot better. He has such a purpose to his game. Everything is sharper. He has a sense of where his teammates are. He understands and can slow down when he needs to slow down."
That's exactly it. As recently as a couple of weeks ago, Barnes was a popular discussion topic. He looked out of sync. He wasn't rebounding/scoring/assisting (pick your favorite) the way he should. It occasionally felt like he was thinking instead of playing, like he was trying to find that purpose to his game.
You'd think we'd have learned our lesson by now. Identical comments were made about him last year around this time. Almost a year ago to the day, Virginia fans chanted "O-ver-rated" at him during a Carolina win. That season turned out OK, didn't it?
This one is going to, also. As Donahue said, he's a different player. He added the much-discussed 15 pounds of muscle in the offseason, and he spent the first two months of the season deciphering the best way to use that weight. As a freshman, he was often a spot-up jump shooter. As a sophomore, he is significantly more difficult to guard. The impressive part of Saturday's performance wasn't that he scored 25 points. It was how he got those 25 points. His ten field goals included five separate drives to the basket, three three-pointers, and a pair of dunks.
In one 59-second stretch in the first half, he scored seven points: an explosive transition dunk, a drive and reverse layup banked high off the glass, and a three-pointer off a ball screen.
How'd you like to be the guy who has to guard that?
It's pretty simple: he's figuring it out. His pump fake is one of the most dangerous moves on the team. Multiple times on Saturday, he used it to send Eagle defenders flying past him before he initiated a drive to the basket. It's simple to say they should've kept their balance and stayed on their feet. Here's the problem: Barnes is shooting 51.2% from the three-point line.
Did you hear that? Fifty-one point two percent. His three-point percentage is better than all but one Eagle is shooting from the two-point area. If you took just his three-point percentage, it would rank sixth in the entire Atlantic Coast Conference in field goal percentage.
That's why the pump fake is so dangerous. Every other team in the conference--where scouting reports are extensive--has seen him take that shot, and every other team in the conference has on their scouting report that he shouldn't be allowed to take it. Last year, teams played him to drive. Saturday, he drove straight through the Eagles.
In his last four games, Barnes is shooting 60.7% from the field (34-for-56). That would be good numbers for a seven-foot center. Barnes is doing it on the wing.
"A lot of it is experience," Barnes said. "Knowing when to drive and when to shoot. Knowing you can't drive in there and dunk it every time. I have a better sense of what to do."
He remains one of the more unique individuals of the Williams era. A couple weeks ago, he was in the weight room following a Carolina win (of course he was). A couple bystanders were carrying on a conversation as he lifted weights. He circled them for a few seconds, and eventually approached. "Excuse me," Barnes said. "I'm about to really go hard on this last set. I didn't want to be inconsiderate, but I wondered if it would be OK if I turned up the music."
Uh, sure, Harrison. Go ahead and turn up the music. Yeah, that'll be fine.
There's just enough of an edge with him--that same edge he shows when he punctuates a dunk with a yell--that you know those types of interactions are not entirely indicative of his personality. Some people are polite and deferential. That is not him. He's polite right up until the point that it becomes an obstruction. Look, he was going to do that last set of weights. He gave you the opportunity to pretend you had a choice about the music, but it was getting turned up no matter what.
There's a little meanness in there, the right kind of meanness. He's not totally bedazzled by this whole Carolina basketball experience. Having a sense of himself includes realizing the same thing you and I realize, that his game makes him unique. He has played a couple games this season when he looked like a star trying to figure out how to be a star. Saturday, he was just a star.
Eventually, the scouting report will change, and opponents will try to defend him differently. They've played him as a shooter. Maybe now they start playing him as a driver. He's evolved from his freshman year to his sophomore year, and that process will have to continue over the next three months.
Listening to him talk, though, it's hard not to believe that the previous two months were nothing more than a trial for him, a test of moves he might want to remember for later in the season.
"That (sense of myself) has progressively gotten better because the teams we're playing have gotten better," he said. "The better competition we play, the better team we want to be."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of six books on Carolina basketball, including the official chronicle of the first 100 years of Tar Heel hoops, A Century of Excellence, which is available now. Get real-time UNC sports updates from the THM staff on Twitter and Facebook.
