University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Rapid Reactions
January 11, 2014 | Men's Basketball
1. On paper, this looked like a terrible matchup for the Tar Heels—an opponent that plays zone, but with better athletes and training in the system than anything Carolina has seen so far this year. That's exactly what it turned out to be. This year's team just isn't constructed in a way that is equipped to beat that style of opponent. Some teams you just seem to match up well against for some reason (Michigan State). Others you don't. This was one of the latter.
2. Carolina started the game with a solid plan for attacking the Syracuse zone, feeding James Michael McAdoo at the free throw line to allow him to create offense with the drive or the shot. McAdoo put up 10 quick points in the game's first eight minutes, staking the Tar Heels to a 15-11 lead. But then the Orange began to clamp down on the passing lanes, and the Carolina offense dried up.
By the way, McAdoo seems to get his share of criticism when things go poorly. He played very hard in the Carrier Dome.
3. Syracuse was simply the bigger, tougher team on the backboards on Saturday. The Orange rebounded nearly fifty percent of their missed shots in the first half, building an 8-0 advantage in second chance points. Seemingly every time a ball rolled free, there were at least one or two Syracuse hands grabbing the ball. As a testament to the way Carolina chose to attack the zone, the Tar Heels drew just four fouls on the Orange in the first half, which would suggest there were lots of jumpers and fallaways. For what is almost certainly the first time in the Roy Williams era, the Tar Heels didn't make it into the one-and-one in either half.
There were multiple occasions when a 50-50 ball seemed to be up for grabs, and Syracuse almost always snagged it. It's a little concerning that midway through the season, with a handful of post choices to pick from, no one has really stepped forward and seized a key role among the Tar Heel big men.
4. Isaiah Hicks is starting to show one or two flashes per game of the player he could be. He had a nice move in the paint on Saturday that didn't end in a hoop, but was a tantalizing example of what the freshman could eventually become. And in a game where aggressiveness was at a premium, he had an impressive block at the rim. Hicks is nowhere close to a finished product, but there's some raw material there to work with.
Adam Lucas is the editor of CAROLINA.
