University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: UNC Basketball Notebook
December 16, 2014 | Men's Basketball
By Adam Lucas
Justin Jackson is one of just two Tar Heels, along with Marcus Paige, who has started all nine games for Carolina this season. The freshman has shown flashes of his potential, including an 18-point performance on 7-of-10 shooting at Davidson and 12 points each against Florida and UCLA in the Bahamas.
But after making 19 of his first 31 shots, Jackson has connected on just 15 of his last 44. He rushed a good look at a three-pointer on his first shot at Kentucky on Saturday and misfired, then never really looked comfortable most of the rest of the afternoon and finished 2-for-6 from the floor with just one rebound in a season-low 18 minutes.
"He needs to be more positive with what he does," Roy Williams said on his radio show with Jones Angell on Monday night. "It's like John Wooden used to say, 'Be quick but don't hurry.'"
Williams also cited Jackson as the most likely player to emerge as the second-best perimeter threat for Carolina (behind Marcus Paige). Jackson made a pair of three-pointers in the first half against Florida but is 0-for-7 from the arc since that game. As evidenced by his 78.9 percent mark from the free throw line, the Texas native has a good shooting stroke that should eventually translate to better perimeter marksmanship.
Tracking the turnovers: Williams mentioned again on Monday night that his team needs to do a better job taking care of the ball. Turnovers first emerged as a problem in a 19-miscue loss to Butler, and Carolina also turned it over 19 times against Florida and 18 at Kentucky.
As a team, the Tar Heel turnover rate--which measures turnovers per 100 plays--is 18.1 percent, which would be the highest since the 2011 team compiled an 18.3% mark.
A player to watch in that regard is J.P. Tokoto, who has evolved into one of the team's key secondary ball-handlers. His passing has justifiably earned him raves during the early part of the season, and he still leads the team in assists with 39 and ranks ninth in the league in that category.
But Williams pointed out last week that some of those passes have been high-risk, high-reward type plays that have looked good because they've worked. In the last couple of weeks, the odds have evened out on some of those risks, and Tokoto has 14 turnovers over his last four games.
Holiday schedule: Exams forced Carolina into an awkward practice schedule last week leading up to the trip to Lexington. The Tar Heels were off on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, then had short practices on Thursday and Friday (when the team collectively had 12 exams) before playing the game at noon on Saturday. But that schedule will stabilize somewhat over the next week.
Part of life as a major college basketball player means likely being away from home at Thanksgiving, when many of the high-profile preseason tournaments are held. But Williams has consistently tried to schedule his players some time at home at Christmas. After Saturday's game against Ohio State, players will scatter and fly straight home from Chicago. Most will have five nights at home before the team reassembles in Chapel Hill for a 9 p.m. practice on Christmas evening.
The Tar Heels will then move into a more consistent practice pattern as they point towards the ACC opener on Jan. 3 at Clemson, which had been TBA but was set on Monday for an 8:15 p.m. tipoff on ESPN.
Briefly: An interesting comment from Roy Williams on Monday night, as he identified the 1990 UNLV team and the 1989 Oklahoma team as two of the best teams he's ever coached against. Williams' Jayhawks lost a pair of games to the Sooners in 1989, including one in overtime, but handed the eventual national champion Rebels one of just five losses in 1990, a 91-77 KU victory...Williams on coming out in a zone defense instead of his preferred man-to-man on the first possession at Kentucky on Saturday: "To me, that's like being a communist."...
Asked what he sees as the most important component of a championship-level team, Williams quickly identified toughness as the key trait. The coach singled out Raymond Felton from the 2005 team and Tyler Hansbrough from the 2009 squad as the players who contributed that toughness to those titles...Carolina has plenty of chances for marquee wins against this year's loaded the schedule. The Tar Heels have six games against the current top six teams in this week's Associated Press poll. Five of those six games still remain, with only last Saturday's trip to Kentucky already off the board.
