University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: A Hard Seven
January 27, 2015 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
By Adam Lucas
After every game, Carolina strength and conditioning coordinator Jonas Sahratian makes the rounds in the Tar Heel locker room.
“What was that one?” he asks virtually every player, pen poised over a sheet of scratch paper to record the answer.
Players answer him with a number between one and ten, their answer reflecting how much they feel they had to exert themselves to play the number of minutes they played. One means they barely broke a sweat. Ten means they are completely wiped out. Even Carolina's rigorous preseason conditioning days don't usually get a ten.
Kennedy Meeks played 32 minutes in Carolina's 93-83 win over Syracuse. Most of those minutes were spent exchanging pushes, elbows and grunts with the Orange's 6-foot-9, 250-pound Rakeem Christmas, a senior and three-year starter. It was one of the most physical games of Carolina's 21 contests so far this year; the fact that Christmas played all 40 minutes made it seem even more relentless. There simply wasn't anywhere to get a break from him.
“He's athletic, with a soft touch,” said Meeks. “He's one of the best big men in the country if you ask me…Against any guy like that you have to play your hardest the entire game. You know he's going to be aggressive and get touches every time down.”
Exactly—every time, every possession it meant Meeks was going to be pushed. So it was natural to see how he might rate Monday night on Sahratian's scale of one to ten.
“I'd say that was a seven,” Meeks said.
Just a seven?
“A seven is pretty high for me,” he said. “That's probably the highest I've given this year.”
If that was just a seven, a ten must involve an afternoon of pushing trucks in the parking lot with Tyler Hansbrough. A seven meant elbows and arms locked together and shoves in the back (on both sides). A seven meant a forearm in the back on every attempted post-up. A seven meant both Meeks and Christmas trying to score through contact in the paint on every shot attempt.
And sure, Christmas still had a very solid game. "Christmas," Roy Williams said, "is a load." But what bodes well for the rest of the season is that Meeks did also, and very nearly held his own against one of the best post players in the country. Twice in the second half Meeks converted old-fashioned three-point plays by going through the defense.
Last year, Carolina didn't make it into the one-and-one in either half against the Orange. This year, the Tar Heels attempted 30 free throws, including getting into the double bonus with six minutes left in the second half. Meeks and Brice Johnson attempted eight free throws apiece.
Earlier this year, Williams was disappointed when he felt his team flinched when confronted with “a man's game” against Butler. Monday night was similarly physical, but this time no one from Carolina withdrew. Even late in the second half, Meeks was still trying to post hard while trying to make sure Christmas had to receive the ball at least a step or two outside of the paint.
“We wanted to attack the five man,” Meeks said. “We were trying to draw fouls and wanted the posts to run the floor and see what happens.”
What happened was that the efforts of the Carolina big men required Syracuse to honor them defensively. Combine that with a career-best shooting performance from Nate Britt on the perimeter, and there was simply too much Tar Heel offense for the Orange to cover. Carolina's 93 points were the most scored against Syracuse in regulation since Feb. 7, 2009.
It wasn't that Meeks outplayed Christmas; no one would make that claim. Instead, it was that he credibly competed against him for a full 40 minutes, making him earn every basket and forcing him to work on both ends of the floor for a Jim Boeheim team that is extremely depth-shy.
It was, in other words, an all-out 40 minutes of effort. Give it a seven.
