University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: The Unknown
November 7, 2015 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
By Adam Lucas
You go through all those summer months waiting for basketball. You watch the game tapes from last year. You spend afternoons jotting down possible lineups, and by the time you're on Day Three of your imaginary lineups you've convinced yourself eight different players could play 35 minutes because the Tar Heels just have so much depth. You watch YouTube videos of the incoming freshmen (in the old days, kids, we sometimes didn't know who the Tar Heels had signed until the preseason magazines came out).
You do all that to get to that first exhibition game of the year, that first chance to see Carolina against another opponent, because at that point you convince yourself you'll have a good read on the Tar Heels.
And then, after watching Roy Williams' team demolish Guilford, 99-49, you know that the Tar Heels have hooded warmup vests this year, that the new introduction video with Stuart Scott is very cool, that you don't ever want to see Marcus Paige and Justin Jackson in suits again until the basketball banquet…and that as for basketball, you don't know much more than you knew back on that summer afternoon when you were trying to decipher a rotation.
Video
That's the fun and the frustration of this whole thing. For the next week, we'll parse that 50-point exhibition win like the Zapruder film trying to figure out if this is truly the nation's best team. But especially without Paige and Jackson, it's very hard to tell anything for certain. Players will improve and players will go through slumps and the rotation will change and by March, it'll be a different team than the one that faced the Quakers.
Here are some of the questions about the 2016 team that weren't answered on Friday night:
Can this team shoot from the outside?
We don't know.
They certainly looked like they enjoyed it in the first half, jacking up 12 three-pointers against a Guilford team that they had physically overmatched inside. Keeping in mind that Paige and Jackson, the team's likely two best outside shooters, were on the bench, there were signs of hope.
Joel Berry hit two-of-four three-pointers and Theo Pinson made two-of-three. Berry is coming off a strong finish to his freshman season, making 10 of his final 20 trifectas. Pinson is more of a question mark, but says he's been working on his jumper.
“I put in a lot of work on it this summer,” he says. “When I got back, I got right back on the court working on my shot. Coach and I have had many conversations about it. I shot it well in preseason practice, and he said, 'Theo, the time you've put in is paying off.'”
Pinson has worked with Hubert Davis to change some of the mechanics of his shot and is no longer dropping the ball to his hip when he loads, and is also working on a more consistent, higher release point.
As Berry points out, though, the Carolina outside game is almost always going to be dependent on the post players. “If we can get it down low and suck the defense in and then kick it out, that's what we want,” the sophomore point guard says.
Is Pinson healthy?
We don't know.
But he sure looks like it, and he says he's 100 percent. Pinson played 26 minutes, a figure that tied Berry for the most on the team. He never looked hesitant, never seemed to favor his foot, and generally provided the same energy he contributed as a freshman when he was healthy. It was terrific to see him leaping high off the floor to grab a missed Luke Maye free throw in the second half.
“The team needs the same things they needed from me before,” Pinson says. “Energy, make plays on the defensive and offensive ends, and limit turnovers.”
Could freshman Kenny Williams contribute?
We don't know.
But this is where some of those napkin-scratch lineups come into play. There were definitely more minutes available against Guilford than there will be when ACC play begins. But Williams contributed in some small ways that suggest he might still be in the rotation later in the season. In addition to shooting 5-for-7 from the field, he had five assists against just two turnovers.
He also has some of that Pinson-type energy and frenetic activity level. On one sequence late in the second half, Williams skied for an offensive rebound, had his shot blocked, stayed after it, and then followed it again for a put-back basket.
At one point, Roy Williams deployed Kenny Williams and Pinson together—that's a lineup with a lot of athleticism and versatility.
As per Dean Smith's long-standing rule, Carolina freshmen can't talk to the media until they've played their first regular season game. But Williams has impressed his older teammates.
“In the preseason, I've seen (Kenny) is a great defender,” Berry says. “He gets up on us in practice. We need toughness, and he brings that on the defensive end.”
So the night we've waited for since that disappointing evening in Los Angeles last March has come and gone. The 2015-16 Tar Heels are real. They exist. Carolina will actually field a team that returns four starters and goes a legitimate nine deep, and maybe more. Over the next four-plus months they'll alternately make us laugh and scream and maybe cry a little, and by February it's guaranteed that someone wearing the argyle will be doing something as of right now you don't expect from them at all.
It's going to be fun, especially once we actually know something. Until then, this will do just fine.
