University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Carolina Basketball Notebook
February 27, 2017 | Men's Basketball
By Adam Lucas
With the second highest road winning percentage in ACC history, Roy Williams has made a habit out of doing the unusual on the road during his Carolina head coaching career. If he can coach the Tar Heels to a victory tonight in Charlottesville, he'll have done something very rare.
The Atlantic Coast Conference became a part of ESPN's Big Monday package before the 2013-14 season. Tonight's pair of contests—Carolina at Virginia and Miami at Virginia Tech—will mark the 32nd and 33rd Big Monday game. Out of those 33 games, only seven times has a team had to play the prior Saturday on the road followed by a road Big Monday game. Of the six prior instances, only twice has a team won both of those road games. In 2016, Syracuse won at Wake Forest and then won at Duke. And this season, Duke won at Wake Forest and then won at Notre Dame.
Roy Williams was also around the last time Carolina played two ACC road games in such a short turnaround—but he was still selling calendars. The last similar similar instance was Jan. 12 and 14, 1984, when Carolina won at Maryland and at Wake Forest (when the Deacs were playing home games in the Greensboro Coliseum). The last time the Tar Heels traveled out of state for two road ACC games in three days predated Dean Smith, as Frank McGuire took Carolina to Virginia on Jan. 14, 1961, and then to Maryland on Jan. 16. Both of those games were UNC victories.
Travel tips: The unique scheduling created some thorny travel issues. Roy Williams always prefers to come home when he can, and so the Tar Heels returned to Chapel Hill after Saturday's win at Pitt, getting back to RDU around 5 p.m. A little over 24 hours later, after a Sunday afternoon practice at the Smith Center, they were back at the airport for a Sunday evening flight to Charlottesville. They'll have a shootaround at John Paul Jones Arena today around noon and then fly back to RDU after tonight's game.
Cavalier preparation: It will be interesting to see how playing Virginia twice in such a short turnaround (the teams just met nine days ago in Chapel Hill) impacts Carolina's preparation. Tony Bennett's team plays such a unique style that it might be beneficial to have some of their offensive sets still in the short-term memory.
“We know you have to be very ready to defend against them,” Isaiah Hicks said. “The way they move on offense is not easy to defend, and playing them at their place is a big challenge.”
Jackson's actions: National Player of the Year candidate Justin Jackson is averaging 18.8 points per game, the highest individual Carolina scoring average since Tyler Hansbrough scored 20.7 points per game during the 2009 national championship season. Although his three-point percentage has increased from 29.2% as a sophomore to 39.9% this season, Jackson has consistently said he hasn't made any technical changes to his shot. Instead, he credits his offseason repetitions for the increase.
“I didn't have a certain amount of reps that I did,” Jackson said. “I did the drills every single day, and I did them until my shot felt good, whether that was 300 shots or 500 shots or whatever it took. I added a few things I had learned at the combine, and every single day I went in the gym and tried to get better.”
