Lucas: The Standard

By Adam Lucas

Now we have the standard.

You know the one. That game you reference as the absolute bottom, the one that's the baseline for an utter breakdown in every possible fashion.

In other words, Saturday's Louisville game.

The 83-62 loss to the Cardinals wasn't just historic. It wasn't just frustrating. It wasn't just concerning.

It was all of those things, wrapped in a two-hour cocoon of misery. Carolina fans have seen this type of game before. You know what happens. The opponent comes out hot and chucks in a few three-pointers (yep—the Cardinals hit their first four three-pointers and five of their first seven), the Tar Heels close it to single digits at halftime (yep—it was a manageable 43-34 deficit at the break) and then the good ol' Heels make a push in the second half and overwhelm the visitors (Nope. Not even close.).

It was that last part that never happened. Carolina cut it to seven on a very nice set out of halftime but were down by 11 two minutes later and never even cut the gap under double figures the rest of the way. It was mind-boggling. Roy Williams' team hadn't lost a home game by double digits since Feb. 2, 2015, an 11-point defeat to Virginia. They hadn't lost a home game under Roy Williams by more than 20 since…ever. And they hadn't lost a regular season game by more than 20 since being blown out at Indiana on Nov. 27, 2012.

All of which is to say that if you had that feeling like, "This never happens," while watching Saturday's debacle, you were pretty close to right. It's true that the Tar Heels have had a double-digit January defeat in four of the past five prior seasons. But none of those included such a complete breakdown in every aspect of the game, with a chance to go 3-0 in the ACC and firmly establish the team in the top tier of the league.

Perhaps most concerning is the resemblances to last year's season-ending loss to Texas A&M. In that game, the Aggies came out hot and shot better from the perimeter than they had previously, then proceeded to bludgeon the Tar Heels inside, and Carolina was never really able to make a push.

So it was also at the Smith Center on Saturday. How bad was it? Well, ask those who were there.

Within a span of about two minutes, Kenny Williams used the words, "unfocused," "lackadaisical," "lackluster," "bad," "careless" and "complacent."

Cameron Johnson described it this way: "They hit us in the mouth and we didn't respond well."

Keep in mind those were the two Tar Heels who finished in double figures. It didn't matter. Sometimes there are total team efforts in a win. This was a total team effort in a loss.

And then there was Roy Williams, who seemed more disappointed than angry after watching his team shoot 3-for-22 from the three-point line, get outrebounded 40-31, and allow Louisville to rebound more than a third of their missed shots. He has been the head coach for 566 games at Carolina. Saturday would almost certainly rank in the bottom five of those.

"We didn't have the energy, the execution, the toughness, or the sense of urgency," the head coach said.

Remember, of course, that a January blowout is not necessarily an indictment of the season. The 2012 Tar Heels were horrific at Florida State, lost by 33 points, and were still a hard Creighton foul away from the Final Four. But it's also true that the game in Tallahassee was a one-time performance. Those Tar Heels won the ten games on either side of the FSU loss by an average of 21.3 points. It was the very definition of a one-time fluke.

Conversely, it was just 21 days ago that these Tar Heels had some of the very same concerns that presented themselves against Louisville in a loss against Kentucky in Chicago.

After that game, Carolina broke for Christmas and the players spent four days at home. It's hard to learn an immediate lesson in that situation.

The same won't be true this time. The Tar Heels will be back on the practice floor before noon on Sunday, the same place where Roy Williams said they went through two "very mediocre" practices leading up to the game with Louisville.

As he reconsidered the practices since the win over NCSU, Kenny Williams expressed some remorse for not holding teammates more accountable in those sessions. Presumably, he will be making some changes in his leadership starting tomorrow. If so, that's the one positive result that can come from Saturday. It won't be long before the seniors start to measure their remaining time in a Carolina uniform in weeks and days rather than months and years. They're going to need the rest of their teammates to feel that same sense of urgency.

At this point, the Louisville game is over and nothing else can be done about it. Now we have to see if the Tar Heels can learn more from this one than they did from the Kentucky defeat. Carolina just lost by 21 points, at home, in a conference game, on a court they just named for their head coach five months ago, to a team that lost to a team Carolina beat by 25 points a week ago. The lessons don't get much more incisive than that one.

"The feeling you have after games like this," Johnson said, "we don't ever want to have again."

Players Mentioned

Cameron Johnson

Kenny Williams

Related Videos