Lucas: Board Work

By Adam Lucas

PARADISE ISLAND, Bahamas—This is how it happens.

Carolina had just finished off a 76-67 win over Alabama, a game in which the Tar Heels methodically pounded away in the paint while watching the Crimson Tide fire away from the three-point line.

By the time it was over, Garrison Brooks tied his career high with 20 points and Armando Bacot had his third straight double-double, this one a 12-point, 15-board effort in just 26 minutes of action.

Brandon Robinson (a career-high 12 points in his return to action) and Leaky Black had joined Brooks at the postgame press conference, and Bacot was virtually alone in the Tar Heel locker room—really a hotel meeting room—while his teammates showered elsewhere.

"How many rebounds did I have?" Bacot asked.

"Fifteen," came the answer.

There are schools where three straight double-doubles as a freshman would be celebrated. Bacot is only the third Tar Heel freshman to ever achieve the feat, and the other two are Mike O'Koren and Antawn Jamison, so he's in rare company.

This was the reception he received in the Carolina locker room: "Hmmmph," said Sean May, who happened to walk by at that exact moment. "You could've had 20 if you'd played in the first half."

And that is how Carolina big men become, well, Carolina big men. You got ten rebounds? Now get 12. You got 15? Now get 20. You got 20? Let me tell you about the time Sean May got 24 boards…against Duke…with the Atlantic Coast Conference regular season title on the line.

It is absolutely not a guarantee that getting the ball closer to the basket will result in a victory. Sometimes the perimeter-oriented team wins, like Auburn in last year's NCAA Tournament. But the same way Dean Smith told his teams to pound it inside to Brad Daugherty and Eric Montross and Rasheed Wallace, Williams consistently emphasizes feeding May and Tyler Hansbrough and now, Bacot. Smith won 879 career games with that philosophy and Williams, amazingly, is now at 876. The game has changed over the nearly 60 years that span the careers of those two men. The Carolina approach continues to work.

This year Williams is delighted to have two capable big men for the first time since 2017. Bacot gives him the type of back-line defender Carolina hasn't had in recent years. With Cole Anthony saddled with three fouls and forced to allow his man to breeze by him early in the second half, it was Bacot who appeared out of nowhere to swat Kira Lewis's shot away.

The storyline will be that the win wasn't pretty. And it wasn't, unless you like watching the Tar Heels throw the ball off the rim—shooting 40.8 percent from the field, meaning they still haven't connected at a 50 percent clip yet this season—and then go chase it. A whopping seven different Tar Heels had at least two offensive rebounds, led by Bacot with six (he had more offensive rebounds than all but one Alabama player had total rebounds). You want to play for Williams? It's pretty simple: go get the ball. Carolina led the overall rebounding race, 60-31.

The Tar Heels—who will get their biggest test of the season against a big, talented Michigan team tomorrow—have had two of their most effective rebounding games of the season in the last two games. Wednesday, it meant getting exactly as many offensive rebounds (23) as Alabama got defensive rebounds, the Williams equivalent to the old Dean Smith trick of making as many free throws as the opponent attempted (for good measure, Carolina did that also against the Tide, making 13 while Alabama attempted nine). So relentless was the Tar Heel inside attack that Alabama's Galin Smith played six minutes and 22 seconds and collected four fouls.

"Make them pay," Williams repeatedly told his team at Tuesday's practice when they recovered an offensive rebound. "Make them pay."

And after a first half in which Carolina turned a dozen offensive rebounds into just six points, they used 11 offensive rebounds to score 17 points in the second half. No, the Tar Heels don't shoot very well, and after five games it's possible that may just be a reality about this particular squad. But when they're at their best, they compete for every single ball that bounces off the rim. So focused are they on offensive rebounding that even simple missed free throws—basically a giveaway for most teams—turn into scoring chances. The Tar Heels missed eight free throws against the Tide. They rebounded six of them.

Consider that. By rule, Alabama had inside position on all eight of those opportunities. Seventy-five percent of the time, it didn't matter and the Tar Heels grabbed the ball anyway.

"We practice that every day and Coach preaches it every day," Brooks said. "For the most part, that's what we try to do every day."

Every day, every rebound, every time.

"We just play our brand of basketball," Bacot said. "We didn't want to go three-pointer for three-pointer with them. We just wanted to play Carolina basketball."

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University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Cole Anthony

Armando Bacot

Leaky Black

Garrison Brooks

Brandon Robinson

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