Lucas: The Walk

Shea Rush

Photo by: Rebecca Lawson

December 5, 2019 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas

Roy Williams' body language said it all on Wednesday night.

By: Adam Lucas

By Adam Lucas

Shea Rush has been studying Roy Williams for four years, so he knew. He's seen the Carolina head coach in hundreds of practices and over 100 games. By this point, he didn't need to look at the scoreboard to know what was about to happen.

"The way he walked from the baseline up to the scorer's table, he's just got a walk," Rush said. "I said, 'Alright, here it comes.'"

The senior was right, of course. Ohio State led Carolina 54-40 with 10:42 remaining, but it felt substantially worse than the score indicated. The Buckeyes' last two baskets had been dunks, and the Tar Heels had made one field goal in the prior five minutes--a stretch that included one of the foremost Williams warning signs, a timeout early in the second half (he called it with 13:35 left in the game and Carolina down nine, after which they promptly failed to convert an offensive rebound and gave up a three-pointer).

It was at that point that Williams sent Rush, K.J. Smith, Christian Keeling, Justin Pierce and Brandon Huffman to the scorer's table. He had tried virtually everything else. The Tar Heels were already severely hamstrung by injury, with Armando Bacot missing most of the game with an ankle injury--his status, of which Williams said, "It looks like he'll be out a while," remains overwhelmingly the biggest outcome from this game--and Leaky Black trying to play through a toe problem while Cole Anthony soldiered on through an illness. That's three of Carolina's most essential players, and the opponent just so happened to be the second-best defensive team in the country (the national leader in team defense is on the horizon Sunday).

You don't have to be Shea Rush to see the signs of trouble in the previous two sentences.

The new five, however, was a temporary four-minute relief from the rest of the night's issues. Players and the ball suddenly moved more actively. Pierce scored on a drive almost immediately, and the points per possession on six possessions with the five substitutes was a welcome 1.17. For the sake of comparison, Carolina managed only a meager 0.75 for the game in that category. The Tar Heels were +2 with the five subs on the court during that four-minute stretch.

"The biggest problem for us tonight is that we were really stagnant," Rush said of the worst home loss in the Williams era, a home defeat eclipsed in recent program history only by a loss to Duke during the 8-20 campaign, which isn't exactly a frame of reference you want to find yourself using. "The ball wasn't moving, we weren't moving, and against a pack line defense like that, it makes it really tough to score."

On a night when Carolina was dominated on the boards, 48-32, Carolina's leading rebounder, Brooks (who had seven), summed it up this way: "We couldn't stop them on defense, we didn't get good shots on offense, and they were a better team than us today."

If indeed the Tar Heels are without Bacot for any significant stretch of time--during a month that includes road trips to Virginia and Gonzaga, plus a neutral site meeting with UCLA--the offense is likely to become even more dependent on Anthony. According to Ken Pomeroy's stats, he's already taking nearly a third of Carolina's shots when he is on the court. That's a figure significantly higher than, say, any of Tyler Hansbrough's seasons in Chapel Hill (his maximum was 27.4% as a freshman). The highest mark since the 2005 championship team is Harrison Barnes taking 29.8 percent of the 2011 team's shots.

Anthony is almost certainly on track to obliterate that mark. Not because he's a selfish player or because he'll take a disproportionate amount of shots. But because the Tar Heels need him to shoot that much. Anthony took 15 of Carolina's 62 field goals on Wednesday night, and that almost didn't feel like enough. The one time it felt in the building of 21,115 like the Tar Heels had a chance was when he drilled back-to-back three-pointers early in the second half. That was it. Other than a couple of possessions from the substitutes, that was the best offense Carolina mustered all night.

The Tar Heels shot 25.6 percent on two-point shots on Wednesday. That's only on two-point shots--you know, the ones closer to the basket. That's what tends to happen when a struggling offensive team loses their best offensive option close to the basket while facing one of the nation's elite defenses.

"There are so many more games left to play," Brandon Robinson said.

The senior is exactly right. One sizable defeat is not indicative of the remainder of the season, and there are plenty of examples in Carolina basketball history that prove it (last year's Louisville loss and the 2017 team's stinker at Georgia Tech are only two of the most recent illustrations). But the Tar Heels must get healthy and must find more consistent offense. Otherwise, we're likely to see even more of those walks from the head coach.