Carmichael Comments: As Successful As You'd Hoped

CARMICHAEL COMMENTS: Inside Carolina Women's Basketball
Vol. 3, Edition 3: As Successful as You Could Have Hoped For

The Carolina Women's Basketball home season is 20% over.
Let that sink in.

One week removed from the looming season start and the uncertainty therein, the Tar Heels played three home games as scheduled this week. In a season where teams must play 13 games to be considered for the NCAA Tournament come the end of the regular year, every tipoff and final horn yields an enormous sigh of relief. Three said sighs in five days is major progress in the world of pandemic basketball.

Now that we're feeling relieved, we can look at what happened between the lines: three wins, three games in which Carolina re-wrote record books and racked up superlatives.

90-61 over Radford.
96-35 over UNCG.
95-70 over High Point.

All of a sudden, we've gone from a sigh of relief to Courtney Banghart's team being one of just two Division I programs to have played three games and won them all. The other is our neighbors to the south in Columbia, who have a national championship in the past five years and might have won another had the pandemic not occurred this March.

Coach Banghart talks about how this group of Tar Heels might be her favorite team she's ever coached, and it showed this week. Carolina built a 28-12 lead over Radford after a quarter and never looked back in rolling over the Highlanders. That win was merely a sign of things to come on Saturday, when a 29-0 first half run fueled the largest margin of victory for the Tar Heels since December 2013 – the school-record 83-point win over New Orleans. The 56.3% field goal percentage was the best for Carolina under Banghart. Same with the 18.2% field goal percentage defense. And to find the last time the lights on the "HOME" portion of the Carmichael scoreboard displayed a "96," you'll have to zip back to January 2015.

Oddly enough, we were one bucket away from only waiting 24 hours to see it again. Yes, the 95 points against High Point were eye-catching, but the calm Tar Heels erased an early 21-point hole in order to earn the win. That's a 46-point swing – and the largest comeback in school history. Only Notre Dame's 23-point comeback in 2018 against Tennessee represents a greater in-game turnaround in ACC Women's Basketball history.

The challenges of the ACC lie ahead. So does the omnipresent COVID-19 pandemic. But these Tar Heels are deep and balanced. Three games are complete, and three wins are in the books. That's as successful as you could have hoped for.

Here's what else caught my eye this week…

Veteran Presence
When Carolina faced its large deficit on Sunday against High Point, it marked a new challenge for the group of five freshmen experiencing a week of college basketball games for the first time. The quintet, and the Tar Heels as a whole, had used a decided on-paper advantage to control both the Radford and UNCG games from the jump, and the stat sheet reflected the young players' successes. In a situation where Carolina had to overcome adversity, however, it's no surprise that the collegiate veterans stepped up. Seniors Stephanie Watts, Petra Holešínská and Janelle Bailey combined for 48 points and 23 rebounds, and rarely left the court in the process of the comeback.

"I was preparing in May for a team without Petra or Watts on it," Banghart said postgame. "So those were two key pickups. Look at Watts' line – she's been here before. She, Bailey, and Petra will have to play with the experience that we require when our young players are learning by fire."

Given that there's so much youth on the roster this season, don't be surprised to see the veterans rise to the occasion when their names are called and Carolina has its back against the wall this season. The younger players may have a lot of buzz, but it's the experienced veterans who could determine the ceiling of the 2020-21 Tar Heels.

Depth Leads to Defensive Creativity
At points last season, Carolina played a four-guard/one-big lineup out of pure necessity. A post player might be unavailable due to injury or foul trouble, so traditional guards had to step out and play the four (power forward) spot. But that was last year. This season, Carolina enjoys five healthy and capable post players thanks to the arrival of Anya Poole and Alexandra Zelaya, plus the return of Jaelynn Murray from injury. That's why an early substitution on Wednesday caught my eye. With 6:15 to play in the first quarter against Radford, Malu Tshitenge made her way to the socially distant bench and was replaced by Alyssa Ustby, who, despite her athleticism, is a traditional guard. Carolina was back in a four-guard set by choice.

Flash forward to Sunday. One look at the numbers and you knew High Point was going to shoot a lot of threes. One look at the film and you know they spread the floor to do so.

So I asked Coach Banghart before the game about the chances that we'd see the four-guard lineup with any regularity against the Panthers.

"We're going to always do what we do, but if the game forces us to adjust, we will," she said.

Safe to say that a 32-11 deficit is a situation where the game forces you to adjust, and adjust the Tar Heels did. For much of the final three quarters on Sunday, Carolina played the four-guard set, and High Point went from shooting 57 percent from three in the first quarter (8-for-14), to 21 percent (5-for-24) the rest of the way.
HPU star Skyler Curran, who was 5-for-7 from three in the opening quarter alone, was 0-for-7 for the remainder of the game.

"We put our length on her," Banghart said postgame, referencing the adjustment in personnel. "We played a lot of (Alyssa Ustby) and a lot of Ariel (Young), so we forced her to shoot further out."

Scoring Balance
Any time you score 90+ as a team in the first three games, you'd figure impressive individual numbers would be soon to follow.

And you'd be right.

Six different Tar Heels achieved a double-figure scoring game in the Radford opener, matching the 2018 opener at Elon for the most double-digit scorers in game one for the Tar Heels since seven Carolina players reached the threshold in 2007 against North Carolina Central. On both Saturday and Sunday, we saw five Tar Heels score in double figures in each game.

Back to the record books we go, to find out the last time Carolina had five double-digit scorers in each of the first three games of the season. The deep dive took me as far back as online box scores exist on this website (1998)…and this year is the first occasion in that span in which the Tar Heels have enjoyed such productivity in the initial trio of games. In fact, to find the last time it occurred in just the first two games, you land on 2006-07, the last season in which Carolina played in the Final Four.

"Offensively, we've got a lot that can score, and it's going to be by committee all season long," Banghart said after the Radford win.

Holešínská and Poole Join Elite Company
While eight different Tar Heels posted a double-figure scoring game this week, three players – Petra Holešínská, Anya Poole, and Janelle Bailey – reached the mark in all three games. For Holešínská and Poole, the feat was achieved in their first three games in a Carolina uniform. Three other current Tar Heels have also scored 10+ in each of their first three games: Bailey, Malu Tshitenge, and Stephanie Watts. Among current players, Bailey holds the longest streak of double-digit scoring games to open a career with seven.

What's Next
After a frantic three-games-in-five-days stretch to tip off the 2020-21 campaign, Carolina will assume the "normal" ACC Thursday night/Sunday afternoon schedule rotation for the duration of the regular season – even though this week is still a pair of non-conference games. The Tar Heels close out the non-league portion of the schedule by welcoming the South Carolina State Bulldogs (Thursday, 6:00 p.m.) and Charlotte 49ers (Sunday, 4:00 p.m.) to Carmichael Arena. Carolina has won its four previous matchups with South Carolina State in program history, the most recent of which took place on Dec. 30, 2016, an 82-49 final score in Carmichael. The Bulldogs sputtered last season, finishing 3-27 and 2-14 in the MEAC, a drought that continued into their season opener for 2020-21 with an 88-56 loss at Coastal Carolina last Wednesday. Thursday's game is the second leg of a back-to-back for South Carolina State, who will host Winthrop on Wednesday afternoon before visiting Carmichael Arena.

Our Tar Heel Sports Network coverage of Thursday's game begins with the Reeds Jewelers Pregame Show at 5:30 p.m. Catch the call streaming worldwide for free on the TuneIn app (search "North Carolina Tar Heels Women's Basketball"), GoHeels.com (click "listen" on the women's basketball schedule), and the GoHeels app. Additionally, fans in the Triangle can tune in on WCHL 97.9 FM/1360 AM.

Charlotte enjoyed a 21-win season last year, including an 11-7 mark in Conference USA. The 49ers fell to Appalachian State, 74-68, in their season opener last Wednesday in Boone, and now begin a week loaded with ACC competition. Clemson (Monday) and Wake Forest (Thursday) will both visit Charlotte before the 49ers' game at Carmichael.

Our Tar Heel Sports Network coverage of Sunday's game begins with the Reeds Jewelers Pregame Show at 3:30 p.m. Catch the call streaming worldwide for free on the TuneIn app (search "North Carolina Tar Heels Women's Basketball"), GoHeels.com (click "listen" on the women's basketball schedule), and the GoHeels app. Additionally, fans in the Triangle can tune in on WCHL 97.9 FM/1360 AM.

In the meantime, check out this week's edition of the Courtney Banghart Show on Wednesday morning on the Tar Heel Voices podcast channel. Fans can listen by clicking here, or by searching "Tar Heel Voices" on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe to the channel to automatically receive each episode! Additionally, the show link will be posted each week on Twitter @uncwbb.

That's all for now! Go Heels!

-Matt