Lucas: Georgia Tech Rapid Reactions

By Adam Lucas

1. On the final meaningful possession, the film is probably going to show the Tar Heels might have preferred for RJ Davis to make one extra pass to an open Kerwin Walton. The freshman shooter was open in the corner facing a three-point deficit. The shot Davis took wasn't a bad one, but if he'd used his point guard instincts instead of shooting guard instincts, he would have made one more pass. Davis' shot missed, and Georgia Tech escaped with a 72-67 win.

2. In the second half, Georgia Tech followed a blueprint established by NC State last week. The Jackets repeatedly drove the ball against the Carolina defense and scored if no defensive pressure was present, but otherwise pitched to an open man. Tech handed out 13 assists on 16 second half field goals as they spread the ball around and took advantage of Tar Heel help defense. Tech shot over 61 percent in the second half while outscoring Carolina, 43-32.

3. Georgia Tech's sagging zone defense posed a problem in the second half when Carolina wanted to get the ball inside to where the strength of the team is located. The Tar Heels couldn't find a big man consistently to slow the Tech push late in the second half, and not enough jumpshots fell to thwart the rally. Free throws were also a smaller, but still important, issue. Carolina made just two of seven charity tosses in the second half, including missing the front end of a one-and-one opportunity.

4. Interesting pregame moment with about 25 minutes until tipoff. As the Tar Heels were somewhat leisurely going through warmups on the McCamish Pavilion court, assistant coach Steve Robinson gathered the team around him for a vocal lecture that appeared designed to nip some of the casualness Carolina was displaying in the bud. For the sake of perspective, I'm not sure I can remember a similar pregame on-court meeting at any game in the Roy Williams era. Coincidentally or not, the Tar Heels played one of their most consistent first halves of the season and avoided falling behind by double digits as they had in six of the previous eight games.

5. Carolina made a major starting lineup change on Wednesday, with three new starters--Andrew Platek, Day'Ron Sharpe and Kerwin Walton--entering the lineup. That moved Garrison Brooks to the bench for the first time in a non-Senior Day game since the final game of his freshman season in 2017-18. The second half lineup was different, as Davis, Bacot, Walton, Leaky Black and Brooks started the final 20 minutes.

6. Sharpe and Walton combined with RJ Davis to give Carolina a three-freshman starting lineup for the first time since March 25, 2007, when Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington and Brandan Wright started against Georgetown in the NCAA Tournament.

7. Going to be tough to get Walton out of the lineup if he shoots the ball the way he did in the second half, when he connected on three three-pointers in the span of three minutes. The Minnesota native gives the Tar Heels something they don't have--a shooter opponents have to be aware of no matter where he goes on the court. Walton didn't have his best defensive game, but his shooting is a major asset and he finished with nine points and four assists.

8. Day'Ron Sharpe might be the best passer on the Carolina roster. Sharpe doesn't always get credited with an assist, but the openings he sees and the passes he delivers are consistently some of the best on the team. Freshmen typically force some things early in their college career; he has rarely fallen victim to that habit.

9. This is entirely unscientific, but it feels like Carolina used the Davis/Love combination together as little as they have all year. Love played 25 minutes, the fewest of his Tar Heel career. The starting lineup will get most of the attention, but Carolina is still filtering through who it wants to use in the closing minutes of a game. The Tar Heels shuffled personnel in and out over the final minutes--Tech outscored the Heels 19-6 in the final seven minutes--and never found a winning combination. At the moment, it feels like Love and Davis give Carolina two shooting guards (who need to consistently make more shots), but no one who is really managing the game the way we might be accustomed to seeing a Carolina point guard do it. They're young and that will change. But right now it's very difficult on key possessions. Carolina committed 18 turnovers in a fairly low-tempo game, a fatal number.

10. Unusual choice by Tech head coach Josh Pastner, who leads the nation in the amount of time he plays players in the first half with two fouls. When leading scorer Jordan Usher picked up his third foul with under four minutes to go in the first half, Pastner left him on the court for most of the remainder of the half. The strategy worked, as Usher was able to escape without drawing his fourth (and Carolina perhaps should have taken at least one shot at driving the ball at Usher). On a side note, really looking forward to that Pastner aerobic video in which he puts subscribers through the workout he does on the Jacket sideline each game, which is a combination of defensive slides and aerobic exhortations of his team.

11. Very interesting bench setup in Atlanta. Four seats were on the sideline in the traditional bench area. The rest were scattered throughout what is normally the Tech student section, meaning that at any given moment, a player who had just come out of the game might be four rows away from Williams, with some "bench" chairs even farther away than that. The most adversely affected Tar Heel might have been head manager Kiersten Steinbacher, who spent most of her night running up and down the stairs trying to keep the bench functioning properly.

12. Maybe it's just the lingering memory of the very unusual environment in Cleveland, but Wednesday night's game felt the closest to a college basketball game we've seen since March. Georgia Tech had a socially distanced band--the first band at any Carolina game this season--plus members of the dance team and cheerleaders. The Jackets have also been allowing student attendance this year, but with the students at home, most of the fans were of the local Atlanta variety. Still, it felt a little more like college basketball, and that's a step in the right direction as we move towards 2021.

13. A reminder that Saturday's scheduled game against Syracuse at the Smith Center has been postponed due to COVID issues with the Orange. No makeup date has been set for that game, which means Carolina's next game will be at Miami on Tuesday night at 8 p.m. At that point, the Tar Heels will have played two home games in the first ten contests.

14. Good riddance to 2020 as far as it pertains to Carolina basketball. The year started with a home blowout at the hands of this same Georgia Tech team and ended with a stinker of a road loss to the same Jackets. Bring on 2021. It will be interesting to see how Carolina handles this adversity moving forward. Brooks had a game-high 11 rebounds and missed a double-double by one point, and Black went 5-for-7 from the field for his ten points. It felt like the choice to sit that duo at the start of the game was about sending a message, but with nearly a week to get ready, everything is on the table.

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University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Leaky Black

Garrison Brooks

RJ Davis

Andrew Platek

Day'Ron Sharpe

Kerwin Walton

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