Lucas: Your Attention Please

By Adam Lucas

SYRACUSE—Exactly five and a half weeks ago, Christian Keeling played only nine minutes in a double-overtime game at Virginia Tech, a contest in which North Carolina was woefully shy on perimeter depth and Roy Williams elected to play Andrew Platek 49 minutes and Jeremiah Francis 23 rather than put Keeling on the court for any extended time.

This is not an indictment of the head coach. At that point, Keeling had earned that level of trust—or lack of trust. He'd shot 0-for-4 in the previous game, a loss at Pittsburgh, and was in the middle of a 2-for-12 shooting slump. His defense was struggling. He'd turned it over four times in 16 minutes in a loss to Georgia Tech.

"CK has an ability to score but his three-point shot wasn't going in," Williams said after Saturday's win at Syracuse, in which Keeling pumped in 18 points in 26 minutes. "He was turning it over and he wasn't defending. I said, 'Son, you've got to give me something to put you in the game.'"

Williams has given that speech to multiple other Tar Heels in the last 17 seasons. Some respond. Some don't. Very few have responded exactly like Keeling, who is in the midst of a late-season renaissance unlike almost anything we've seen in the Williams era. In late January, he was a player who couldn't even get off the bench. By late February, he's turned into a player who reminds you just a little bit—just a little—of an early version of Danny Green, providing instant offense off the bench.

On the happy bus ride to the airport in frostbitten Syracuse Saturday night, Tar Heel players were as usual using their phones to review the various social media and video highlights of the game they'd just played. Watching Keeling go 7-for-11, Cole Anthony (who himself poured in 25 points to go with his seven assists) announced, "CK, you've got the best midrange jumper I've ever seen."

It truly is uncanny. Keeling has turned around his season by excelling at the least utilized shot in today's college basketball: the 17 to 19 foot jumper. Since that game in Blacksburg, he's made at least 50 percent of his shots in nine of his last 11 games. He's hitting 58.1 percent of his shots in his last seven games. And his three-point stroke is quietly coming around also, as he's seven for his last 14 from long distance after starting the season 8-for-33 (24.2 percent) in that category.

We've passed the point that this is a hot streak. This has been, for the better part of a month, exactly the player the Tar Heels thought they were getting when Keeling arrived from Charleston Southern.

So how has he done it? How did he go from a liability who couldn't get on the court to an indispensable player who helped carve apart the vaunted Syracuse zone?

"Perseverance," Keeling said after Saturday's game. "I'm a big person on that word. Don't ever give up. Always believe in yourself and your team, and buy in."

What's refreshing about Keeling is he hasn't hidden from his early season struggles. Even in that game at Virginia Tech, as Carolina went through a double overtime loss with him mainly on the bench, he was one of the most active and vocal players on the sideline. There has been no pouting.

Remember, this is a player who arrived with a well-earned reputation as a scorer, and somehow found himself on the biggest stage in the game suddenly unable to score. The first half of this season was perhaps the first time in his college basketball life he's ever seen so many shots bounce off the rim.

"The coaches and Kendall (Marshall) and Sean (May) and all my teammates believed in me," Keeling said. "They knew what kind of player I was and they stayed with me. They put me in even when other coaches would've buried me."

Earlier this season, Williams had compared Keeling to Theo Pinson off the court. That fun-loving personality quickly made the Augusta native a favorite of his teammates. It's Keeling who is trying to increase the Carolina basketball presence on TikTok (ask your kids).

They've also discovered the perfect target for occasional jokes. On the first long trip of the year, teammates conspired to persuade the pilot of the charter flight to make an announcement from the flight deck: "We have a special guest with us," the pilot said before takeoff. "Christian Keeling is making his first plane flight."

It wasn't. But it made for good in-flight entertainment.

So perhaps everyone should have been suspicious as the team plane sat on the tarmac Saturday night awaiting the de-icing procedure after several inches of snow had fallen in upstate New York over the past two days. With the players stretched out across the first class seats, the PA crackled to life.

"Your attention please. We'd like to congratulate Christian Keeling," came the announcement. For what? His hot shooting? A second straight win? Playing through adversity and finding a way to contribute?

"We understand this is the first time he has seen snow," was the punchline, as his teammates roared and Keeling just smiled, totally comfortable with his role and his team.

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University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Cole Anthony

Jeremiah Francis

Christian Keeling

Andrew Platek

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