Lucas: Room For Improvement

By Adam Lucas

The best sign from Wednesday night is that Armando Bacot wasn't happy when he sat down to talk about Carolina's 80-73 victory over Wake Forest.

The Tar Heels have won four of the past five. They remained unbeaten at home. They have played seven straight ACC games decided by seven points or fewer for the first time in program history, and they have won four of them, a stark change from last year's struggles in close games.

And?

"It's frustrating," Bacot said. "We're so much better than how we've been playing. Nobody is really happy with this win."

Maybe not. But Carolina survived not one, but two different career highs from Wake players on Wednesday night, as Isaiah Mucius and Daivien Williamson each had 27 points. You can lose to an average team when just one player gets hot. You're almost surely in trouble if two different players have career nights.

But thanks to the win, Mucius and Williamson will be just footnotes. There are signs Carolina might be turning into a quality team (and if you peek ahead at the schedule, you'll know that's going to be necessary to make it through the gauntlet of what's left). Caleb Love scored 20 points against Wake, continuing the improved shooting that has slowly been coming around.

Love is almost always part of the gaggle of guards that have been making late-night shooting trips to the Smith Center in recent weeks, which have correlated with better shooting performances. They couldn't make the evening pilgrimage in Tallahassee before the Florida State game because they didn't have access to the Donald Tucker Center; maybe it's a coincidence, but Carolina lost. So K.J. Smith and Leaky Black organized a group that was firing up jumpers late on Tuesday night before the Wake game on Wednesday. With the win, it's a safe bet you'll find the guards back in the building Friday night before the NC State game.

That's part of an overall offensive surge that is reason for optimism. Carolina's offense averaged 0.80 points per possession in the first four Atlantic Coast Conference games. Even with the poor first ten minutes, the Tar Heels put up a season-high 0.93 points per possession against the Deacons and are averaging 0.90 points per possession in the last three league games.

That's improvement, folks. And while Carolina's defense wasn't airtight, it did collect a season-high 12 steals, including two each from five different players. Those steals helped create 17 fast break points, the second-most by the Heels in an ACC game this year. Williams has told his players multiple times during practice that it looks like they're running the "slow break" instead of a fast break. Wednesday looked more like the Tar Heel tempo we expect, and they did it largely under control, committing just 12 turnovers, with only three miscues in the second half.

"We played that vintage Carolina basketball," Bacot said. "They would go at us and we would go right back at them."

It's natural to still be so scarred from last season that you fear the worst. But this Carolina team is better—granted that's a low bar—than last year's squad. The Tar Heels currently sit 4-3 in the ACC. Last year's group didn't win their fourth ACC game until—avert your eyes—February 25. Nobody is yet saying this team is a great one. But they've still got a chance to be very good, and the rate of consistent improvement in some key areas, plus a wide-open ACC, is encouraging.

The question, then, is how good this team can become. They've proven they can beat some of the likely lower-tier opponents in the conference. But it's about to get much tougher. They've already played five games against Pomeroy top-50 opponents; a whopping eight of those top-50 foes await in the final ten games of the season.

It's good news, then, that no one thinks this team is close to peaking.

"We have not tapped even 20 percent," Bacot said, "of how good a team we can be."

Players Mentioned

Armando Bacot

Leaky Black

Caleb Love

K.J. Smith

Related Videos