University of North Carolina Athletics
Photo by: Maggie Hobson
Lucas: One For The Books
February 13, 2021 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
The Tar Heels set a mark they didn't want on Saturday.
By Adam Lucas
This one won't be fun to read, but history class isn't always enjoyable.
Carolina lost to Virginia, 60-48, on Saturday. There are short-term implications (with the postponement of Tuesday's Virginia Tech game, the Tar Heels' postseason formula is getting trickier—at 12-7, the Heels need to play games and need to win games) and there are long-term implications (a maddening seven-game losing streak to the Cavaliers that is doubtless thrilling to everyone who sleeps in Thomas Jefferson pajamas).
But this one, folks, was one for the history books, and it feels like it needs to be chronicled for posterity.
You certainly realize that the Tar Heels had trouble scoring in Charlottesville. The 18 points in the first half tied a Roy Williams-era low, and the 48 points are a season low and the lowest since…ugh, last year in Charlottesville.
But here's the remarkable statistic: Walker Kessler led Carolina with nine points. Zero Tar Heels made it into double figures.
If you've been watching long enough, you've seen most everything happen in a Carolina basketball game. It's entirely possible, though, that you've never seen a game in which no Tar Heels reached ten points. It's very, very difficult to do.
The last time it occurred was in 1966, an ACC Tournament game against Duke in which the Blue Devils were vastly better than Carolina, and the entire Tar Heel strategy revolved around not shooting the basketball. Duke won that game, 21-20.
Based on the research of Tar Heel Sports Network statistician Jody Zeugner, the last "normal" game in which no Tar Heels reached double figures was January 22, 1949, a 67-36 loss to NC State after which the message boards doubtless lit up with "Fire Tom Scott" threads.
That's 72 years ago. Roy Williams hadn't been born yet. Dean Smith hadn't enrolled as an undergraduate at Kansas. The ACC hadn't been formed yet. Credit cards hadn't been invented, an average house cost $7,450 and gas cost 17 cents a gallon.
But even dating back to the unusual game in 1966, it had been 2,175 games since Carolina last played a basketball game with no one in double figures. It was so long ago that TV Teddy was known as Victrola Valentine.
Name every crazy Tar Heel game you can think of since that day in 1966. At least one Tar Heel reached double figures in all of them. That includes the 1979 game against Duke in which the Blue Devils led, 7-0, at halftime. Yes, Carolina had a player in double figures in a game in which they had zero points at halftime. Al Wood finished with a dozen. It includes every stinker during the 2001-02 season (you can mostly thank Kris Lang) and the injury-ravaged 2009-10 season (often, Deon Thompson was the double-figure scorer). It includes every single game in Carolina history in which the three-point shot has existed.
And that's exactly why this game was such an aberration. It didn't require just a low offensive output. It required a balanced low offensive output. Most of the Carolina teams that you might suspect as being a candidate for this dubious honor had at least one player who was probably getting ten points even on an off night. Cole Anthony comes to mind.
Or, if a team was offensively challenged and didn't have a dominant scorer, they also didn't have much depth, so the squad's best shooter had to play substantial minutes and take substantial shots.
That's not the case this season. Even before clearing the bench against the Wahoos, ten Tar Heels had played, none of them more than 26 minutes but none fewer than 11 minutes. It was very much a historical perfect storm: a slow-paced and defensive minded opponent, one of the most balanced teams in the Roy Williams era that has also struggled to consistently shoot effectively, and a frigid shooting night. This is not the worst team in these past 2,000+ games, and likely won't be anyone's guess as the last time it happened when Halley's Comet comes around and this occurs again in a few decades. But on this evening, it was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong shots.
Maybe we should have expected it. After all, Saturday was also the first time Carolina had played four straight true road ACC games since the 1964-65 season.
It was a night for the history books, in all the wrong ways. So when the Jetsons go to their hologram computer 50 years from now and wonder how it happened, how that day way back in 2021 unfolded, let the record show that it was an icy night in Charlottesville during the weirdest season in the modern era. There were too many missed three-pointers and too many missed layups. Official attendance was 250, all of whom saw history.
May it be another 2,000 games until they see it again.
This one won't be fun to read, but history class isn't always enjoyable.
Carolina lost to Virginia, 60-48, on Saturday. There are short-term implications (with the postponement of Tuesday's Virginia Tech game, the Tar Heels' postseason formula is getting trickier—at 12-7, the Heels need to play games and need to win games) and there are long-term implications (a maddening seven-game losing streak to the Cavaliers that is doubtless thrilling to everyone who sleeps in Thomas Jefferson pajamas).
But this one, folks, was one for the history books, and it feels like it needs to be chronicled for posterity.
You certainly realize that the Tar Heels had trouble scoring in Charlottesville. The 18 points in the first half tied a Roy Williams-era low, and the 48 points are a season low and the lowest since…ugh, last year in Charlottesville.
But here's the remarkable statistic: Walker Kessler led Carolina with nine points. Zero Tar Heels made it into double figures.
If you've been watching long enough, you've seen most everything happen in a Carolina basketball game. It's entirely possible, though, that you've never seen a game in which no Tar Heels reached ten points. It's very, very difficult to do.
The last time it occurred was in 1966, an ACC Tournament game against Duke in which the Blue Devils were vastly better than Carolina, and the entire Tar Heel strategy revolved around not shooting the basketball. Duke won that game, 21-20.
Based on the research of Tar Heel Sports Network statistician Jody Zeugner, the last "normal" game in which no Tar Heels reached double figures was January 22, 1949, a 67-36 loss to NC State after which the message boards doubtless lit up with "Fire Tom Scott" threads.
That's 72 years ago. Roy Williams hadn't been born yet. Dean Smith hadn't enrolled as an undergraduate at Kansas. The ACC hadn't been formed yet. Credit cards hadn't been invented, an average house cost $7,450 and gas cost 17 cents a gallon.
But even dating back to the unusual game in 1966, it had been 2,175 games since Carolina last played a basketball game with no one in double figures. It was so long ago that TV Teddy was known as Victrola Valentine.
Name every crazy Tar Heel game you can think of since that day in 1966. At least one Tar Heel reached double figures in all of them. That includes the 1979 game against Duke in which the Blue Devils led, 7-0, at halftime. Yes, Carolina had a player in double figures in a game in which they had zero points at halftime. Al Wood finished with a dozen. It includes every stinker during the 2001-02 season (you can mostly thank Kris Lang) and the injury-ravaged 2009-10 season (often, Deon Thompson was the double-figure scorer). It includes every single game in Carolina history in which the three-point shot has existed.
And that's exactly why this game was such an aberration. It didn't require just a low offensive output. It required a balanced low offensive output. Most of the Carolina teams that you might suspect as being a candidate for this dubious honor had at least one player who was probably getting ten points even on an off night. Cole Anthony comes to mind.
Or, if a team was offensively challenged and didn't have a dominant scorer, they also didn't have much depth, so the squad's best shooter had to play substantial minutes and take substantial shots.
That's not the case this season. Even before clearing the bench against the Wahoos, ten Tar Heels had played, none of them more than 26 minutes but none fewer than 11 minutes. It was very much a historical perfect storm: a slow-paced and defensive minded opponent, one of the most balanced teams in the Roy Williams era that has also struggled to consistently shoot effectively, and a frigid shooting night. This is not the worst team in these past 2,000+ games, and likely won't be anyone's guess as the last time it happened when Halley's Comet comes around and this occurs again in a few decades. But on this evening, it was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong shots.
Maybe we should have expected it. After all, Saturday was also the first time Carolina had played four straight true road ACC games since the 1964-65 season.
It was a night for the history books, in all the wrong ways. So when the Jetsons go to their hologram computer 50 years from now and wonder how it happened, how that day way back in 2021 unfolded, let the record show that it was an icy night in Charlottesville during the weirdest season in the modern era. There were too many missed three-pointers and too many missed layups. Official attendance was 250, all of whom saw history.
May it be another 2,000 games until they see it again.
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