Lucas: Consistently Inconsistent

By Adam Lucas

It's the first day of March, 2021, and it's time to stop saying the Tar Heels are inconsistent.

Carolina lost, 72-70, to Syracuse on Monday night. It was maddening and costly and frustrating, but it was also very, very predictable.

The Tar Heels had their best win of the season on Saturday, beating Florida State in the Smith Center. Forty-eight hours later, they had one of their worst losses of the season, losing to Syracuse on the road.

In some seasons, that would look like inconsistency. Not this year. This year, it's very, very consistent with what these Tar Heels have been throughout the season.

Here are some facts we know for sure. Carolina is very good at the Smith Center. The Tar Heels are 9-1 there. Put fans in the building for the first time all season, as happened Saturday, and you're bound to see a quality performance.

But Carolina is also not as good away from the Smith Center. The Tar Heels are 3-7 in true road games, and 3-6 in ACC road games. It's absolutely true that none of those road losses have been in front of capacity crowds. But it's also absolutely, undeniably true that Carolina's results on the road this year have been very different from the home production.

Maybe that's the product of the weird COVID year. Maybe that's simply what happens when you rely so heavily on freshmen, as six of the ten players who saw action against the Orange were freshmen.

We're likely never going to know the exact source of the problem. As Roy Williams is fond of saying, if he knew the solution, he would have fixed it by now. Problems come and go regularly; one day the Tar Heels look like a capable bunch of shooters, the next they can't find the basket. One day the ball movement and team play appear to be improving, the next the Tar Heels are piling up their first back-to-back 20-turnover games in a decade.

"I feel like we went out there tonight expecting for the game to be handed to us," said Armando Bacot, who was by far the most consistently productive Tar Heel with his 18-point, 15-rebound performance. "And we just lost."

That should be a familiar refrain. Here are the results over the last month:

Loss.

Win.

Postponed (let's be honest: canceled).

Loss.

Postponed.

Win.

Win.

Postponed.

Loss.

Win.

Loss.

There hasn't been a full calendar week of feeling good about Carolina Basketball since January. Which makes sense, since even the 40 minutes of Monday's game weren't consistent. The Tar Heels were dominant on the glass in the early minutes, but it felt a little ominous that even with that performance on the backboards, they still weren't in control of the game.

Then they played a middling midsection of the game, only to awaken for the final minutes, by which time it was too late. If this was a group of juniors and seniors, it would be maddening. But it's largely freshmen, which means we're mostly watching freshmen do what freshmen do.

"The whole game was kind of dry," said Caleb Love, which was an interesting way to describe it. ACC games in March aren't supposed to be dry. "We came out slow," Love said. "We came out and we weren't ready to play."

Here's the good news: the path of this season suggests Carolina will have a solid performance on Saturday against Duke. That type of effort coming off Monday's stinker would be welcome, would be much needed, and would be—very predictable.

Players Mentioned

Armando Bacot

Caleb Love

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