Lucas: Feed The Monster

By Adam Lucas

In a Smith Center crowd of 17,892, there was precisely one person who was unaware that Carolina reached the biscuit mark in Friday night's win over College of Charleston.

That individual was Armando Bacot. It just so happens that Bacot was the one who threw home the alley-oop dunk on a pass from Caleb Love (eloquently described by Eric Montross on the Tar Heel Sports Network as "Bacot for biscuits!") that gave the Tar Heels 100 points.

The basket sent the crowd into a frenzy, but the low-key Bacot didn't notice.

After the game, he was asked if he had ever made the biscuits shot, which is usually the purview of Dewey Burke and his successors.

"We got biscuits?" Bacot asked with a surprised look. Understand that hitting biscuits is so popular in the Smith Center it's almost impossible not to realize it. On Friday, the crowd response was somewhere between "Gio just took the punt back" and "Luke just beat Kentucky."

In truth, though, everyone else in the building would have been equally shocked at halftime by the biscuits outcome, given that College of Charleston built a 50-43 lead at the break and Bacot contributed one free throw, zero field goals, and one rebound.

"They took us off our rhythm in the first half," Bacot said. "They are skilled all over the floor and it threw us off. We weren't playing that tough, gritty basketball that we want to hang our hats on."

Things changed immediately in the second half, as Davis very consciously ran a play to get Bacot the ball in the paint on Carolina's first possession. This is the advantage of having experienced players; it's not unusual for Davis to ask Bacot, "What do you want?" in that type of tone-setting situation. The head coach trusts his senior big man and values his basketball acumen.

It worked again against the Cougars, as that early hoop set Bacot on course for a huge second half in which he racked up 27 more points and five more rebounds.

"It's always intentional to get Armando the ball," Davis said. "It takes two parts. There is intentionality in terms of us calling a play to get him the ball. There is also him working hard to get the ball in the post and be able to score. In the second half, he outworked whoever was guarding him to catch the ball where he wanted to and was able to be effective around the goal. Armando's ability to post up and score around the basket is huge for us. It opened up a number of things for us on the offensive end."

Carolina again didn't shoot the ball particularly well from the perimeter—the Tar Heels are now 7-for-30 (23.3%) from the three-point line through two games—but it didn't matter because they were so efficient inside the arc, hitting 30 of 38 two-point shots.

Bacot did occasionally score by overpowering Charleston, but he also flashed some of the footwork and post moves that he's worked on so diligently since arriving in Chapel Hill. That combination also makes him one of the most unique weapons in a college game that has moved away from the dominant big man.

It doesn't take James Naismith to figure this one out. In the first half, Carolina mostly ignored Bacot (who, as Davis said, also needed to do a better job of making himself available). The result? A deficit on the glass, six missed two-point shots and, most importantly, a seven-point deficit to a competitive but inferior team.

In the second half, the Tar Heels ran most everything through their center. They held an edge on the backboards, missed just two two-point shots, and outscored College of Charleston by 23 points in 20 minutes. Fittingly, on a night when the Tar Heels honored Lennie Rosenbluth, whose 1957 national champion teammates often thrived in an offense where the best play was "Feed the monster" (in other words, give the ball to Lennie), the modern-day Heels found success by feeding their most powerful player.

The result was a relatively easy Carolina win and biscuits for everyone—even if the provider didn't realize it.

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Armando Bacot

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