Lucas: Making The Adjustments

By Adam Lucas

NEW ORLEANS—Carolina is officially in New Orleans, with the team arriving Wednesday night for a couple days of practices and media obligations in advance of Saturday's Final Four showdown with Duke.

Much of the storyline in the next 48 hours will revolve around the Tar Heels' midseason turnaround and a closing kick that has seen Carolina win 12 of the last 14 games and 16 of the past 19. To put that in perspective, the last Tar Heel squad to earn a spot in the Final Four, the 2017 national champions, went into the Final Four with three losses in the past 13 games and four defeats in the past 16 games. Carolina is plenty, plenty hot in 2022.

You'll hear plenty between now and Saturday night about how Hubert Davis turned around the season with patience and positivity. And it's true, he's consistently set the right emotional tone ever since that blowout loss to Wake Forest.

But painting him as some sort of Ted Lasso wannabe is missing one very key point: Davis really, really knows how to coach. Yes, he's handled his team well emotionally. But Davis and his staff have also given the Tar Heels plenty of technical guidance.

Compare Carolina game film from the last month to the first month of the season and you'll nearly see two different teams. The secondary break was a Roy Williams staple but has now been almost completely shelved. Starting around mid-January, Davis and his coaching staff began to evaluate what worked best for this particular team's personnel, and then they did something revolutionary—they ran more of it.

"Coach Davis is a master," says Armando Bacot, who has been the beneficiary of some of the offensive tweaks. "I see teams all the time stealing our sets. I'm watching a game and I'm like, 'Dang, they're running our plays.'"

Davis discussed some of the changes as soon as he was hired. He wanted an offense that could spread the floor and a power forward who would require defenses to guard him all over the court. Even Davis didn't know, however, that the absolute perfect fit for his offense was currently in Oklahoma.

Brady Manek's arrival in Chapel Hill gave Davis the shooter he wanted and gave Bacot the room he needed to operate—and required defenses to cover enough of the floor that Bacot could work against single defenders instead of double teams. An in-season adjustment to put the ball in the hands of RJ Davis more frequently allowed the Tar Heel offense to utilize high ball screens and take advantage of what Bacot does best—roll to the basket and create offense moving towards the rim.

And it's not just as simple as Manek standing around the three-point line while Bacot dominates in the paint. Davis has shown a willingness to run the offense through the hot hand, as he did last weekend in Philadelphia when Caleb Love caught fire in the second half against UCLA.

The Tar Heels still ran some of their favorite sets, including a look to get Manek a three-pointer out of a timeout. But tied at 64 with under 90 seconds to play, Davis called a set designed to get Love a perimeter look—the sophomore swished a three-pointer and Carolina never trailed again. Not bad for a coach one national columnist rated the 16th best coach out of the Sweet 16 coaches and who received a lonely one vote for ACC Coach of the Year, both of which seem laughable now.

"The timeliness of the things we do, fans not in the huddle won't always see it," Bacot says. "The plays Coach Davis is calling and the things we do at the right time are always perfect."

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University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Armando Bacot

RJ Davis

Caleb Love

Brady Manek

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