Lucas: Little Things

By Adam Lucas

Yes, we are going to talk about the dunk.

We have to. There is no way to talk about Carolina's 77-52 win over UC Riverside without talking about Seth Trimble's two-hand dunk over 6-foot-7 Vladimer Salaridze. A few years from now, someone will ask you about this game, and you will remember it for two reasons:

1. Carolina wore blue jerseys at the Smith Center for just the fourth time anyone can recall (1990 against UConn, 2013 against UNCW, 2020 against Duke).

2. Seth Trimble dunked on a guy.

So we are going to talk about the dunk. Before we do that, though, can I tell you something that maybe you didn't notice if you weren't in the Smith Center? Something that has been occasionally evident through the first three victories of the season but was especially obvious during long stretches of Friday night's win?

This Tar Heel team is fun to watch play basketball. UC Riverside is not the most glamorous opponent of the season. It was a Friday night in the heart of college and pro football season. And yet—even with Carolina shooting a pedestrian 45.9 percent from the field and 28.6 from the three-point line—it was still a fun evening to be in the Smith Center.

That's largely because every Tar Heel who played made a committed effort to do the little things, even when those little things didn't always lead to a basket. Maybe that's exactly what made it fun to watch; it wasn't necessarily fun because the ball was going in all the time. It was fun because it was objectively well-played basketball.

It started early, when Elliot Cadeau turned down a three-pointer he might have taken in the first two games and instead swung the ball to Cormac Ryan on the wing. It was a textbook example of going from a good shot to a great shot, as Hubert Davis frequently asks his team to do.

A couple possessions later, Jalen Washington hit a three-pointer, then blocked a Highlander shot, and then the Tar Heels came back to the offensive end and flowed right into an old school secondary break that created an easy RJ Davis layup.

There's just something about scoring off that attack that says Carolina Basketball. All it was missing was Dean Smith diagramming it on the Sunday television show, talking about the screeners instead of the scorers.

Shortly thereafter, Trimble was switched onto 6-foot-11 Ben Griscti, the tallest Highlander on the roster. But even when Griscti received the ball in the post, Trimble didn't give in, and eventually forced a missed shot (he did it again in the second half). After forcing the miss, he pushed the ball up the court, swerving through traffic to finish with a layup before the UCR defense could get set.

These are little things, yes. But…

"That stretch was fun to watch," Hubert Davis said on the Tar Heel Sports Network after the game. "We were really good on both ends. We were locked in defensively and we were able to get out in transition."

After three wins, Carolina is shooting just 31.0 percent from the three-point line. Everyone involved believes that number that will go up, even as the competition improves next week in the Bahamas. But as long as those same types of plays continue, the Tar Heels will have a chance to beat most anyone. Friday night wasn't perfect; Carolina airballed a couple of three-pointers, got in a second half rut with a couple rushed shots without enough ball movement, and was outrebounded by UC Riverside.

But some of the little details are very, very encouraging. Armando Bacot made a nice pass out of a double team to find Paxson Wojcik (who drew two charges) for a three-pointer. Wojcik missed the shot, but there was Harrison Ingram on the floor, scrapping for one of his three offensive rebounds. Jae'Lyn Withers was in every passing lane and blocked three shots, one of which was rejected with extreme prejudice and another which led to the Trimble dunk off a gorgeous RJ Davis pass. Zayden High went three rows into the crowd chasing a loose ball in a 19-point game.

It's fun basketball to watch, which puts people in a good mood, which is why you get things like the Smith Center crowd of over 18,000 (on a Friday night to watch UC Riverside) going crazy for an in-game video board dance-off between a band member and a slightly-older-than-band-member female in section 110 during a second half timeout. By the time marketing staffer Charlie Dillon (call him "Turbo" if you want a better chance at a shirt) brought out the t-shirt cannon and fired shirts into the upper deck during the second half, it was most definitely the kind of night that makes people want to come back to watch the Tar Heels.

And, of course, the fans in attendance got to see Trimble's dunk. His teammates enjoyed it, too. Look at the picture above. Wojcik, Armando Bacot and RJ Davis are celebrating as though they were the ones who threw it down. That's exactly the type of taking joy in a teammate's accomplishment that Hubert Davis has been coaching since the first day of practice. But it was Trimble who dunked it, so let's allow him to walk us through it on the THSN after the game:

"I've been hunting one since Johnson C. Smith in the preseason last year," he said. "The second I got that fast break I knew I was by the rim. I just went up, and I got hit in the face, so my eyes were closed when I dunked it."

He was told that the defender in his flight path was 6-foot-7.

"Really?" he said. "I've dunked on taller."

His current career best is dunking on a 6-foot-9 defender. Trimble admitted that he had a notion of trying to dunk on an even bigger player against Lehigh, but took off from too far away and wasn't able to complete the play. Don't worry about it. The season is still young.

But this was not really a night that was about highlights. It was about what happened away from the spotlight, which is why to fully appreciate this evening, you needed to see Trimble an hour before the game.

That's when young Tar Heel fans typically line the tunnel where Carolina players take the Smith Center court. They usually bring posters and hats and programs for autographs, shouting the name of each player who comes by. It's not great timing, because it's not long until tip-off, but some players still stop and sign an item or two.

Trimble went even further. With kids hanging over the rail holding their phones, he grabbed each of their phones and took selfies with multiple fans. He didn't go back to the locker room until everyone was happy.

A scribbled autograph would have been sufficient. He didn't have to do anything more, but he did.

"Whatever I can do to make someone's day, I'm going to do it," Trimble said. "My brother used to do that for me. He always took time out for me. So I want to make sure I do it for kids. That could have been their first Carolina game. A little thing like that, you never know, it might make someone's day."

The little things usually do.

Scoreboard Slider

University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Armando Bacot

Elliot Cadeau

RJ Davis

Zayden High

Harrison Ingram

Cormac Ryan

Seth Trimble

Jalen Washington

Jae'Lyn Withers

Paxson Wojcik

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