Lucas: March 20 Basketball Notebook

By Adam Lucas

Part of refining the Tar Heel offense is getting Harrison Ingram back on track. He's gone back to back games without double-digit rebounds for just the second time in calendar year 2024. Given his incredible rebounding performance this season, it's reasonable to assume he'll fix that issue on Thursday when he plays in his first career NCAA Tournament game.

There's one other area of potential improvement. Fifteen of the 23 shots Ingram took at the ACC Tournament were three-pointers. That's well above his season-long ratio, as he went into Washington, D.C. attempting fewer than half of his shots from three-point range, where he is a 37.0% shooter this season.

"The last two or three weeks, a majority of Harrison's shots have been three-pointers," Hubert Davis said on Wednesday afternoon. "His gift is his versatility, and that's something we have worked on in practice."

Notes: Carolina went through the usual 40-minute open practice at the Spectrum Center on Wednesday afternoon. That was mostly a shootaround to get reacquainted with the building where the Tar Heels defeated Oklahoma earlier this season. The "real" practice took place earlier in the day at Johnson C. Smith University. That's the same school where Hubert Davis's father played basketball in the late 1960s, and the school even had yearbooks out featuring college photos of Hubert Davis Sr…Just as a reminder that it's a different world in college sports now, earlier this week Armando Bacot was in the Carolina players' lounge when Paxson Wojcik's new Skims endorsement social media posts hit his phone. Bacot—who has no shortage of NIL opportunities at this time of year—grinned. "Pax, this could be big for you," he said. "You might legit be a model."…

With Thursday afternoon's opponent unknown until the outcome of Tuesday night's First Four game between Howard and Wagner, the Tar Heels had to be flexible with their preparation at Tuesday afternoon's practice. They went through some overall tendencies for both potential opponents and then focused more completely on Wagner on Wednesday morning…The Seahawks have had a daunting travel schedule. The NCAA schedules NCAA Tournament flights and travel, but Wagner still had to go from Wagner to Dayton on Monday, play Tuesday night, then get on a plane and travel to Charlotte in time to be on the court for a 1:15 p.m. Wednesday open practice…

One of Carolina's most dramatic in-season improvements has been Seth Trimble's offensive efficiency inside the arc. After shooting below 50 percent from two-point range during the first part of the season, he's improved that figure to nearly 62 percent over the last seven games. The sophomore guard has worked hard on finishing more effectively around the basket, and it has paid dividends…Wagner plays one of the slowest tempos in college basketball. "They're a really good basketball team that is extremely well coached," Davis said. "They're very confident and can really shoot. They're outstanding defensively. It doesn't matter what conference you come from. If you come to this tournament, you've experienced success in some way during the season."

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University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Armando Bacot

Harrison Ingram

Seth Trimble

Paxson Wojcik

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