Lucas: His Time

By Adam Lucas

RALEIGH—In an era when every hole on a college basketball roster is supposed to be fixed with an instant transfer portal solution, it turns out that good old-fashioned player development still exists.

In Jalen Washington's freshman season, he blocked one shot and collected three offensive rebounds the entire season. He scored 43 points, averaging 2.2 per game.

This was the year, incidentally, that Eric Montross tabbed him as a player to watch. "He works so hard," Eric said on numerous occasions, "and he is such a good kid. Good things are going to happen for him."

It should be noted that the previous player Eric singled out before they started making big contributions was Luke Maye. The big fella, it turns out, had an eye.

Washington blocked 21 shots as a sophomore and averaged 3.9 points per game. He was still playing behind Armando Bacot, so the opportunities were limited.

As a junior, he has sometimes struggled—playing just 12 minutes against Alabama and only eight against LaSalle. But he has also shown some flashes—nine rebounds at Kansas and 18 points against American.

It's not flashes anymore. Now he's doing it consistently, and Saturday he was largely responsible for Carolina's 63-61 win at NC State.

In the final two minutes, this is what he did:

Fired an assist to Ian Jackson for a three-pointer that gave the Tar Heels a two-point lead.

Dunked home the game-winning basket on a nifty pass from Elliot Cadeau.

Made a clean block of State's Jayden Taylor with three seconds remaining, then recovered the block for his 12^th rebound of the night, icing his first career double-double and Carolina's 20th win in 26 all-time visits to the Lenovo Center/PNC Arena/ESA/Marcus Paige Gym.

"I've been resilient," Washington said of his Tar Heel career, and specifically this season. "A season is going to be full of highs and lows. I want to make sure I am doing the same thing every day and working hard every day. I try to keep that mental balance."

It should be noted that his teammates absolutely love him. He is the one they gather around at the end of early pregame warmups. They've seen the work, the long afternoons in the gym as he worked his way back from two difficult injuries he suffered as a high schooler. And they've seen how he handled it. They started the day gathered around him an hour before the game on the Lenovo Center court and ended it dumping water on him in the Carolina locker room. "I am," he said afterwards, "really cold."

He is one of the most low maintenance Tar Heel starters in recent memory. As a high school senior who was committed to Carolina, he once drove with his family to watch the Heels play a road game at Notre Dame (his home in Gary, Ind. Is just an hour from South Bend). But he didn't want to bother anyone for tickets, so he sat with his family—all wearing Tar Heel gear—in the upper level.

He is seemingly incapable of making a big deal out of himself. But he's becoming a very large deal for this year's team, which has desperately needed some of exactly what he is providing. The Tar Heels spent significant time the last two days in practice talking about two things: outscoring NC State in the paint and not putting the Wolfpack on the free throw line.

The final tally on points in the paint was Carolina 34, State 28. And Washington's man, Ben Middlebrooks, with one of the highest free throw rates in the entire nation and the most free throw attempts on the roster despite playing the fourth-most minutes, shot just one free throw.

"He's playing with more confidence and assurance," Hubert Davis said on the Tar Heel Sports Network. "You can see it growing. Defensively he is blocking and altering shots over the last three or four games. Now we have a presence in the paint that doesn't allow teams to get easy points in the paint…I'm really happy for him. He's a kid who wants to play well, but not just for him. He's been waiting for this time, he's been waiting to be counted on."

To do it here—with the angry crowd and the band playing the Smurfs theme and the signs and the howls—is even better. They want to beat Carolina here more passionately than perhaps anywhere else in the league, which just makes it all the more incredible that it so rarely happens. In the entire time Jalen Washington has been on this earth, State has never beaten Carolina in two straight games.

His on-court celebration was perhaps a little out of character for the player who is more likely to give you a "yes sir" than a "wolf down."

But that wasn't just 27 minutes of playing time of pent-up emotion in front of a rowdy, hostile crowd. That was two and a half years of effort, of workouts with Jonas Sahratian, of individual sessions hours after practice. All of those went into this one afternoon in Raleigh, this one game that would have made one certain seven-footer from Indianapolis laugh that big laugh and roar, "How about that big fella?!"

It is Jalen Washington's time now, and you could forgive him for taking some credit. Instead, he wanted to talk about everyone else. It was Cadeau, he said, who deserved the credit for the game-winning dunk because the point guard "made an incredible pass." It was the rest of the team that helped him with the blocked shot, because all he had to do was come from the help side to swat Taylor's shot.

And this upwards trend he's been on? He immediately spouted off a list of several others who deserve the credit.

"The coaching staff has been so helpful, specifically Big May," he said of assistant coach Sean May. "And my people back home, like my parents, my high school coach, my siblings, my best friends. Everyone has kept me balanced whether I have a good game or a bad game. And I'm just going to keep working and stay confident."

Scoreboard Slider

University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Armando Bacot

Elliot Cadeau

Ian Jackson

Jalen Washington

Related Videos