Lucas: Margin Of Error

By Adam Lucas

PITTSBURGH—In so many ways, this was the perfect encapsulation of the season to this point.

Carolina lost, 73-65, to Pittsburgh on Tuesday night. Everything went…well, exactly like it has gone for this year's team for most of the season.

It started before the game. Jalen Washington was unavailable due to a sprained knee suffered in an overtime win over Boston College that shouldn't have required overtime. That left the Tar Heels shorthanded in the post, an area where they are already shorthanded.

Is shorthandeder a word? That's what they were against Pitt…in a game when they couldn't afford to be shorthanded.

Still, though, they had enough players to win the game. They had enough players, in fact, to build a 38-30 lead with just over four minutes left in the first half. If you squinted just a little, you could almost imagine a scenario where the Heels built a rare double-digit lead at the break on the road.

But then.

Carolina Basketball 2024-25: But Then.

Elliot Cadeau had been terrific up until that moment. He was scoring and he was passing and having him on the floor was, quite honestly, the difference in the game.

But then he had to go off the floor, because he earned his second foul. The next four minutes were not pretty. Pitt couldn't convert at the end of the half but still trimmed six points off the deficit. With their floor general on the bench, the Tar Heels committed a couple of costly turnovers on an evening when costly turnovers were one of the key themes of the game—the Panthers had a 22-4 edge in points off miscues.

"A little foul here and there may not mean something if it's not a shooting foul," Hubert Davis told Jones Angell on the Tar Heel Sports Network. "But it puts you closer to the penalty. Those little fouls that put the opponent closer to the penalty have hurt us this year and hurt us tonight."

"You can't put them on the line," a Tar Heel assistant told the team at practice earlier this week. "They are automatic."

And they almost were, making 16 of 20 from the charity stripe while Carolina's ability to get to the line—a strength earlier in the year—dried up, with the Heels making just six of nine.

These two teams meet again in a little over a week. Even with Washington, it's hard to imagine a scenario where Carolina takes and makes half as many free throws as Pitt and wins the game. They simply have to create more opportunities in that area of the offense.

So yes, the fouls add up. And so did the minutes without Cadeau. A bad scene repeated itself early in the second half, as he was whistled for his third foul 3:25 into the half. At that moment, Carolina held a four-point lead. It was purely Cadeau's ability to create tempo that had pushed the lead out again, getting as big as seven points early in the half.

One minute and five seconds after that third foul, with Cadeau on the bench, the Panthers had ripped off five straight points and forced a UNC timeout.

"The margin of error for this team," Davis said, "is small."

Oh yes. It's smaller than the Chapel Hill branch of the Grayson Allen Fan Club. The Tar Heels don't score enough to overcome the occasional lapses—the fouls, the bad decisions on the break, the iffy shot selection, the taking a defensive possession off, the failure to convert at the rim—that are in danger of defining this year's team.

They don't play poorly all the time. But they play poorly at the wrong time, and they struggle to pull out of a spiral.

"Those little things," Davis said, "really hurt you down the stretch."

And now the season is coming to the stretch. The Tar Heels lost a quad one opportunity tonight, and have three more in a row upcoming. They must get one of those, and really could use two.

A winnable one slipped away at Pittsburgh. Getting one to go the right way will require a more complete effort than everyone—from coaching staff to players to postgame column writer—was able to put together on Tuesday. This team has to find a way to execute for a full 40 minutes. The dismal close against Pitt will get most of the attention, as the Panthers finished on a 14-2 run.

But the earlier sequences were just as important. That's how Carolina put itself in position for that final run to be decisive. And that's a reminder of how small the margin for error has been for most of this year.

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University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Elliot Cadeau

Jalen Washington

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