Heels Hoops
UNC basketball for the analytically inclined
Seven national championships and counting...
With their win on Saturday against NC State, the Heels are 23-6. They're well in the NCAA tournament, and need only one more regular season win to clinch their first single digit loss season since 2018-2019.
According to Bartorvik, they're favored by ~15 points against Notre Dame on Tuesday, and will be 5 point underdogs against Duke next Saturday. Bart gives them a 93% chance of winning Tuesday, so that should lock things up. It should also lock up at minimum a share of the ACC title. They're one game ahead of Duke, so winning Tuesday ensures no worse than a tie. It's been a season with some unstable play at times, but overall quite successful for Hubert and company.
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The Tar Heels rather easily dispatch Virginia Tech on Saturday, as the Hokies didn't have the size to matchup with Bacot and Ingram, plus we got good shooting from Davis and Ryan. Bacot was a monster against VT's undersized bigs, putting up 25 and 12 while featuring more offensively than he has of late. Would've liked to have gotten the bench a bit more time in this game, as Trimble, Washington, and Withers all put up solid relief performances. Fortunately this is a "bye week" of sorts for UNC, with no game until next Saturday against UVA. The Heels now at 20 wins probably have enough wins to make the NCAA tournament, even if they were to lose out the rest of the way. One additional win should definitely seal the deal. The ACC race is coming down to us, UVA, and Duke, with the game Saturday looming large for championship purposes. We should be pretty effective defensively as the Cavaliers don't have big driving guards nor athletic wings to take advantage of us. The question is, can we score at JPJ? Hasn't been the case recently. As you can imagine, it was tough seeing UNC lose a difficult road game. The offense was a bit flustered by the Syracuse zone, although good shooting from most of the team (45% from three on the game) helped cover up for difficulties getting into the teeth of the zone. Bacot apparently got hurt and was limited rebounding and defensively, as Mintz + Starling for Syracuse punished him repeatedly via high ball screens. Syracuse shot 63% on the game and an absurd 71% on twos, both numbers that will almost surely be highs for the season. This was due to: 1. Bad matchups with their big guards vs our small backcourt 2. The aforementioned limited Bacot 3. A healthy dose of shot luck. It seemed like Syracuse couldn't miss on mid-range pullups, and of course they hit that banked three Although disheartening, I am not too concerned by the loss. A more typical shooting game from the Orange would've looked quite a bit different. One issue is the Heels are now back into the 300s in the country in bench minutes, as Hubert has been unwilling to trust anyone besides Trimble. They need to give Bacot more of a break to help him heal, and Washington played well in this game. And as long as Ryan continues to struggle, I don't think he needs to go all 40 minutes (!). Give Withers a bit more run please. See highlights below. On to the next one! I'll be attending the Syracuse game tonight in person; my first UNC game since pre-COVID! I'm very much looking forward to it. A buddy and I got lower level seats near midcourt, so we'll be there cheering the team on in all our Heels gear. I'll make sure to report on the game afterwards.
Go Heels! It was a very disappointing game. It's a bad loss, no other way to put it. Here's my assessment of the team as we are right now: 1. Our defense was overrated by most of our fans. The defense is good as Bacot has become a very good all-around defender and we have some smart players. Early in ACC play though we were getting extremely lucky on 3-pt shots. It's just not sustainable to have teams shoot sub-20% from three, and lots of research back that up. We've had some teams start to shoot better against us, and consequently have looked more mortal on that end. It's still a good 2-pt defense and rebounding team, but not an elite defense. Why? Our backcourt is very small and we don't have great wing defenders. Our best non-Bacot defenders are backups. 2. Davis, Bacot, and Ingram are three of the best 6-7 players in the conference. That's really what's been powering this team. Davis obviously has been elite offensively, Ingram with shooting and rebounding, and Bacot off pick-and-roll, rebounding, and defense. The rest of the team has been pretty average. 3. We only really have two shooters. Other than Davis and Ingram, there's not really anyone else that's consistently a threat from out there. We thought we had Ryan, Withers, Wojcik, and Cadeau as potential shooting options, but none have done all that well (at best) here. That's the one thing that could keep our offense from being elite. And as others have pointed out, Ryan is a career 34% shooter, so it's not like we should've expected him to be a knockdown guy. We're really one wing player away from being much more complete. 4. This should be a 7 man rotation when it counts. Trimble and Withers are really the only guys providing reliable contributions, and even Withers is inconsistent. Washington has his spots, but his lack of rebounding and defense are major issues. Overall, while he's not a terrible player, there is a big drop-off from Bacot to him. I might even try Withers/Ingram at the 5 in certain must-win matchups when there's not a dominant 5 on the other team. High, Wojcik, and Okonkwo aren't really playing at an ACC level. 5. This is still a very good, if not elite team. We probably won't finish with a #1 seed, but we are still the odds-on favorite to win the ACC, win a protected seed in the NCAA tourney, and make the second weekend. That's a huge, huge step forward from what we've seen for most of the last 4-5 seasons. We are making due with one reliable forward (and even he struggles to score inside or take guys off the dribble), a PG who can't shoot, a very small backcourt, etc. It's not a perfect squad, but they've played very well so far this season. Entering the game yesterday, the Heels were 13-31 in their last 44 Quad 1 games stretching across 4 seasons. They were 1-9 in 2022-2023. Oklahoma is top 10 in the NET, so this neutral site victory is almost assuredly going to be a Quad 1 win. Combined with the Tennessee win, the Heels now have 2 quality Quad 1 wins already this season, with another solid win against Arkansas that could end up Quad 1 as well. That should solidify the team's resume pending solid ACC play, and I have to imagine it helps the players' psyche and recruiting momentum. Hard to overemphasize the importance of winning last night. Great job guys! I'm going to quote some stats from EvanMiya.com. You can find more info on his site here.
According to Evan's Bayesian Performance Rating metric, which compares players to the average Division 1 player over 100 possesions, Armando Bacot has easily (unsurprisingly) been our best player, at 6.58 points per 100 possessions better than the D-1 average. After Bacot there's a second tier of Ingram and Davis. Ryan falls well behind them but ahead of others, while Cadeau and Wojcik make up a fourth tier. It's extremely early, but so far neither is severely outplaying the other according to the numbers. Withers and Trimble are the only others even close to this group. We'll revisit these stats after the Bahamas. The +/- numbers tell a similar story, with Bacot, Davis, and then Ingram well ahead of the others.
The Heels handily beat another creampuff. Yawn.
We're still struggling shooting, hitting only 31% of threes on the season. We supposedly added a bunch of shooting this year but it hasn't played out that way: Withers has mysteriously yet to even attempt a 3 as a Tar Heel after shooting 42% last year, Wojcik has only hit 1 three and I believe it was the first possession of the season, Cadeau is shying away from 3s, and Ryan/Ingram are off to poor shooting starts. We saw the aggressive Bacot doubling rear its head again, and we weren't able to punish it. It was encouraging to see outside shots falling for Washington and (!) Trimble. I don't think Cadeau was good enough offensively in this one. He had more turnovers than the rest of the team (sans High) combined. 4 turnovers is way too much given his minutes, usage, and the competition. Several poor passes and a strip, and a couple passes that could've been additional turnovers but he was a bit fortunate on. He was forcing things; against a high level team where he plays 33 minutes that's a 7-8 turnover game. He also still isn't comfortable shooting from the outside. He and Trimble were very good defensively. Cadeau looks clearly better than Wojcik, and he's rightly played more minutes than Wojcik the last two games. The season will really start on Thanksgiving; we'll see the minutes distro Hubert wants to use in tough games then. For these cupcakes I much prefer to see a mix of guys. I'm actually really refreshed by the frequent subbing this year; someone finally got in Hubert's ear on this! If Wojcik could hit some shots I could see trying to start him, as Davis/Bacot can soak up a lot of the early possessions. Cadeau is more valuable when one of them hits the bench than having all three of them out there and then later playing minutes with only 0-1 on the floor. I would try to have minimum 2 of those three on the floor at all times. Watch below for one of the most electric highlights you'll see from the Heels all season. Trimble!! Another comfortable win -- nice to see. Cadeau was much better defensively and had some good passes despite zero assists (also had a couple good drives for scores), but he has to shoot better or it'll be hard to be an impact player. The Lehigh defenders were sagging way off him, it wasn't good seeing him stand wide open at the top of the key and not shoot. Looked a lot like Trimble's game last year. I assume it's just early season jitters because he shot pretty well in high school, but his shot looks a little off so far. He doesn't look comfortable from the college distance, as he's shot several within a couple steps inside the arc and has clanked some 3s. He's also missed 3 of his 5 free throws so far. He would be more effective passing in half court offense if his guy has to guard him tightly. Easy to say after such a monstrous game, but Bacot looks great. He does seem to be more aware with the ball and in a bit better shape. I like Ingram's game so far too, but curious to see how he plays in Bahamas against better athletes. If Trimble and High can carve out any kind of offensive role they deserve consistent minutes. Great motors and defense; Trimble's started looking more comfortable on drives too and his free throws didn't have the big hitch we saw last year. I'm impressed with his year-over-year progress. Phew... can't say I'm mad to see Caleb Love in another uniform. He was stinky bad for about 38 minutes tonight. Before the closing possessions he had 7 points on 10 shots, with 3 assists but 6 turnovers. Several of his turnovers were of the cringey variety, such as dribbling off his shoe and making passes to no one. Overall that's 7 points on 16 possessions though, for a putrid 0.44 points per possession.
He did redeem himself some in the final moments though, making four crucial free throws and coming up with some defensive stops. Clutch Caleb returns to Cameron! Both of these teams looked pretty good, going 7-8 deep with talented guys. Duke was just too reliant on Flip's offense in the end, (25 points on 21 possessions, no turnovers) as the rest of their offense couldn't get going. Mitchell had some early inside power moves for layups, then barely scored the rest of the game. Roach was solid, but the rest of their team (besides the aforementioned three guys) combined for just 22 points in 30 possessions. Arizona's bigs did a great job as well, holding Ryan Young scoreless and piling up 15 offensive rebounds to 8 for Duke. |
AuthorI'm a UNC grad and big-time Heels fan. I launched this site in October 2021 because I felt like there was a dearth of analytics for UNC basketball fans and wanted a spot to speculate, comment, and scrutinize all things UNC hoops. Hope you enjoy! Archives
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