By Adam Lucas CHARLOTTE—Now there’s proof. For the better part of a month, close observers have known this was a different North Carolina team than the one that struggled to a 14-11 record after 25 games. That was the stretch when the Tar Heels piled up a program-record ten one-possession games.
One of those came in South Bend, when the Heels squeezed out a 74-73 win over Notre Dame on a miraculous Elliot Cadeau four-point play in the final seconds.
The two teams met again on Wednesday, and Carolina needed no miracles in a 76-56 victory that was never in question from the game’s opening minutes, when they raced to a 17-5 lead in the first five minutes. Notre Dame coach Micah Shrewsberry described Carolina as “desperate,” and maybe they are, but perhaps the word he was looking for was “different”–in multiple key ways.
There’s the play of Jae’Lyn Withers, of course. He set a career high with 21 points, all of them coming on three-pointers. That means he made seven three-pointers in 29 minutes on Tuesday afternoon. In the entire months of December and January, he made five three-pointers in 142 minutes.
Yes, that’s different.
But you could also dismiss it as just a really good shooting day. You can’t dismiss this: Withers did more than just score to change Wednesday’s game. He also rebounded, pulling down nine on a day when four different Tar Heels had more rebounds than team leader Seth Trimble. During one seven-game ACC stretch just a month ago, Withers had a combined eight rebounds—total!—in the seven games.
How active was he in Charlotte? His two steals against the Irish equals his output of the last 17 games combined. His two blocks were just the fourth time this season he’s had multiple rejections in a game.
“He’s comfortable in his role,” Hubert Davis said after the win. “His shot selection is great. His activity defensively was elite. He’s rebounding, blocking shots, running the floor. He’s giving us that veteran experience this team has needed all season long.”
Withers was just one rebound short of a double-double, an achievement reached by Ven-Allen Lubin with 17 points and ten rebounds. In a scenario that seems perfect, the under-the-radar Lubin—a player so unheralded the Atlantic Coast Conference itself misspelled his name in an in-game tweet—easily would have been the story of the day if it hadn’t been for Withers. And this is perfect: Lubin had two beautiful passes for Tar Heel buckets during the second half, one to Drake Powell and one to Ian Jackson. But the immediate postgame box credited him with just one assist (it’s since been corrected thanks to the eagle eye of Steve Kirschner).
It’s very unlikely that Lubin cared. But it’s as though no one believes Carolina could actually be as good as they appear to be.
Think it’s just some hot offense? The Tar Heels are different defensively, too. They showed it in the way they defended Markus Burton, a very talented player who shredded them for 23 points in South Bend. Trimble didn’t play in that game, and in this meeting Hubert Davis first assigned the rangy Powell to Burton, and then mixed in healthy doses of Trimble. Burton finished 3-for-11 from the field and took only seven free throws instead of the ten he attempted in the first meeting—even though he played ten more minutes in this one.
“Drake is a gifted defensive player,” Davis said. “He is very athletic with tremendous length at 6-7. One thing that’s very difficult for a scorer, especially someone like Markus who leads the ACC in scoring, is going up against length…Drake’s length bothered him and made him work a little harder than usual.” Carolina also showed a key difference even after the game was over. ESPN wanted to interview Withers, the hometown kid who set a career high. And the entire team hung around to celebrate him. This has never been a selfish group. But it has been a team where players are sometimes unsure of their roles, and that uncertainty can sometimes create uneasiness when someone else has success. That’s gone now. Most recently, you could hear it in the way the team raucously celebrated the win at Virginia Tech, laughter and music spilling out of the locker room in a way that wasn’t happening in December and January. And that’s largely why they’re not just beating teams, they’re destroying them. They don’t just look more like a team off the court. It’s carrying over onto the hardwood. Led by Cadeau’s 11, the Heels had a whopping 22 assists on 28 field goals against Notre Dame. That’s an assist on 78.6 percent of the field goals, easily the highest ratio this year. They’ve set the season high in that category in two of the last three games. That type of unselfishness, on and off the court, is leading to some very pretty basketball. Take out the Duke game—the Tar Heels are different than they were a month ago, but they’re not on the Blue Devils’ level just yet—and Carolina’s margin of victory in the last six wins is 20.2 points per game. They have more 20-point wins in those six victories—three of them—than in the entire rest of the season (two). There are plenty of season-long metrics that leave Carolina on the fringe of the NCAA Tournament conversation. But there’s one very simple one that doesn’t: when you watch them play, the Tar Heels are playing very, very good basketball right now. They’ll get a chance to prove it again on Thursday when they face a Wake Forest team that—this should sound familiar—won a one-point decision over them earlier this season. This time, the Heels hope things continue to be different.
