Chansky's Notebook: Risky Business

Art Chansky’s Sports Notebook is presented by The Casual Pint. YOUR place for delicious pub food paired with local beer. Choose among 35 rotating taps and 200+ beers in the cooler.

Basketball is a pretty simple game. Can’t score from both inside and out, can’t win.

The Tar Heels were only down by a point at the half of their eventual 80-72 loss to a very talented Miami team. But listen to these stats.

In the first half, Carolina shot 15 of 29, which is 52 percent. Subtract 1 for 11 from 3-point range, and the Heels made 14 of 18 two-pointers, which is an astonishing 78 percent, by driving the ball to the U’s interior.

The No. 15-ranked Hurricanes made that more difficult after halftime, and the crowded paint should have resulted in the Heels shooting better than 4 for 20 from the arc to end the game at a season-low 16 percent.

Overall, Caleb Love and R.J. Davis were 4 of 19, and the Pete Nance-Puff Johnson combo at power forward went 0-for-7. Nance, who shot better than 40 percent from outside last season at Northwestern, is in a miserable 1-for-18 slump in his last four games. It may be time to give freshman Tyler Nickel, a reputed outside shooter, more than mop-up minutes.

“The only way to loosen up the defense inside is by making more perimeter shots,” Hubert Davis said after the game. “We had some wide-open looks. At the end of the day, we need to knock more of those down.”

For the season, UNC is dead last in the 15-team ACC with Boston College, shooting 30.6 percent from “3”. Last year’s Tar Heels finished just under 36 percent, and losing Brady Manek affects that difference because his departure leaves opponents daring them to do it from outside while double- and triple-teaming Armando Bacot. That should be giving Love and Davis more good looks, but neither is close to the percentage he shot a year ago.

So Carolina is back on the NCAA bubble, and in a far more precarious position at 16-10 overall and 8-7 in the ACC. After 26 games last year, the record was 18-8 and 11-5 in the ACC and still considered a bubble team before beating Louisville, N.C. State, Syracuse and Duke to finish the regular season 22-8 and 15-5.

The Tar Heels have five conference games left: Sunday at N.C. State, next Wednesday at Notre Dame, the following Saturday at home against Virginia, at Florida State on February 27 and the regular season home finale vs. Duke on March 4. They may have to win four of those last five to secure an NCAA at-large bid without needing to win a game or two in the ACC tournament.

And with the opposition employing the same suffocating game plan, Carolina has to start knocking more outside shots down than lately.

Featured image via Todd Melet

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Chansky’s Notebook: Risky Business

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