Garrison Brooks said the Tar Heels just don’t have it so far this season.
After UNC’s 72-67 loss at Georgia Tech, which all things considered is probably the worst of four defeats to date, Brooks said the team doesn’t have enough “want to” on defense.
That is a cardinal sin of Carolina basketball, which was built over the years on effort and defense. Brooks, the senior captain and preseason ACC Player of the Year, is supposed to be the leader of a team that isn’t as young as Roy Williams and others make it out to be.
Brooks and Andrew Platek are seniors, Leaky Black is a junior and Armando Bacot a sophomore. All of them have started games so far in Williams’ mish-mash of a lineup.
After determining that the “defensive grades sucked” in last week’s loss at N.C. State, the head coach benched Brooks, Black and freshman Caleb Love from the starting lineup at Tech. Williams said Love’s defense was terrible against the Wolfpack and that Brooks and Black were better but still “need to be held to a higher standard.”
The microcosm of the loss in Atlanta, during which the Tar Heels had some very good stretches, was this: After UNC’s 8-0 run broke a 53-53 tie with just under seven minutes to play, the Yellow Jackets got back in the game with three wide-open 3-pointers that triggered a decisive 19-6 spurt for the rest of the game.
The first two 3’s were by Bubba Parham, the worst shooter among the Georgia Tech starters, who all average in double figures. Was that enough reason to not cover him? While the Jackets did confuse Carolina by switching between zone and man-to-man defenses, covering their offense shouldn’t be that much of a problem. Tech shot 61 percent in the second half.
It takes effort or, as Brooks put it, “Want to.”
The Tar Heels, who have far more talent than their 14-19 dud of last season, are a mess. They had their best shooting game in a while, but a defensive effort that, until the grades are in, didn’t look much better than what happened in Raleigh that got three starters benched.
Now, with the Syracuse home game postponed, they are 0-2 in the ACC and have visits to Miami and Florida State around a home game with Clemson. Whether those three opponents have more talent is debatable. Whether they play harder than Carolina is not. At this point, almost everybody does.
Photo via Curtis Compton.
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