The good news, bad news season for Garrison Brooks.
The good news is Carolina’s junior forward had a career-high 35 points in the embarrassing loss to Georgia Tech on Saturday. The bad news is that stellar performance came largely because the rest of Brooks’ teammates were driving teetotaler Roy Williams to drink.
It was the most points scored by a UNC player at home since Brice Johnson’s 39 against FSU in 2016 and Tyler Hansbrough’s 39 against Clemson in 2008 in the epic comeback that kept the Tigers winless in Chapel Hill. More on that later this week.
Brooks, ironically, was the biggest culprit in the Tar Heels’ putrid start, attempting five of the 15 shots they missed to open the game. The good news was that he made six free throws to keep them from getting shut out over the first 13-plus minutes of play.
More good news was that he went on to hit 17 of 18 free throws, a UNC-record 94 percent for a team that had its own bad news-good news shooting night. After that dismal 0-fer start, Carolina shot 48 percent the rest of the way, and the team that was down 30-6 at one point actually had a chance to win the game.
The bad news was, on the defensive end, the Heels couldn’t stop the 210th worst-shooting-percentage and the 309th lowest-scoring team in America. The Yellow Jackets uncharacteristically shot 59 percent from the floor, including 63 percent in the second half to stave off what would have been the biggest comeback ever for Carolina.
The crowd certainly wouldn’t let the Tar Heels lose until the clock went to double zero. The fans cheered sarcastically when Brooks hit a short jump hook for the team’s first field goal with 6:30 left in the first half and kept it up. Brooks was on both ends of that, too.
He equaled his personal high of nine field goals and made half of his 18 shots, meaning all but four of his attempts for the rest of the game went in. But had he been as aggressive in the first half as he went on to be, the hill wouldn’t have been quite so high for Carolina to climb.
The best possible news came in the way Brooks kept fighting, more than the rest of the players put together, Williams said, and perhaps as the leader of the team, it will rub off on the others.
We can only hope.
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