Well UNC basketball is officially back. First game, first dub. It was weird to watch the game and see all the empty seats at the Smith Center. I was watching the game from a stream that kept lagging and skipping because I don't have the acc network, but hey you do what you have to do. S/O to ricky for always finding me a stream and dealing with my Carolina Basketball obsession. A 79-60 win over a pesky College of Charleston team should make me feel better than I do. I am looking at this game from the perspective of someone who has played the game her entire life and focused my game on fundamentals and playing smart. We lacked that on the defensive side of the ball for most of the game. I will get to that later.
The starting lineup was what I had expected, but we started slow. Thankfully Charleston started slower and only scored 2 points in the first 8 minutes and started 0-11. Sharpe and Platek were the first subs. Sharpe was expected. Platek was not. He played solid, but he still can't hit the broad side of a barn. He has way more confidence and clearly has the green light to shoot but maybe he shouldn't. Sharpe was one of 3 freshmen in double figures with 13 points. The other two were Love and Davis. Bacot was the fourth player in double figures with 12 points. Bacot and Sharpe could be a good combination and they had a nice high low in the first half. Brooks and Sharpe had a nice high low in the second half. That is going to be there all season and there was an effort to get the ball down low even though we struggled, at times, to convert. We missed our first 4 shots in the paint to start the second half. Walton's first 3 point attempt was way off whereas Johnson hit his first and only 3 point attempt. Johnson has a sweet stroke. Davis also hit a 3, but as a team we went just 4-17 from behind the arc. That has to improve. Surprisingly our full court defense caused Charleston problems. It led to a 5 second violation, 2 steals and a miscommunication that lead to Charleston throwing the ball out of bounds. Blocks were another pleasant surprise. We had 9 for the game and some of those bailed out some bad defense, but it is nice to have some rim protectors now. We also had 10 steals. When we didn't get those steals, Charleston ended up with easy buckets. Davis and Love were aggressive which is good, it is something we lacked last year, but they have to be more fundamentally sound. They overplayed some and got blown past because they were flat footed. We would run out on shooters full force and then bid on the head fake, jump, and then the rest of the defense was left scrambling. Charleston got a lot of easy buckets because we couldn't rotate correctly after the original overplay. Davis got caught flat foot twice and his man blew by him for a couple "And-ones." We were tied in rebounds and points in the paint at half time, only had a 7 point lead, and used 8 different lineups with all of them seemingly out of sync. Kessler was noticeable absent from the first half. Apparently he hadn't practiced in 10 days, so I am going to assume that was why. In his limited minutes, he was productive though. He had 6 points, 4 rebounds, and has a nice turnaround jumper.
We started slow in the second half as well and Charleston took a 43-42 point lead with 15 minutes to play. We then went on a 12-0 run and never looked back. The way I see it is that we eventually wore them down. We kept pounding the ball down low, drawing fouls, and cleaning up second chances. Love struggled to finish at the beginning of the second half, but had a couple of nice finishes later in the half and finished a perfect 8-8 from the free throw line. Davis had a couple of nice finishes were he was able to draw a foul. He completed one of his two "And-one" opportunities. The one he didn't finish came off of an in bound steal where Charleston tried to throw the ball into the back court and Davis outcompeted his man for the ball. Brooks didn't have a good season opener. He hit the boards with 11 rebounds, but only had 6 points on 3-10 shooting. If Brooks has many of those games he could see himself lose his starting spot, but that is premature after the season opener. Leaky Black was Leaky Black. He didn't do anything to make you have more confidence in him, but he didn't do anything that made you lose confidence either.
We ended up out-rebounding Charleston by 15 and had 17 offensive rebounds, 9 more than Charleston. We only had 9 turnovers which is a bright spot being that we struggled with that mightily last season. I would like to see Johnson and Kessler worked more into the rotation as the season goes on. They were limited tonight because of rona protocols.
I imagine we will continue to see a range of lineups as Roy tries to find one that gels and has chemistry. That will come with familiarity that only comes with more games. Our next game is Monday against UNLV at 7pm on ESPN2 in the Maui Invitational that wasn't. I rather be in Maui than Asheville, but hey Asheville has some nice breweries.
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