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How Justin Jackson can take North Carolina to new heights

By Matt Ostrowski

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Let’s get one thing straight right off the bat: I generally hate when a player is referred to as his team’s “x-factor.” It would seem pretty obvious that when a player plays well, it’s going to affect his team positively, too. Anyone would be hard pressed to find a player that actually performs worse in  losses than in wins.

But something caught my eye when examining North Carolina’s individual splits from last season, and that was Justin Jackson. Among the Heels’ four leading scorers (Marcus Paige, Brice Johnson, Kennedy Meeks, and Jackson), Jackson possessed an extreme drop in scoring and efficiency from wins to losses (via college basketball reference). Let’s take a look:

Marcus Paige in wins:      14ppg, 43% FG%, 40% 3PT%

Marcus Paige in losses:   14ppg, 37% FG%, 37% 3PT%

Brice Johnson in wins:    13ppg, 57% FG%

Brice Johnson in losses:  12ppg, 55% FG%

Kennedy Meeks in wins:   12ppg, 57% FG%

Kennedy Meeks in losses: 10ppg, 54% FG%

Justin Jackson in wins:   12ppg, 51% FG%, 33% 3PT%

Justin Jackson in losses: 8.5ppg, 39% FG%, 25% 3PT%

While Paige also possesses a decent drop in efficiency, he only drops 6% from the floor, and 3% from the three-point line, while still putting in about 14 points per game. Jackson drops 12% from the floor, and 8% from beyond  the arc, putting in almost four points per game less. Johnson and Meeks don’t possess much of a drop at all.

The explanation for this is really a simple one: Jackson was the only spot up shooting threat in North Carolina’s starting lineup. Opposing defense’s were content to pack the paint on Marcus Paige, limiting his production, in exchange for giving guys like Jackson and the now-deprated J.P. Tokoto wide-open threes. When Jackson made them, it made their offense great. When he missed them, they were mediocre. What burned the Heels is that he wasn’t a good enough shooter to make them consistently.

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    • This becomes even more evident when you dig deeper into the stats. For the first three months of the season, Jackson was shooting a paltry 20% from the three-point line, and Paige was shooting just 40% from two-point territory. Then, Jackson caught fire, scoring close to 12 points per game during the last two months of the season, compared to 10 points per game from November to January. But even more importantly, he did it on 42% from the three-point line. In turn, Paige’s two-point percentage rose to 48% in the last two months, a number on par with his 2013-14 season.

    Just look at how packed the lane is on this Marcus Paige drive. Duke essentially ignores both Tokoto and Jackson spotting up. It turns out OK because Tokoto makes a nice cut and Paige hits him with a nice pass, but driving into four defenders generally isn’t good for the offense.

    Another major part of Jackson’s offensive game is a dribble pull-up from midrange.

    He’s become deadly from that area with an array of floaters and pull-ups. The issue is, defenses caught on, and started going under screens, forcing him to shoot the three.

    So not only does the whole offense flow better when Jackson is making his threes, but it also opens up his entire offensive arsenal. North Carolina has very high expectations this season, and I fear that a lot of those expectations will fall on Jackson. J.P. Tokoto is gone, so he is the lone returner on the wing. While Theo Pinson will pickup some playing time, and he has tons of potential, they didn’t really add anyone that could play the role of spot-up shooter. It’s going to have to be Jackson. Hopefully, his shooting from February and March is what we will see this year. If not, it might be another disappointing year in Chapel Hill.

    Next: Tom Crean Needs to Land Eron Gordon

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