UNC Basketball: Caleb Love’s recent breakout huge for Tar Heels

“He’s working at it and is just a tremendous young man… I hope he feels good about the way he played.” — Roy Williams

Caleb Love didn’t walk away from UNC’s seven-point victory as UNC’s Defensive Player of the Game — instead, it was fellow freshman RJ Davis who earned such an honor after finishing with two steals, a block, and several hustle plays — but his performance on the defensive end against Wake Forest’s relentless ball-screen offense was transformative.

Playing like a man possessed, Love was everywhere.

He routinely stunted into driving lanes, digging at ball-handlers before recovering to his assignment and using every bit of his 6’9 wings to disturb shot attempts on the perimeter. His team defense was remarkable, featuring prompt tags/rotations as the lowman and impeccable positioning — gluing himself to the backside of divers, serving as a deterrent, and allowing himself a runway to close out onto his man in the event of a skip pass. Passing lanes were jumped, players were denied, and stocks were compiled (two steals, two blocks).

A player who has mightily struggled grasping team defense responsibilities throughout the season, including a vicious outing against Iowa on Dec. 8 that saw the Hawkeyes target him with relentless off-ball actions, Wednesday’s game was revelatory, if not ostensibly uncharacteristic.

But as impressive as his help-side defense was, it was his efforts defending the point of attack (specifically Wake’s spread pick-and-roll offense) that proved to be revelatory. Though Daivien Williamson put together a career performance for the Demon Deacons (27 points on 69.6 percent true shooting), he was rarely afforded driving lanes or advantageous opportunities when covered by Love.

The 6’4 guard got skinny around a number of ball screens, stepping around stationary bigs and mirroring Williamson (and other Deacon ball-handlers) out on the perimeter and effectively squashing numerous pick-and-roll actions, at times forcing turnovers with his superior strength and length.

In a few instances throughout the game, synergy between defensive intensity and offensive focus manifested in displays of two-way brilliance, with a stop on one end begetting a score on the other, at times in dazzling fashion.

Falling a step behind Williamson in Wake’s Spain pick-and-roll, Love regains his footing and sends the layup attempt careening off the backboard before pushing in transition, darting toward the middle of the lane to collapse the defense and free up the corner kickout to Kerwin Walton (while relocating to the slot after the pass), who drills a one-dribble pull-up jumper:

Not backing down in the post, Love (with a late double from Brooks) contests Isaiah Mucius’ fallaway jumper without fouling, immediately darts up the floor with the ball in his hands, makes the (slightly inaccurate) skip pass to Leaky Black in the corner, relocates to the strongside slot, and attacks the crease in Wake’s defense, following up his missed floater with dogged determination:

And in a sequence that effectively cemented a Carolina victory, Love plays the outside hip of Ismael Massoud — angling for an entry pass that he knows will be thrown and knows he will come away with — and intercepts the ill-thought post feed, sparking a transition leakout that he ends with a punctuation slam to put UNC up 12 with two minutes to go.

Carolina’s 80-73 win over Wake Forest was not one without incident or imperfection. It was yet another meeting that was decided by seven points or fewer, the seventh such result in seven games for the Tar Heels, but it was nonetheless a game with encouraging performances, with Love’s two-way play being chief among them.

Roy Williams and co. are far from where they want to be, but getting his five-star freshman to return to form is imperative, and it’s hard to overstate how meaningful and momentous of an outing this was.

For Caleb Love, rebuilding his confidence and reestablishing himself as a prominent basketball prospect requires unceasing effort. He’s not one to settle, even when facing the unexpected levels of uncertainty and stress that he’s endured up to this point.

The grind will continue, the process will be trusted because he’s capable of much more. And he knows it, as do his family, friends, and coaches. Twenty points in a conference game is a stepping stone to be sure, a meaningful one at that, but he understands that there’s more to be done.

“I started meditating a few weeks ago, that’s helping me,” Love said. “Talking to my mom and dad, my coaches, having meetings with them telling them to keep their confidence in me. My teammates just building me up. I had a lot of people staying in my head telling me to keep going.

“So, that’s what I’m doing.”