Defense Trending Positive
The Tar Heels defense through the first five games of the season has been very suspect and cause for concern. The team gave up an average of 83.8 points per game, 47.9% shooting from the floor, and only forced 9.0 turnovers per contest. Those aren’t great numbers especially considering they include matchups against lower-to-mid Division 1 programs, such as Loyola (MD), Brown, and the College of Charleston.
Fortunately, Carolina has maintained its offensive prowess enough to outpace these teams outside of losses to Purdue and Tennessee. In their last outing, however, things started to change for the better. A matchup against fellow in-state program UNC-Asheville, North Carolina only ceded 53 points. While the Asheville offense isn’t prolific by any stretch, UNC was able to hold its opponent to a season’s best 26.5% from the field and 18.9% from the perimeter.
Something has started to click, whatever it may be, but it visually seems like North Carolina has cranked up the focus and effort on this end of the floor considerably. The performance against Asheville was needed, but it wasn’t expected to hold against a program of Michigan’s caliber as evidenced by the Boilermakers and Vols being able to take advantage of the Tar Heels miscues. Yet, it did and even bested the previous scoring mark turned in the game before.
While the likelihood of UNC continuing to hold teams to under 55 points a night is unlikely, the large improvement on defense has produced very positive signs about the potential of this team to win tough games down the stretch. If they can stay locked in and play together, Coach Davis may have this group fighting for some level of hardware by season’s end.