On a sleepy Wednesday night, North Carolina got a reprieve from a run of games against rivals and NCAA Tournament contenders. The Tar Heels nonetheless managed to come out firing, dominating a lowly Cal team 79-53.
The box score was very spread out for UNC, with twenty points from Ian Jackson after a late game surge, fifteen points for Elliot Cadeau and twelve for a now healthy Seth Trimble. Cadeau and RJ Davis each contributed a third of the team's nine assists. The defense was the main story, centered around holding the Golden Bears to three for twenty-five from deep.
It was not a particularly memorable game, but North Carolina showed a few things that could be important moving forward.
1. We Are Not Talking About Drake Powell Enough
In five months, Drake Powell will hear his name called on the first night of the NBA Draft. But at the moment, he's more or less going unmentioned by the media. It probably has something to do with the fact that four of the most talked about freshmen in college basketball play within ten miles of him and the one he is teammates with (Jackson) is far more spectacular in the box score.
But Powell is an absolute rarity. Other stud athletes have fallen in as role players due to a lack of scoring and have been drafted in the lottery based solely on potential. But those players never brought the game wrecker impact in college that Powell has. His rebounding instinct is already elite for a forward and he's shooting a stellar 40% from three on two and a half attempts per game.
But the huge contribution comes from his defense, as the best shutdown option the Tar Heels posses across three positions, while still holding his own in rare instances facing small guards or centers. In the post-game press conference, Coach Hubert Davis remarked "That's as good as you can get" when asked about having Powell and Trimble to throw at Cal's best offensive options.
But what became most clear in-person is that Powell is even most entertaining to watch than I had originally thought. He has these Pterodactyl arms that he was using to envelop Cal star Andrej Stojakovic everytime he caught the ball, holding him to six points on the game. It's going to get even better after a summer in an NBA weight room to fill out his frame. But hopefully not too much, as there may not be a player in college basketball this year who is as good at crashing the offensive glass from the wing. He goes up so fast that he looks much like he's stretching Gumby arms instead of jumping. With UNC likely to spend the rest of the season in a major spotlight, it's time for Powell to share in the attention.