North Carolina Tar Heels: Concerns with Marcus Paige?

North Carolina Tar Heels point guard Marcus Paige has been in a three game slump. What does this mean for the Heels?

The North Carolina Tar Heels may play the Virginia Tech Hokies tomorrow. If they do then the game will carry a good bit of early season importance. The Hokies have come out to a 4-2 start in league play behind second year coach Buzz Williams. The Tar Heels are currently unbeaten in league play, and staying that way would make future developments (Tournament seeding in ACC/NCAA) far easier to control.

Yet the Tar Heels have done their latest conference wins in an interesting fashion. They have done them more or less without Marcus Paige. This isn’t that Paige is injured or anything, but he is a shooting slump that is longer than the last two games. After scoring thirty against Florida State, Paige has not reached the four point barrier in three games.

The Heels have won those three games by relying on other players to take over the game. Brice Johnson has been consistently good in that stretch. Isaiah Hicks broke the Syracuse zone and Kennedy Meeks put in points against NC State. Yet Paige’s production is down.

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This would not be a problem if Paige was taking less shots and finding open teammates, but Paige is still taking the same amount of shots. He simply is not making them. This gives you some idea of the growth of the Carolina team from last year. If Paige had a down stretch of games last year, it would have been fatal to team hopes. This year it is just a slight concern as long as the team can win without him.

What is striking about Paige’s slump is that if he is hitting those shots these games would turn into blow outs. Remember it is not about him not shooting, so these extra points would fit in the flow of the game as they currently play it. It would be the little extra to put games out of reach. The NC State game was kept reachable because of missed shots, not anything that State was particularly doing. The Wake game drifted almost back into contention. A Paige three or two would have solved both problems.

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To fix Paige is the easy part. Let him shoot it out. I would much rather Paige struggle with his shot in January and then find it before Valentine’s Day than to lose his shot in March when the competition will be so much closer than it is right now. Will that mean sacrificing an ACC win here or there? Perhaps, but with the revised tournament you just need to stay in the top four of the standings to get any kind of bye.

I would still rather have Paige taking the big threes for this team. Joel Berry has played some nice ball lately, but it still feels like Theo Pinson takes too many of that shot. We’ll see if this changes against the Hokies. Or maybe we won’t with snow and everything.

Who thought it was a good idea to schedule the game against the Panthers game anyway?

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