North Carolina Tar Heels fall to Badgers, Look to Future

So it ends for the North Carolina Tar Heels. The Tar Heels were handed the biggest task that they could personally face: the Wisconsin Badgers. For a while it looked as if they had done it. They managed to secure the goal of Big Ten basketball: reach sixty first. Then a 9-0 run with about five minutes to go completely flipped the script on the Heels. Instead of trying to hold off a charging Badger team, they were now forced to play catchup against a team with good foul shooting. It never happened.

This game really pit the present and the future. The Badgers are a team that has to win now, because Frank Kaminsky is a senior. The Tar Heels are not quite there yet, but they should be next year. That will be the senior seasons of Marcus Paige, Brice Johnson, JP Tokoto, and Joel James. Every significant contributor comes back to the team next season. The open scholarships of Jackson Simmons and Desmond Hubert will allow the team to make one more shot at bringing in an additional piece.

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So what was good and bad about the showdown with the Badgers?

Bad

Let’s handle this first. The early problem that the Heels had was foul trouble for Brice Johnson and Kennedy Meeks. That took the best big man scoring options off the court for long stretches, particularly when coupled with the move to a smaller lineup to cover Wisconsin’s shooters. A bit more Brice and a little less Hicks (not that Hicks played poorly) or a little more Meeks might have been enough. However they could not stay on the floor.

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Another point was the free throw shooting. The Tar Heels were 12-18, but lost the game by seven. Free throw shooting alone would not have changed everything. Sure Hicks missed two free throws late, but at 62% for the year and not being in games at crunch time- it was not likely to end well.

The glaring problem was the offensive rebounds that Wisconsin got. Sam Dekker got a majority of his twenty-three points off hustle by either cleaning the glass or slicing through the Tar Heel defense on drives. The stat book says only eleven offensive rebounds, but they converted those chances into points.

Good

In a game where the Tar Heels could not turn it over, they really did not. There were four turnovers in the entire game. So the Heels did not give away the game that way.

The tempo of the game probably favored Wisconsin as a whole, and the rebound numbers are smallish compared to many games the Heels played this season. However Wisconsin could not sit comfortably by and win that way. If the game had played out the way Big Ten games normally do, the Badgers would have lost when the Heels reached the sixty point barrier with not much time to play.

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The final good thing was that the Heels got contributions from everywhere. Starters and bench players contributed to the effort. Justin Jackson had fifteen points and a couple big three point baskets. Marcus Paige almost had the opportunity to play hero at the end of the game. Joel Berry was 2-3 from the three point arc. Hicks led the team in rebounds.

The Tar Heels will be bringing the band back next year off of a Sweet 16 run that should make them hungry for more. With Duke and other teams reloading, they could be primed for a big run in the ACC and be well set for Tournament play.

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