CORAL GABLES, FL – Perhaps we are now figuring out what is North Carolina’s identity, and it’s not exactly something that will invoke a great deal of optimism among its massive fan base.
The Tar Heels can be fantastic, scoring in myriad ways offensively flowing as if they are sometimes running a clinic at a summer camp so campers will see the proper way to space, move, share, get open, position, and shoot. And sometimes the Heels play some defense, too.
But every now and then they don’t. And when that happens, the Heels go from being a pretty nice team with second-weekend potential in the NCAA Tournament to a club that won’t sniff the big dance.
The latter showed up here in South Florida on Tuesday night, and it didn’t take long to see that was the case. Carolina just wasn’t dialed in and brought its F game. And nothing happened on the sideline to trigger a reversal of that course. It went from terrible to worse, and the result was an embarrassing loss that should have every member of the team – coaches and players – angry and determined to change their collective, every-day disposition.
Miami’s 85-57 victory over UNC was exactly as the final score says, and in some respects was even worse.
And speaking of worse, this was Carolina’s low-point of the season. The Tar Heels weren’t this listless in the 17-point loss to Tennessee in Connecticut two months ago. And they weren’t this bad in a 29-point loss to Kentucky in Las Vegas exactly one month ago.
The margin in Sin City was one more point, but Miami isn’t UK, even though UNC allowed the Hurricanes to look the part.
UNC opened with a 5-2 lead, and then Miami rolled off a 14-0 run. Carolina was terrible on offense and terrible on defense. It did nothing to change, it just kept being terrible.
Carolina Coach Hubert Davis said the adjustments he eventually made on defense were to guard full court, and he did this late in the first half. He also said they added some things in the second, but none of it worked, as he acknowledged.
While perhaps there could have been some more strategical moves by Davis, maybe this was one of those nights nothing would have worked. He sort of hinted at that late in his postgame press conference when asked what the deal is with sophomore guard Anthony Harris, who missed a second consecutive game.
Would Harris, who is known for giving the team energy and playing tight defense, have helped?
“He's a guy that is a really good on-ball defender,” Davis said. “But as poorly as we played in the first half, as good as Ant is on the ball, I just I don't think it would have made a difference.”
That is the problem. Everyone who watched the game had a fair idea the Tar Heels were done well before halftime hit when they trailed by 27 points. Maybe it was after Miami’s 14-0 run to take a 16-5 lead with 14:10 remaining in the first half. Or, a better way of looking at it was that run ended with 34:10 remaining in the contest.
Carolina still had 83 percent of game time left, but the game may as well have been over. The score didn’t say it, but their body language did. That was the case versus the Volunteers and Wildcats, and it was tonight.
“At this moment I don’t know,” Davis said when asked how he can change the collective mentality of his team, especially on a night when things are bad early. “At times throughout the season, I feel like there has been a change in mentality and effort and toughness, and then we have a game like this.
“Just very disappointed, very disappointed in our fight, competitiveness, our effort, just very disappointed.”
That’s on the players. They need to take the pride Davis often discusses to the court. There will be off nights, and that’s when leaders, or a leader, can smack a few fannies and get the team righted. But Davis doesn’t have any leaders.
“In order to be a good team, you have to have leadership, and there has to be somebody outside of myself, outside of the coaching staff, that has a voice in the locker room,” he said. “That's amongst the players that binds us together.
“I've never seen a good team absent of that. At this moment, we do not have any, and that's something that needs to change, that has to change, and must change, and my hope is that it will change but at this moment we do not have any.”
And that is why the Tar Heels have proven through 17 games to be a Jekyll and Hyde outfit. Some nights, they are breathtaking, and some nights they are abysmal.
The latter describes Tuesday’s performance, and it’s something Davis, his staff, and the players need to figure out, because this is not a sustainable approach to a season.
