AJ: UNC's Common Thread In Its Losing Streak Is The Losing

Carolina isn’t rebounding anywhere near the clip it has for the last six decades. The Heels have just 14 more rebounds total than their opponents, while they’ve grabbed 11 fewer on the offensive glass. That’s a truly shocking stat.

UNC is giving up points in the paint at an alarming rate. With Virginia Tech scoring 42, that means combined with Indiana’s 50 points in the paint, UNC has allowed 92 this week while scoring only 56 itself.

The Tar Heels (5-4, 0-1 ACC) are a poor perimeter shooting club, which is really the anchor in all that is wrong offensively.

After converting 3-for-17 from beyond the arc today, they are 18-for-76 during the losing streak. The calculator says that’s 23.7 percent. Basketball eyes say that horrific. Note that the streak began with a 3-for-18 outing.

Staying on the perimeter shooting, RJ Davis and Caleb Love are each shooting 26.2 percent from 3-point range for the season. They have obviously struggled mightily during the streak.

There’s more…

UNC assisted on only six of 24 field goals Sunday, and actually went a span of 30:27 without registering a single assist. That is unheard of. This week, UNC has 11 assists on 44 baskets. During the streak, the Heels have just 38 dishes on 104 buckets, which is 36.5 percent.

To put that into perspective, last year’s team assisted 54.1 percent of the time. The current average for all Division One teams is 51.2 percent.

So, where do the Tar Heels go from here?

This is still a club that should contend for a national championship, as far-fetched a notion as that might be given the first nine games. The parts are there. The depth is there, and a step in the right direction Sunday was that Davis used all of his available scholarship guys in an attempt to find something to get the team going.

He did with freshmen Seth Trimble and Tyler Nickel.

And this is a club that understands how to fight through adversity, mostly self-inflicted, and come out on the other end just fine. Right now, however, is the time the Heels do that.

Carolina has only have three more nonconference games remaining: The Citadel in nine days; Ohio State in New York City; and Michigan in Charlotte. Otherwise, it’s ACC play until the postseason.

The NCAA Tournament doesn’t begin for three-and-a-half more months, but as much as the thinking is this team will run out of the tunnel one night and flip the switch morphing into the juggernaut that was projected, that is less likely a given each time the Tar Heels take the floor.

They are not a good team right now. They are really bad in some areas, wildly inconsistent in others, and just haven’t hard the spark and spunk that carried them to the memorable run last season.

This column reads somewhat like the last one, and so on. It does because the common thread in the losing streak, and with nine underwhelming performances is that North Carolina just hasn’t been good this season.

Now that Armando Bacot is out indefinitely, how much losing can this club endure before getting him back and producing like a heathy Bacot did last season?

Time isn’t running out by any means, but it’s chipping away.