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CHAPEL HILL – A year ago, Armando Bacot called it “bully ball.”
That was a description of his game following an impressive win at Pittsburgh.
Nowadays, it’s much more than that. An element of grace has been added to how he plays basketball accompanied by his raw strength and sheer size that have tasked opposing teams with unenviable undertaking of trying to stop the North Carolina junior forward.
Or at least slow him down.
Notre Dame and Virginia didn’t stand a chance last week, as Bacot rolled to 50 points and 39 rebounds in the two games. He was 21-for-31 from the field and 8-for-11 from the free throw line. And when the Cavaliers had some rare success doubling Bacot on Saturday in the Smith Center, he passed out of it, recording a pair of assists, as well.
Bacot is still bullish around the rim, but he has become a much more refined player with a whole lot in his bag.
“People always talk about how big he is, how strong he is,” said teammate Brady Manek, who spent the last four seasons at Oklahoma. “But he’s got a lot of touch around the rim, he can read the defender on his back really well, he seals well. Yeah, he’s strong, he’s hard to get in front of, but the stuff he does without the ball in his hands are just overlooked at times.”
Through 15 games, Bacot has posted 11 double-doubles for the Tar Heels, including in their last six games. In only four contests has he failed to grab at least 10 rebounds, and two of those game she played only 17 minutes easy due to foul trouble.
He has scored 20 or more points six times after doing so five times total in his first two seasons at UNC. And on the year, he leads Carolina averaging 16.6 points and 11.2 rebounds per game, and is shooting 64.2 percent from the floor.
Bacot is playing more, as UNC’s rotation is narrower under Hubert Davis than it was under Roy Williams, but this is more about the 6-foot-10 native of Richmond, VA. He is just better in every way. The improvement between his freshman and sophomore year was noteworthy, but from last season to this year has been several notches higher.
“One of the things I love about Armando is – there’s a number of things – this is what college basketball is,” Davis said. “It’s the progression, it’s the growth of these kids. Now, kids go to the NBA, they transfer. We don’t get an opportunity for them to be able to just grow as a player, and every year Armando’s just gotten better. He’s just gotten better.”
Bacot’s run through the mid-point of this season in some respects started showing itself late last year. He added a drive from the free throw line in early February increasingly showing it off up to Carolina’s final game, a loss to Wisconsin in the NCAA Tournament. He was the only Tar Heel who played well in the second half that night, and it carried over into the offseason.
He tested the NBA draft waters after leading UNC with 12.3 points and 7.8 rebounds per game last season to mainly get feedback from the league, which was pretty much the same thing he was hearing in Chapel Hill from Davis, Williams, who retired in April, and assistant coach Sean May.
The 2005 National Player of the Year and Most Outstanding Player on Carolina’s national championship team that season, May has been a part of UNC’s staff for seven seasons. He coaches the bigs because he knows a thing or two about playing in the post. Bacot credits May for much of his hoops growth.
“Coach May, (he was) a very intelligent player,” Bacot said. “Just being able to sit down with him and watch film. Also just in practice, just being able to learn from him, it's been helping my game do numbers. He's just been making it so much easier on me and just been simplifying a lot of things for me and it's been great just having him on staff.”
May was a double-double machine, too, and no doubt was proud watching Bacot dismantle a UVA team that had previously bottled up Carolna’s bigs. Bacot scored a career-high 29 points in the game and pulled down a career-high 22 rebounds.
Consider there were 60 missed shots combined by both teams in the game, and he snared 36.7 percent of them. The last Tar Heel to post 20 and 20 in the same game at home was Tyler Hansbrough in 2008. May went for 26 and 24 in a win over Duke capping off the 2005 season.
The last Tar Heel to go 20-and-20 in a game was Brice Johnson, when he scored 39 points and grabbed 23 rebounds in a win at Florida State in 2016. One thing those three former Tar Heels have in common: They all played in national championship games.
May and Hansbrough (2009) won theirs, and Johnson (2016) lost his at the buzzer to Villanova.
There is no telling if Bacot will play on the last Monday night of the season with the Tar Heels, but his performances are looking increasingly similar to the way May, Hansbrough, and Johnson performed in their Carolina careers.
No longer bully ball, now it’s simply big-time basketball.
