North Carolina has gone from one of the nation’s best perimeter defenses to one of the worst in college basketball.
Entering its first ACC game last week, UNC had held opponents to 36.1% shooting from the field, which ranked fourth nationally and second in the league behind Duke. Foes were hitting just 28.0% from 3-point range, good for 13th in the country.
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Three conference games later, that picture has flipped. The Tar Heels are allowing ACC opponents to shoot 39.2% from beyond the arc, which ranks 15th out of 18 league teams. Over those three games, Carolina has surrendered 40 made threes — an average of 13.3 per game, more than double the 6.1 threes it allowed per game before conference play began.
In North Carolina’s 87–84 win over Wake Forest, the Demon Deacons went 14-for-35 from 3-point range, a clean 40%. Guards Juke Harris and Nate Calmese torched the Tar Heels, each scoring 28 points and combining to shoot 12-for-23 (52.1%) from deep.
That performance followed a similar breakdown at SMU. In a 97–83 loss to SMU in Dallas, North Carolina gave up its most points of the season as the Mustangs went 14-for-27 from 3-point range, a blistering 51.9% clip.
A major share of North Carolina’s problems can be traced to the backcourt’s inability to stay in front of athletic guards. SMU and Wake Forest both attacked that weakness, with their perimeter players scoring comfortably at all three levels. Seth Trimble remains the one guard on the roster who has consistently played high-end defense this season, though even he has shown some slippage of late.
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The rest of the backcourt has struggled to match the size, quickness and shot-making of some of the better guard groups in the ACC, and every guard outside of Trimble is already dealing with inconsistency as a perimeter shooter.
If the Tar Heels want to stay near the top of the league, they will have to tighten up their perimeter defense in a hurry. Three of their next five opponents in January rank in the top 75 nationally in 3-point shooting percentage — Notre Dame (No. 39), Virginia (No. 50) and Cal (No. 75) out of 365 Division I teams.
The rest of the month should reveal what this North Carolina team is really made of. The Tar Heels looked sharp against a softer nonconference schedule, but Central Arkansas, East Carolina and Radford are no longer on the docket. Duke, Louisville and Virginia are. The level of competition — and the expectations — will be much higher.
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This article originally appeared on Tar Heels Wire: UNC Basketball: Growing concern with perimeter defense
