Last night, UNC dominated North Carolina Central in order to improve to 4-0. The game had a lot more of a flow than the game against Radford as far as the foul call situation goes, but the Eagles did their best to slow the Heels down with their zone defense. While they did just that for a while, they simply had no answers for the many weapons that Hubert Davis unloaded. Of course the most dangerous of them was Caleb Wilson, who we will get to in just a moment.
Let’s go ahead and discuss three takeaways from last night’s blowout victory.
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Caleb Wilson continues to impress
One has to wonder if Caleb Wilson found out what Duke freshman Cameron Boozer did against Indiana State earlier in the night, because he was a man on a mission against the Eagles. He finished his night with 21 points off 7-8 shooting, 13 rebounds, three assists, and four blocks. It’s also worth noting that he only had two fouls in this game after racking up three fouls in the first half alone against Radford.
Wilson was super active against a NCCU team that wanted to keep the ball out of the paint. He kept finding ways to destroy the rim, made really good passes, and even knocked down a corner three in the second half. Watching Wilson play is one of the greatest joys that I’ve had as a Carolina basketball fan in a long time, and I can’t wait to see how the rest of the season plays out for him.
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First half turnovers were a big problem
One of the things that Hubert Davis has been trying to clean up with this team is turnovers, which have been a bit of an issue at times. They haven’t been nearly as bad as some of the games we saw last season, but anybody that has watched each game this season will point out that the turnovers so far have been careless and silly, to put it nicely. The behavior continued last night in the first half — the Heels went into the locker room with 10 turnovers.
The good news is that whatever Davis said in the locker room worked, and the Heels didn’t have a single turnover in the second half. What is even more impressive about this is that he cleared the bench with about five minutes left in the game, and the reserves didn’t commit any errors either. It’s likely that the turnover situation is going to be really frustrating this season simply because we’ve seen that this team is capable of not turning the ball over when they put their minds to it. The Eagles didn’t do anything inherently different in the second half, it just felt like the Heels decided they wanted to take care of the ball suddenly. Hopefully this gets cleaned up soon, because it could cost them against more difficult opponents later in the season.
There may not be a suitable backup for Henri Veesaar
It is early in the season, but so far UNC hasn’t shown many glaring weaknesses that should have fans concerned. The team isn’t perfect by any means, but there aren’t the same holes in this roster that existed last season. That is, of course, until we take a close look at the backup center situation.
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Hubert Davis has tried his best to figure out which of Zayden High or James Brown can give him quality minutes off the bench to spell Henri Veesaar, and so far neither of them are playing well. High had 11 points tonight, but five of those points were off free throws. Anybody that didn’t watch the game may look at him going 3-7 from the field and say that his shooting wasn’t that bad, but you honestly had to see it to understand. He wasn’t the worst player out there, he just wasn’t good enough to be a reliable backup.
As far as James Brown goes, Davis didn’t play him until he cleared the bench. It seems like High may be the guy that gets the minutes when Veesaar is inevitably in foul trouble throughout the season, but that could be a big issue for the Tar Heels. A more palatable solution would be sliding Caleb Wilson to the five, Jarin Stevenson to the four, and then whatever combination of guards fit the situation. Hopefully that ends up being the move, because as of right now the other two options aren’t looking very good.
