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By Adam Lucas
1. Big win for Carolina to win two important nonconference games in a row and go into Christmas feeling good. The Tar Heels beat Michigan, 80-76.
2. Armando Bacot was great again for the Tar Heels, and this time he did it against impressive competition in Hunter Dickinson. Bacot was the main differentiator for Carolina’s offense. Bacot made Dickinson look very average. Michigan’s best push came when Bacot had to leave the game with four fouls as the Wolverines closed on three with 3:30 left before getting back into the game. Bacot finished 11-for-15 shooting with 26 points.
3. Will Carolina’s Three Point Shooting Happen? The tar heels were stuck out of the arch in Charlotte. Carolina was 7-for-20, just 35 percent, but they made some big ones, including four by RJ Davis.
4. Three-point shooting eliminated some uncharacteristic fights at the free-throw line. That was Carolina’s best consistent offense that year, but the Tar Heels only managed 14 of 27 in the charity strip. Anyway – Caleb Love made four straight Big Ones with less than a minute left.
5. Also coming: Carolina’s transition game. The Tar Heels had 16 fast break points and are a lot more effective across the floor than they were a few weeks ago when they sometimes seemed to be thinking more than playing. RJ Davis did a good job increasing the tempo for the most part, but Caleb Love’s playmaking has improved as well. Love has 17 assists in his last three games.
6. Leaky Black was quietly a very effective rebounder for Carolina – he finished the game with a team high-ten – and he had a highlight reel play in the second half that felt important to the flow of the game. With Carolina leading by six points, Michigan got a runout led by Dug McDaniel. But Black blocked the shot and then saved McDaniel’s ball out of bounds. When Pete Nance converted a three-point play on the next trip, it became a five-point swing. Black had another big game with less than three minutes to go when he flashed in front of Dickinson for a key steal in a three-point game. The Concorder native, playing close to home, was the unsung hero of the game.
7. In a Dean Smith-like crease, Hubert Davis has started showing a few different defensive looks throughout the game. The Tar Heels displayed multiple types of man-to-man pressure in the first half, preventing Michigan from ever really finding their feet on offense.
8. Seth Trimble didn’t take a shot in the first half but he changed the game. The freshman’s defense against Jett Howard was instrumental in changing the momentum of the game and propelling Carolina on a run that gave the Heels a seven-point lead at halftime. Stopping Howard had been a problem without Trimble; he quickly changed that.
9. The officials let the game get too physical for the first part of the first half and then had to try to rewind it when Hunter Dickinson and Caleb Love got caught in a cloud of dust under the tar heel basket. Four quick technical fouls in the sequence essentially ended an increasingly escalating physical situation. After that, the game got a lot tighter.
10. It’s hard to say what the future of this series might be. The Tar Heels and Wolverines have been frequent adversaries lately, with Wednesday marking their fifth meeting in six seasons. Three of those meetings took place in the ACC-Big Ten Challenge, which will now give way to the ACC-SEC Challenge next season. The teams split up the last four meetings.
11. Second consecutive color-on-color game for the Tar Heels. This was a throwback to the 1993 national championship game that always brings back fond memories. Another great neutral crowd as the Madison Square Garden crew’s Charlotte Tar Heel contingent had grown by any measure on Saturday. Carolina is 15-2 at Spectrum Center.
12. Since Wednesday night is the last game before the Christmas break, most of the tar heels go straight home from Charlotte. Some are leaving with their parents after the game, others are flying out of Charlotte tomorrow. The team will gather in Chapel Hill for training on the evening of December 26th. Don’t underestimate how much the players are looking forward to this break. It’s been a long time since they slept in their own beds; They’re still college students, after all, and most of their classmates went home a week ago. This is an estimated break in schedule.