While the shooting differences are easy to see from the box score alone, watching the game showed North Carolina has to work on defending the dribble drive. All too often senior guard Wes Washpun had an easy time penetrating the paint, with the option to drive to the rim or dish the ball out to shooters on the wing. He finished the game with 21 points on 9-for-15 shooting and eight assists to lead his team in both categories.
It's easy to blame the backcourt defense for this alone, but the help defense was also slow to rotate or simply nonexistent during these instances as well. Improvement across the board defending the dribble drive is going to have to happen.
Justin Jackson is back
Jackson started the season off on an extremely slowly, averaging just 6.7 points per game through the first three games — including a dreadful 0-for-9 stretch from behind the 3-point line. Saturday, though, we saw one of the best games from Jackson in his young career, as he scored a career-high 25 points — which led both teams — after shooting 9-for-15 from the floor and 3-for-7 from behind the arc.
Jackson still looked at his best when he was cutting toward the basket and moving inside the 3-point line, but it is nice to see the distance shooting appear. Still, Jackson was the only Tar Heel to have much success from deep in this game, with Joel Berry and Nate Britt combining to shoot just 2-for-8 on 3-pointers.
Near the end of the game the Panthers looked to deny Jackson the ball behind the arc when UNC was trailing 70-67, and it paid off for them with a game-deciding turnover. Both Britt and Berry have shown flashes of solid 3-point shooting in the past, but until they are able to find some consistency — and until Paige is back in the lineup — it looks like teams won't have a hard time taking this part of the game away from North Carolina.
The starting frontcourt
Kennedy Meeks started the game better than any other player, scoring UNC's first eight points in two minutes and 22 seconds. But things slowed down for him after that, and he only scored two more points the rest of the way. Northern Iowa did implement double teams throughout the game whenever UNC tried to get the ball into the post, and the Tar Heels also slowed down getting the ball into the hands of their bigs in the second half.
During the first half, Meeks and Brice Johnson combined to shoot 5-for-10, with the Tar Heels scoring 12 points in the paint. The second half saw the duo shoot the ball at an even higher percentage, but they got off fewer shots — they went a combined 5-for-8 in the second half.
While it's certainly possible that this just comes from taking better shots in the second half, it is also extremely important for a Paige-less UNC team to establish dominance around the basket.
This was also an interesting nugget from Adrian Atkinson on how UNC's front court rotations faired against the Panthers.
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@CarlosACollazo
sports@dailytarheel.com
