ATLANTA — This loss was not because of one play.
But that’s as good a place to start as any.
Because, fairly or not, it will be the enduring image from Saturday, the one that sticks in the gut of North Carolina fans everywhere. Put 11.9 seconds on the clock, UNC down three to Kentucky, and let the tape roll: Freshman guard Elliot Cadeau — who hadn’t played, to that point, in almost nine minutes — bringing the ball up the floor and right after crossing half court, flinging a pass to the right to Cormac Ryan … who still had his back turned, never looking to receive it. The ball ricocheted off Ryan’s tailbone, then dribbled haplessly back toward midcourt. RJ Davis, he of the game-high 27 points, sprinted mercilessly from the corner to corral it … but only as it was crossing the half-court line. Over and back. Turnover. And with 5.2 seconds left? Ballgame.
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Kentucky 87, UNC 83.
“Just an unfortunate situation,” Hubert Davis said of the play, declining to go into further detail. “The play was not to turn the ball over.”
Most will attribute the blame to Cadeau, and he certainly must wear some for what the official play-by-play kindly termed a “bad pass turnover.” (And for throwing up his hands in frustration after he did so, rather than chasing down the loose ball or positioning himself to help Davis … but that’s a different conversation.)
But if we’re being honest, it’s shared. Some belongs to the head coach, for reinserting a freshman — who was totally cold, who looked overwhelmed all night by the game’s intensity — in such a pressure-packed situation. Maybe some belongs to Ryan, depending on what the play was. (It appeared, on video review, that the play was designed to have RJ Davis coming off one or two down screens from the right corner, with a chance at a 3 or a drive down the middle.) We’ll never know, or at least not until — or unless? — the Tar Heels run it again this season.
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The point is, it’s easy to heap on Cadeau … but this loss, North Carolina’s second consecutive, is about more than just one player. More than just one moment, even.
Consider the following: Against the Wildcats, in the sort of neutral-site, nonconference game that attracts the entire nation’s eye, UNC:
- Was out-rebounded by 10 and had nine shots blocked
- Trailed by as many as 12 in the second half, not to mention 37 of 40 minutes
- Shot under 50 percent overall and a measly 33.3 percent from 3
- Committed 17 (!!) turnovers, its most since last November’s quadruple-overtime loss to Alabama
A winning formula, that is not.
How you interpret all that depends if you swing optimist or pessimist. The pessimist reads those bullet points, replays Cadeau’s turnover over and over again in their head, and says, ‘This team couldn’t do anything right!’ The optimist does the same … but then tacks on a second sentence:
And yet, despite all that, UNC still almost won the game.
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North Carolina’s players, its coaching staff, have to fall in the latter group. “Sometimes you’ve got to play a good team in a tough environment early in the season,” Ryan said, “to find out that you’ve got work to do to finish out games.” It’s not untrue; this was only the Tar Heels’ second game this season decided by four points or less, the other being Villanova in the Bahamas. You’d rather win those two games, obviously, but to have been in either at all — when, if we’re being honest, UNC maybe didn’t deserve to be — is at least a start.
Now it’s about learning to close those games out, against the caliber of teams North Carolina hopes to see come March.
In that respect, Saturday doesn’t have to be a net negative. RJ Davis continues to look like a legitimate All-American candidate; he’s the first UNC player in the modern era to score 26 or more points in four straight games. (The last Tar Heel to do so? Charlie Scott … in 1970.) He’s also the first UNC player since Justin Jackson in 2016-17 to lead the Tar Heels in scoring in six straight games — and that season turned out fine, right?
“RJ, from an offensive standpoint,” Hubert Davis said, “is in a really good rhythm.”
And omitting his role in that final possession, Saturday was a breakthrough of sorts for Ryan, too, who had only made eight of his last 28 3-point attempts since spraining his ankle in that Villanova loss. Against Kentucky, though? Ryan scored a season-high 20 points on 8-of-12 shooting and 4-of-7 from 3. If not for his perimeter gravity — he made half of UNC’s 3-pointers — then UNC wouldn’t have been in the game at all.
“No. 3 comes in, hadn’t been making shots,” Kentucky coach John Calipari said, “but naturally against us, he makes every shot.”
And while Davis and Ryan carried the load offensively, they didn’t keep the Tar Heels in the game all by themselves. Sophomore guard Seth Trimble, before seemingly aggravating his hip injury, had Kentucky freshman Reed Sheppard — arguably UK’s best player, and a projected one-and-done lottery pick — in trouble defensively, following his every move like a shadow. Forward Jae’Lyn Withers, who UNC desperately needs to produce consistently from the power forward spot, offered the rim protection this team has been lacking, blocking two shots and a piece of a third. Even Paxson Wojcik, who only played two minutes, made a two-footed floater early that prevented Kentucky from blowing the game wide open.
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All positives. Of varying degrees, sure, but undeniably good things.
You might have to squint to see it, through the cloud of disappointment, but it’s there.
None of that excuses the loss or myriad methods of explaining how underwhelming UNC looked at times. The rebounding — per KenPom, UNC is ranked 121st nationally in defensive rebounding percentage, as of this writing — has to be better. That’s the biggie. There’s no excuse for RJ Davis, generously listed at 6-feet, to lead the team in rebounding, ever.
“It’s good that RJ got seven rebounds, but it’s not good that he led the team in rebounding,” Hubert Davis said. “He ended up with seven. He had six in the first half — and he still led the team in rebounding.”
The defense has to be better, too. The ball security. The 3-point shooting. A lot of things.
But the Tar Heels have flashed the ability to do that at various points this season. Now it’s about consistency and finishing close games and — ideally — not needing such heroics to have a fighting chance in the first place.
Maybe Calipari is just being kind when he says this, a gentlemanly compliment after a not-so-gentlemanly butt-kicking. But maybe he means it, too. His team just went toe-to-toe with UNC, after all, thoroughly outclassing it in basically every metric … but yet was unable to fully pull away. Why?
“Let me say this: UNC is a Final Four-level team,” Calipari said. “They are.”
(Photo of Cormac Ryan and Elliot Cadeau: Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)