UNC Basketball 2019-20 Player Review: Justin Pierce

We break down every player on the UNC Basketball roster from the 2019-20 season with our player reviews series beginning with Justin Pierce

With the 2019-20 college basketball season abruptly coming to an end, it’s time to do our annual player reviews for the past season.

For the North Carolina Tar Heels, this was a very disappointing season as they had their worst year in the Roy Williams era. What was once thought of as what could be a promising season quickly turned into disaster as several players were hit with the injury bug and had to miss games.

The Tar Heels had some holes to fill following a Sweet 16 loss last year, losing five of their top six scorers. In attempting to do so, they welcomed in a pretty good recruiting class plus added graduate transfers Christian Keeling and Justin Pierce.

The excitement was at a high for UNC fans when both players announced they were joining the Tar Heels roster from their respected programs.

At 6-foot-7 and 210-pounds, Pierce was expected to provide a big scoring threat on the wing for the Tar Heels while also being a solid rebounder. But his season got off to a slow start in 2019-20.

Through the first 16 games of his UNC career, Pierce scored in double-digits just three times over that span. That included four games of zero points going 0-for-11 from the field in that stretch, struggling to find his game and shot.  His high during that stretch was 18 points, coming in the second game of the season vs. UNCW as he also grabbed 11 rebounds in that game for his only double-double of the year.

Unfortunately for Pierce, the struggles continued to mount throughout.

Pierce finished the regular season averaging 5.0 points, 4.0 rebounds and just under an assist per game while shooting 37.3% from the field. He never developed into the scoring wing option that the Tar Heels envisioned and at times it looked like the game was just a little too fast for him.

While he was supposed to be the sixth or seventh man off the bench and a contributor on the second unit, Pierce’s struggles were a microcosm for UNC’s struggles as a team throughout the 2019-20 season.  Pierce never really developed into the guy that we all had hoped for and at times he did show some promises in his game. But the biggest problem was the consistency and struggling to put it all together.

It’s safe to say things didn’t go as planned with this graduate transfer, a few years after Williams struck gold with Cameron Johnson.

Following the situation with Pierce and Keeling, it will be curious to see how Williams and his staff handle graduate transfers moving forward.

Check back with Keeping It Heel for more on our player reviews for 2019-20.