UNC Basketball: Armando Bacot cut from Wooden Award watch list

UNC basketball’s Armando Bacot missed the cut for the Wooden Award Top 20 list.

It wasn’t long ago that North Carolina’s Armando Bacot was in the conversation for first team All-American consideration. In addition to that, Bacot was included in early-season watch lists for a number of prestigious honors, including the John. R. Wooden Award, which recognizes the top player in college basketball.

But after a difficult stretch of games that saw Bacot go from one of the nation’s most efficient offensive players to merely middle-of-the-pack — and a frontrunner for ACC Player of the Year to just an afterthought — those conversations abruptly came to an end. Because of that, Bacot is no longer included among those on the Wooden Award watch list, which was reduced from 25 players to 20 on Monday.

During that stretch of games, three to be exact, Bacot went just 12-for-41 (29.2 percent) from the floor, and a number of the shots that he missed were layups. In fact, of the 29 shots that Bacot missed against Wake Forest, Virginia Tech and Boston College, most were within two or three feet of the basket.

Add to that his 8-for-14 (57.1 percent) mark at the free throw line and difficulty staying out of foul trouble in those games, and it really put a damper on the fact that he averaged better than 16 rebounds per game and notched two double-doubles in three contests. He committed 11 fouls in 97 minutes of play in those games, which averages out to more than one every nine minutes on the court.

So while Bacot is still having a very nice season for the Tar Heels, averaging better than 16 points and 12 rebounds per game while racking up 16 double-doubles, he simply isn’t putting up the kind of numbers that he was a few weeks ago, particularly from an efficiency standpoint.

Bacot still has a lot to accomplish as a Tar Heel, and will likely continue to etch his name in the UNC record books before his time in Chapel Hill comes to an end.

Check back with Keeping It Heel for all the latest on Armando Bacot and the UNC basketball program.