The UNC basketball program once again played a conference game without its two best players and leading scorers against an in-state rival that was frothing at the mouth for a chance at easy revenge. NC State, losers of their last two games, each in a different and uniquely painful fashion, needed to get right, and an undermanned North Carolina squad would do perfectly.
The Tar Heels didn't help matters by having some of the worst shooting Hubert Davis is likely to witness as head coach. UNC couldn't take advantage of NC State's lack of size either because of its missing starting frontcourt. Things snowballed from there, and the game was never really a contest.
Let's dust ourselves off, wipe the blood off our lips, make sure we have all our teeth, and dive into some lessons learned from a tough loss at NC State.
High Scorer
When UNC signed Zayden High as a four-star high school recruit, if I told you that he'd be the team's high scorer in an ACC game, you'd probably say "Wow! Good for him." If I then told you that he'd be the high scorer in a 24-point loss, you'd probably go "Hmm, that makes sense."
I don't mean to slander High, who, for the second game in a row, answered his nation's call. He just has a ceiling that's not as high as Caleb Wilson's. You'd hope that some of the team's more prominent players, like Seth Trimble or Luka Bogavac, could pick up some of the scoring slack. Combined, those two scored the same 13 points that High did.
High stepping up in the absence of Wilson and Veesaar is a net positive for the team. But Hubert Davis needs more horsepower from his backcourt. The balance of the team's scoring should come from its guards, because the remaining posts aren't as good as the Twin Towers of Power. Having most of the team's scoring come from third- and fourth-choice posts just means the team's ceiling gets lower.