The UNC basketball program is now 14 games into the 2024-25 basketball season and sits with a record of 8-6, recently falling to Louisville on the road despite coming back from a deficit of 11 points. North Carolina lost the matchup by a score of 83-70 — not scoring a single bucket in the final five minutes of regulation time.
North Carolina's frontcourt, most notably Jalen Washington, Ven-Allen Lubin, Jae'Lyn Withers, and Ty Claude, have not been sufficient to withstand opposing teams. Drake Powell, a freshman more suited to play a guard position, has been thrust into a forward role (given the team's frontcourt issues) and has arguably played the best out of the names listed. That's not acceptable if this team wants to reach greater heights by the time March rolls around.
However, head coach Hubert Davis has not used freshman James Brown enough — it's hard to believe playing the Aurora, Illinois native would make things worse.
Brown is averaging 1.8 points and 0.8 rebounds while shooting 83.3 percent from the field on 2.7 minutes of game action. The most he has scored this season occurred on Saturday, December 14 a few weeks back during UNC's game against La Salle at home. Brown piled in six points in five minutes of game action — talk about efficiency.
Why has Davis and the staff refuse to use Brown as much as the rest of the frontcourt pieces?
He stands at 6-foot-10 and 215 pounds, and as we've learned after the Kansas game during the first week of this season — there's a lot of fight in him, leading the charge vocally at halftime, which throttled North Carolina's comeback at the Allen Fieldhouse.
Is there something behind the scenes that we do not know about? If this were the case, Brown wouldn't be allowed to dress up for games. But for what's known at the moment, Davis is simply not playing him. Nonetheless, it's worth the shot for Brown to receive minutes on a game-to-game basis — early on, not at the end with the final minutes winding down.
North Carolina's NCAA Tournament hopes will shrink if the way they play continues as time goes on. There needs to be a change, and Brown may be the answer.
The only way to find out is if he's on the court. It's up to Davis and his assistants to make the call.