North Carolina could have the best frontcourt tandem in the country with Caleb Wilson and Henri Veesaar, and if not, they’re easily in the conversation. Yet, the Tar Heels leave a lot to be desired on the perimeter. To be blunt, they can’t play perimeter defense.
On Wednesday night, for the third-straight game, they’ve allowed an offensive outpouring to an opposing ACC guard. For the second time in that stretch, it led to a frustrating loss, this time 95-90 to Stanford in Palo Alto behind Ebuka Okorie’s 36 points on 12-for-20 shooting.
Ebuka Okorie is the latest lead guard to terrorize the Tar Heels
Though the No. 14 Tar Heels are still positioned fairly comfortably in the ACC at 2-2 and 14-3 overall, it’s time to panic because it doesn’t appear there’s a solution on the roster. UNC’s group of perimeter defenders allows far too much penetration, doesn’t stop the ball in transition, and though Wilson and Veesaar are strong rim defenders, the constant paint touches lead to open kickout threes.
Colorado State transfer Kyan Evans has been a letdown at point guard, and Seth Trimble has been up-and-down in his return from injury. Neither is stout enough at the point of attack or navigating screens. Okorie constantly got them on his hip, allowing him to probe the paint for his array of floaters, pull-ups, layups, and kick-outs. When Hubert Davis tried 6-foot-10 wing Jarin Stevenson, he was too slow-footed for the task.
With such a big lineup, UNC often drops under screens, both off and on-ball, which gave Okorie space to shoot from deep, and he punished them for it, hitting three of his five attempts from beyond the arc. On top of his 36 points, the country’s eighth-leading scorer also had nine assists, many to open three-point shooters.
Stanford shot 57 percent from deep. That’s something of an anomaly and could be used to hand-wave away the result, but that’s also a troubling trend for the Tar Heels. ACC opponents are now shooting over 40 percent from deep against UNC after entering the night with opponents shooting 39 percent through their 2-1 start to conference play.
UNC doesn’t have an answer to its perimeter defense problems
Davis’s roster is built to dominate the interior, and they’re doing that, holding opponents to 43.4 percent from two-point range. But the trade-off is allowing a barrage from three that a Wilson-Veesaar-led offense can’t match at the other end. That may be a roster construction flaw that’s impossible to overcome because three is more than two, and that’s not changing.
To make matters worse, UNC is staying out West for its Saturday matchup with Cal, and while the Golden Bears are just 1-4 in conference play, they have another score-first guard that will give the Tar Heels trouble: Dai Dai Ames.
Ames is averaging 17.3 points a game, and though he’s not as prolific a scorer as Okorie, that may not matter. Even Okorie’s understudy, Jeremy Dent-Smith, had a big night on Wednesday, finishing with 20 points on 7-for-8 shooting in just 21 minutes.
It’s early in the season to hit the panic button, but there isn’t an obvious answer for UNC, and that could lead to an all-out collapse.