North Carolina looked to be on the verge of collapse after dropping three of four at the start of ACC play. However, since that ugly stretch, Hubert Davis’s starting lineup changes have led to four straight wins as the Tar Heels prepare for their first matchup with No. 4 Duke on Saturday in Chapel Hill.
The No. 14 Tar Heels look to be safe, poised to make another deep run in March after challenging Duke for the ACC crown. But March basketball is different, and single-elimination tournaments have exposed teams built like this UNC group before.
That’s not to say it will happen for sure when the calendar turns, but it is to say that there are a few red flags that could pop up for the Tar Heels next month.
UNC’s non-Henri Veesaar minutes will determine its fate in the NCAA Tournament
Davis’s lineup tweaks, inserting Derek Dixon at point guard over Kyan Evans, and swapping out Jarin Stevenson for Jaydon Young, have paid great dividends. Over the last five games, that lineup has a ridiculous +61.0 net rating, but Young still plays only sparingly, ceding minutes to Luka Bogavac and Stevenson.
The real trick for Davis with his lineup tinkering is not just to get Dixon in over Evans, an obvious change that does introduce the risk of a freshman guard running the show, but to more evenly distribute his front-court minutes. That’s because, while Caleb Wilson is an excellent defender, he gets exposed in the minutes when he has to play the five, and even moreso when Stevenson isn’t on the floor with him.
UNC lineups | Minutes played | Net rating | O-rating | D-rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Wilson, Veesaar, Stevenson | 259 | +24.2 | 123.4 | 99.2 |
Wilson, Veesaar No Stevenson | 277 | +28.3 | 124.2 | 95.9 |
Veesaar, Stevenson | 124 | +37.5 | 131.1 | 93.6 |
Wilson, Stevenson | 94 | +8.7 | 128.1 | 119.4 |
Wilson | 55 | -33.1 | 93.2 | 126.3 |
per CBBanalytics.com
An even simpler way to illustrate it is Veesaar’s incredible on/off split. As a true defensive anchor and elite rebounding center, Veesaar is easily the team’s most valuable player from a net rating on/off perspective. When he’s on the floor, UNC’s net rating is +25.9. When he’s on the bench, it plummets to -6.3. That’s a net rating differential of 32.2 points per 100 possessions, which is 99th percentile among all players in college basketball.
UNC isn’t the first team to enter tournament season over-reliant on its defensive anchor, and sometimes those teams can go far. However, in many cases, those teams struggle to make a deep run, especially if their seven-footer can’t play huge minutes.
Veesaar is averaging 30 minutes a game, which can certainly tick up in the postseason, but he’s a far cry from last year’s Naismith Defensive Player of the Year, Ryan Kalkbrenner, who led Creighton to an Elite Eight in 2023 and a Sweet 16 in 2024. Kalkbrenner averaged 35.5 minutes per game in the 2023 NCAA Tournament and 42.3 minutes per game in the 2024 tourney.
Veesaar will struggle to match that level, and if UNC can’t find answers defensively when Wilson has to slide to the five for five to eight minutes a game in March, the Tar Heels will be in big trouble.