The Tar Heels will return home, looking to get their season back on track.
Having lost both games on their road trip out to California, the North Carolina Tar Heel men’s basketball team comes into this week fully licking their wounds. Both games, and the couple before that too, have highlighted some bad habits for the team, especially on the defensive end. While many — quite possibly a majority of — fans are in panic mode, there’s still season left for this team to prove that they’re different. If they’re going to do that, I suggest they start tomorrow night against Notre Dame.
The Fighting Irish certainly haven’t looked like a team ready to go on the road and win of late, as they come into this game having lost their last four. Now, one of those losses was somewhat controversial, but before that they did beat a Stanford team that just beat UNC, holding them to just 40 points in the process. However, Notre Dame is just 10-8 overall and ranked in the 70s/80s according to metrics like KenPom and Torvik’s.
Considering what’s happened in recent games, the first thing we probably have to think about when it comes to the Tar Heels’ opponents is what they’re like on offense. According to KenPom, Notre Dame’s offense is fine but nothing special, ranking 108th in the nation. However on raw percentages, they’re solid, knocking down 36.2% of their threes — albeit on 23.7 attempts per game — which is very middle of the pack in terms of D1 teams.
A fairly large part of Notre Dame’s recent struggles stems from the Irish missing leading scorer Markus Burton. After averaging over 20 points per game last year, Burton was going for 18.5 so far this year when he suffered a hand injury back in December. According to the most recent updates, Burton is expected to be out until February, so it seems unlikely that he’ll magically reappear for this game.
That being said, a lot of UNC’s recent defensive struggles have come from struggling to shut down opposing guards, either while shooting or driving, and ND’s next two highest scorers are also guards. Jalen Haralson and Braeden Shrewsberry — son of head coach Micah — are Notre Dame’s other double-digit scorers. Shrewsberry is the dangerous one to watch as far as three-point shooting goes, as he’s made 42.7% of them on over six attempts per game so far this year.
On the defensive end, ND rates a little better by the metrics, as their D is the 55th — at least at time of writing — best in the nation according to KenPom’s Defensive Rating. Opponents are scoring 69.3 points per game against the Irish on average.
If teams can get into the lane and/or into their bigs, they can have success, as opposing teams shoot over 50% on two-point attempts against the Irish. That being said, ND has done a decent job of making that difficult for teams to do, as teams average just 30.9 two-point attempts per game against them, which is one of the better figures in the nation.
Size-wise, Garrett Sundra is the only Notre Dame player over 6’7” who plays more than 15 minutes per game. With Caleb Wilson and Henri Veesaar, UNC should have somewhat of a size advantage, but it’s not as if they’ll be able to just walk all over the Irish bigs.
After the past couple game, it’s frankly hard to know what just to expect from Carolina at the moment. This should be a game they’re favored in, but that didn’t help them in the last two. Notre Dame aren’t world beaters, but they certainly could burn the Tar Heels if UNC hasn’t figured out their (expletive).
Category: General Sports
