This weekend, the North Carolina men’s basketball has quite the important event. On Saturday, they’re set to take on Duke in the first rivalry clash of this season. However before that, they had a game on Monday night against Syracuse to get through.
There were two main objectives for UNC against the Orange. One was that hopefully no one was to get hurt. That’s a goal for every game, but especially for one ahead of what’s coming. The other was to not get caught in the trap game that Monday had the potential
to be.
For a long portion of the game, it seemed like that wouldn’t be an issue either. Then, some absolute stupidity in the later part of the second half led to a massive Syracuse run that got the Orange back into the game after UNC led by 30+. While that kept this game from being a pretty unambiguous positive, they still ended up coming out with the win, as annoying as it was.
A large reason that Syracuse’s big rally didn’t lead to a full meltdown was because that Carolina had racked up a giant lead before that. A big reason for that was again the play of star freshman Caleb Wilson. In the 87-77 win, Wilson finished as UNC’s leading scorer with 22 points on 6-14 shooting. Adding onto that, he grabbed nine rebounds, and had an assist and a steal.
Wilson led the way for the Tar Heels in the first half, scoring 13 points, including going 5-6 from the free throw line. He scored Carolina’s first six points, helping them jump out to an early lead. While the Orange fought back and kept things close for a good portion of the half, UNC were able to tread water throughout that and go on a late run thanks in part to the platform Wilson helped build.
Then to start the second half, Wilson again scored six of the Tar Heels’ first eight points. That was part of a run that — in the blink of an eye — took UNC’s 14-point halftime lead out to 20 not even four minutes in. By the midway point of the half, the lead was nearing 30.
When the Orange went on their massive run to sorta get back into the game, you could hardly blame Wilson for that. The team seemingly stopped playing when the reserves started to take over. That led to Wilson and starters needing to come back in, but they really shouldn’t have had to. For the game, Wilson still finished with a +20 plus/minus, by far the highest on the team.
UNC truly cannot afford to play anything like they did in the final seven-ish minutes on Saturday. If they do, they’ll probably lose and badly at that. However at least for now, we only have to roll our eyes and shake our heads at what happened Monday night instead of genuinely get angry. A large reason we don’t have to go full anger is Caleb Wilson.
