Last night’s game between the Tar Heels and the Highlanders was a game for both teams to learn a lot of lessons from. For UNC specifically, the biggest lesson for them to learn is how to overcome new forms
of adversity. This game lacked Seth Trimble’s presence, we saw Caleb Wilson commit three fouls in the first half, and Luka Bogavac was shooting through his struggles most of the night. Add this with the fact that free throw shooting was atrocious, and that is how you fail to completely blow out Radford. Well, it was also because Hubert Davis put in the bench with about five minutes left in the game, but we don’t need to split hairs.
There’s plenty from this game to discuss, but let’s focus on three takeaways from last night’s win over the Highlanders.
Radford was surprisingly aggressive
While we’ve seen Carolina teams fall asleep behind the wheel against non-Power Four teams, the situation against Radford last night was a bit different. The Highlanders threw a lot of wrinkles at the Tar Heels on defense, they attacked the ball, and yes, it led to four of their players fouling out. A short list of things that UNC saw last night was 2-3 zone, 1-3-1 zone, full court traps, and half court traps. Caleb Wilson at times had four players guarding him under the rim, so overall the scene was pretty chaotic.
Focusing on the Wilson part specifically, he probably struggled the most of anybody dealing with what Radford was doing. It really seemed like he had a frustrating night overall, but those are going to happen. Consider it a welcome to college basketball moment for him, but there’s no doubt that he will bounce back this weekend. I think this game was good for the Tar Heels to experience, because much more talented teams are likely to be even more physical with them. The biggest thing is that they need to make their free throws when teams are this aggressive — they finished their night making 63% of their 49 free throw attempts. That isn’t going to cut it in ACC play.
Luka Bogavac is slowly gaining confidence
Now that we’ve gotten through three games with Luka Bogavac being eligible to play, the thing that has been most notable is that he is still acclimating to NCAA basketball. More specially, it seems like he is still gaining his confidence offensively, and last night Hubert Davis gave him a long leash to shoot through the pain. Thankfully this tactic started to pay off — after shooting 2-8 from the field in the first half and 1-6 from three, Bogavac went 5-10 in the second half and knocked down two of his five shots from deep.
Regardless of what league Bogavac is playing in, one would think that his three-point shooting would be as potent as it was for him last season. Right now that isn’t the case, but in the second half we did see him start focusing on other aspects of his game in order to score. UNC doesn’t need him to shoot three-pointers exclusively to be effective, and we saw him realize that as last night’s game progressed. There’s no doubt that he will be an impact player while Trimble is out, but the objective at the moment is growing his confidence in his game so that he can be impactful on a consistent basis.
Henri Veesaar may be Carolina’s most important player right now
This is a little bit of a hot take, but while there is a lot of hype around Caleb Wilson this season, Arizona transfer Henri Veesaar may actually be the most important player on the roster. There’s no doubt that Wilson is a future NBA player and has all the talent in the world, but Veesaar has been that guy that’s been able to keep the Heels afloat when everyone else is having a bad time getting going. Last night was the perfect example of that — in the first half, Veesaar scored 11 points off 4-6 shooting, and everyone else made two field goals or less. He finished out the night with 18 points, seven rebounds, two assists, and just one turnover.
While anybody reading this could counter that Veesaar’s four turnovers against Kansas almost sank the Tar Heels, it’s worth noting that he flipped a switch and finished the night with 20 points and had zero turnovers in the second half. This is a guy that Hubert Davis desperately needed on the team last year, but unfortunately for all of us it wasn’t meant to be yet. He is a safety valve of sorts on offense, he is capable of knocking down threes, and he is a big presence on defense. I still think Caleb Wilson is the best player on the team, but don’t be surprised if we see more halves like we saw last night where everyone else is struggling and Veesaar is eating at the table by himself.
