A win is a win: 3 takeaways from UNC's victory over Georgia Tech in ACC opener

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — Before Saturday, at least, North Carolina’s basketball tribulations could be rationalized, to a degree. The Tar Heels’ four losses had all come against formidable competition — three of them against opponents with legitimate Final Four aspirations, in Kansas, Auburn and Alabama. UNC’s growing pains could be attributable to the challenges natural to a new season, and new roster.

But there can be no rationalizing much of the Tar Heels’ performance at the Smith Center Saturday against Georgia Tech. UNC simply looked dreadful for long stretches of both halves, amid a splendor of brutal and ugly basketball: missed shots, turnovers, empty possessions on offense to go along with defensive miscues that allowed a supposedly-inferior opponent to hang around and build confidence.

This had the makings of a bring-your-own energy kind of affair from the start. A sleepy and late-arriving (or never-arriving, in a lot of cases) crowd didn’t provide much of it. But neither did the Tar Heels, who entered Saturday on a three-game losing streak and in need of something good to happen.

And did it? Well, UNC persevered through its slumber for a 68-65 victory. There was that. Still, it came in the kind of underwhelming performance that further underscored the Tar Heels’ deficiencies through the first month of the season, in the kind of game in which one of the loudest roars of the day came upon Georgia Tech missing consecutive free throws and thus ensuring free cookies for everyone in attendance.

One for the school’s basketball museum next door, this was not. But it was a win, in UNC’s first ACC game of this young season.

Here are three takeaways from the Tar Heels’ victory:

UNC never really woke up

The home crowd kept waiting for it.

And waiting. And waiting.

And ... waiting. And waiting some more.

Waiting, for the Tar Heels to wake up. Waiting, for UNC to impose its will against a team that, like UNC entered Saturday with a 4-4 record — but unlike UNC, hadn’t played nearly the level of collective competition the Tar Heels have. Georgia Tech earlier this season lost by 12 points against North Florida.

But there the Yellow Jackets were with five and a half minutes left on Saturday, tied at 55 with UNC and giving many of those in attendance — who had little to cheer all day — palpitations. The Tar Heels found a way. That was the positive, for them. They found a way on a day when they didn’t have their “C” game, let alone their “A” or “B” game.

After it was tied at 55, Jalen Washington scored on a dunk, off a nifty pass from Elliot Cadeau. RJ Davis then finished a fast break with a layup that put the Tar Heels ahead by four, and offered a smidge of breathing room. So, OK, everyone thought — here’s where UNC finally pulls away, right?

Not quite. Georgia Tech cut it back to two, and had a chance to take the lead before Cadeau’s 3 pushed UNC by five with two and a half minutes remaining. And the Yellow Jackets never really went away after that, even after falling behind by as much as seven with 71 seconds remaining. Another way to put that: UNC had difficulty putting Georgia Tech away.

The one bright spot for UNC: Seth Trimble, who finished with 19 points on only six attempts from the field. His teammates were hardly as efficient, and the Tar Heels made just 39% of their attempts.

Lineups — starting and otherwise — a work in progress.

UNC coach Hubert Davis used the same starting lineup through his team’s first seven games, before making a change before the defeat against Alabama on Wednesday night. He made another change on Saturday, and gave transfer forward Ven-Allen Lubin the start at center in place of Jalen Washington, the junior who’d started the first eight games.

If the on-court performance and rotations didn’t make it obvious enough, Davis is clearly still trying to figure out what starting lineup works best for the Tar Heels — and which combinations work best even after that. Lubin didn’t necessarily make a splash on Saturday, especially in the first half (zero points and a turnover in 10 minutes, but also four rebounds) but neither did Washington, when he entered the game.

Washington, who started the second half, missed a layup not long after he came off the bench for the first time and also played a role in a few of UNC’s sloppier possessions in a highly-sloppy first half. He committed two turnovers. Meanwhile, Jae’Lyn Withers, the graduate forward who started UNC’s first seven games, played just five minutes in the first half, and for now his role appears to be declining.

The Tar Heels’ frontcourt situation does not make this easy for Davis. UNC missed on essentially every one of its primary frontcourt targets in the transfer portal, which left the Tar Heels especially thin down low and with an imbalance roster whose most talented players are all guards or wings. Drake Powell, the 6-foot-6 freshman from Pittsboro, started for the second consecutive game on Saturday, and seems to have secured his role as a starter.

Among Lubin, Washington and Withers, though, Davis and the Tar Heels are searching for someone to emerge and provide a reason as to why they should play more.

Tar Heels seem to be regressing

This version of UNC, which sleepwalked through most of Saturday, is not the same one that erased a sizable deficit at Kansas’ Allen Fieldhouse last month. It’s not even the same one we saw last week in Maui where, yes, the Tar Heels lost two of their three games but still had a chance to win, at least, against Michigan State.

It’s worth wondering how the Tar Heels were caught so flat on Saturday. After four consecutive losses, including a one-sided defeat against Alabama just a few days earlier, the motivation to get back into the win column should have been easy to find.

Judging from UNC’s performance, though, it was not. There were missed layups galore, at least one alley-oop attempt that was far more oops than alley and enough blunders to fill a Worst of Tar Heels Basketball VHS tape (so a good thing, perhaps, that everything’s digital these days).

Off nights happen. Even good teams go through lulls. But given the circumstances — and the need for a strong bounce-back showing after three consecutive defeats — this was a puzzling performance for the Tar Heels, and one that did not exactly deliver a sense of confidence in this team’s potential.