Photo credit: Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports
UNC Basketball Looks to Expand Playbook, Keep Opponents on Toes
The UNC basketball offense has been anything but stagnant in February. No, the No. 10 Tar Heels (20-6, 11-3 ACC), who remain atop the conference standings despite a loss in each of the past three weeks, have averaged 83.8 points across their past five outings, never falling below 75 points in that span and twice eclipsing 90.
They're fresh off putting up 96 points in a 15-point home victory over unranked Virginia Tech (15-11, 7-8 ACC) on Saturday.
But as UNC enters the homestretch of the regular season and with a full week to prepare for Virginia's vaunted pack-line defense, third-year Tar Heel head coach Hubert Davis explained to the ACC media on Monday that he plans to heighten his experimentation with new actions in practice.
Of course, as Davis noted, the hope is to ensure his veteran-laden Tar Heels, specifically the team's top two scorers in senior guard RJ Davis (21.3 points per game) and graduate center Armando Bacot (14.3 points per game), don't become too predictable late in the season:
"Throughout the year and specifically for the remainder of the season, I'm always looking to add things to what we're doing consistently on both ends of the floor. One of the things I don't want to give is any opponent a steady diet of understanding or knowing exactly what we're gonna be doing on both ends of the floor.
"So, any time that we can add or tweak or alter things, I think that's good news for us.
"And also, just finding ways for Armando and RJ, just with how defenses have been playing them, finding ways to get them the ball a little bit differently, a little bit better — depending on the defense — to allow them to be really effective on the offensive end because we just need them, from an offensive standpoint, playing extremely well."
NEXT UNC BASKETBALL GAME: at unranked Virginia (20-7, 11-5 ACC), 4 p.m. ET Saturday (ESPN)
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