Heel Tough Blog: SMU Recap

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The Tar Heels came into Saturday’s second road game of the entire season with a chance to match the 14-1 start that the team got off to in the 2008-09 season and instead will leave Dallas with their most disappointing performance of the season and a second loss.

It started early for the Tar Heels with some crucial turnovers that led to easy finishes at the basket for SMU and gave the Mustangs an early nine point lead. The Tar Heels were able to settle things down a bit as the half went and clawed their way back to the lead thanks to some important three balls that started falling and a better effort on the defensive end led by Jarin Stevenson off the bench. The teams would trade baskets down the stretch of the half and head into the break tied at 39.

All things considered it felt like the Tar Heels were in a good spot considering how poorly they had played at times in that first half, but it didn’t take SMU long to regain control of the game. After going back and forth for the first three minutes of the second half, SMU would go on a 13-3 run that would extend the lead to ten with the help of some poor perimeter defense from the Tar Heels. The Mustangs never looked back from that point forward, as they were able to simply get wherever they wanted to on the floor and shot 71.4% on the way to a 97-83 victory.

Offensively, the team wasted season-best performances from Seth Trimble and Jarin Stevenson, who carried this team during that first half that put them in position heading into halftime. Trimble led the way with 22 points on 8-16 shooting, including 3-7 from beyond the arc, and tallied a team-high five assists to go along with it. As for Stevenson, he poured in 16 points of his own on an efficient 5-6 from the field and 3-4 from the outside.

Unfortunately, the Tar Heels offensive performance was enough because of how poorly they played defensively. This was clearly the worst defensive performance that we have seen from the Tar Heels this season, but according to advanced statistics, it’s one of the worst that we may have ever seen from this program. In the 29 year history of the KenPom efficiency ratings, this grades out as the 2nd-worst performance that we have seen from the Tar Heels behind only the 2015 loss to the Pittsburgh Panthers. Let’s hope this was just a blip on the radar for a team that got off to one of the best defensive starts that we have ever seen from a Tar Heel team in program history.

1. Defense Gets Embarrassed: Coming into the game, the Tar Heels were allowing opponents to shoot just 36.1% from the field, the second-best mark in the country, but that was nowhere near the case on Saturday. The Mustangs shot 60.0% from the field, easily the best mark of the season by anyone against UNC this season, and were 14-27 from beyond the arc. Guards Boopie Miller and Corey Washington simply got wherever they wanted to on the floor in the second half and they were a big part of the reason why the Mustangs were 20 of 28 from the field in the second half. A big part of the struggles was the fact that the Tar Heels simply could not take away the dribble drive, which created a lot of open shots from beyond the arc that the Mustangs were able to take advantage of. The Tar Heels simply must do a better job of staying in front of guards moving forward or this could be an issue that lingers for the team as they go throughout conference play.

2. Hubert Misused Powell: After what we saw from Jonathan Powell on Tuesday night, we had conversations about putting him in the starting lineup in place of Luke Bogavac because of recent play, but after Saturday it doesn’t feel like we’ll be seeing that any time soon. Powell, who played so well the other night and brought nice energy defensively, only played ten minutes in this game while the struggling Bogavac played 29 minutes in a game where the team was struggling defensively. This decision from Hubert is a head-scratching one, especially because of how things have been trending recently with these two players and the hope is that, moving forward, we will see more of Powell because of what he brings to the perimeter defensively.

3. Bigs Held In Check: Don’t get it wrong, the bigs weren’t horrible in this game but this was not their best performance of the season. Caleb Wilson had a very solid first half, but was silenced for most of the second half by an SMU defense that did a good job throwing different looks at him on that end of the floor throughout the day. As for Henri Veesar, it was another slow start for him, similar to what happened on Tuesday night, but wasn’t nearly as dominant as he was in that second half in the second half on Saturday and spent most of the day in foul trouble. Maybe our expectations for these two have become a little unrealistic, but they will have to perform closer to what we’ve seen from them for most of season in the Tar Heels bigger games, especially if the team is going to struggle to contain some of the better offenses that they are going to face in conference play.

4. Jarin Stevenson Shines: It may be hard to feel like there were any positives to take away from this game, but Jarin Stevenson’s performance deserves to be pointed out. Stevenson led the way for the team offensively in the first half, scoring nine points on 3-3 from the field and 2-2 from beyond the arc. He carried that performance over into the second half, as well, finishing the game with 16 points on 5-6 from the field and 3-4 from the outside while being one of the few players that provided some sort of resistance defensively in this game. The hope is that this game can be the start of Stevenson becoming a more consistent offensive contributor off the bench.

5. Just The Second Road Game of the Season: We talked the other day about whether or not this would matter and it certainly could be part of the reason that this game went the way that it did. Without a home crowd behind them, the team got off to sluggish starts to both half and put together one of the worst defensive performances that we have seen from them as a program. We shouldn’t butcher Hubert Davis for scheduling the way that he did in the non-conference because it feels like this team is in a much better place mentally than last year, but it could have helped to roll into this game with a little more experience at playing away from home than this team had.