Wish List: ‘Tis the season for Heels to open their gifts

Over the course of the next two weeks, College Basketball Talk will be detailing what some of the country’s best, most intriguing, and thoroughly enigmatic teams need. It’s the spirit of the holidays. We’re in a giving mood.

What do other teams have on their Christmas Wish Lists? Click here to find out.

I don’t mean to sound like a Scrooge, but the Tar Heels need to be a bit more selfish this holiday season. They’re giving up far too much on both ends of the floor.

Gotta have it list-topper: Pure point

This sounds dumb. Wouldn’t every team in the country love to have a premiere point guard? Certainly. But the case can be made that Roy Williams’ offense simply does not function without an elite passer. Witness two seasons back, when Larry Drew II — while sporting a respectable 2.2 assist-to-turnover ratio, led his Tar Heels to five losses, including a 20-point blowout at mediocre Georgia Tech. Kendall Marshall took over and led the team to the Elite Eight. The long tail of the data shows that the Tar Heels couldn’t make hay in last year’s tournament after Marshall got hurt, and Drew is averaging 8.4 assists per game in Westwood. The takeaway is: it’s not good enough to be a good point guard at Carolina. What works elsewhere does not work in Chapel Hill.

We’re seeing it again this year. Dexter Strickland, Marcus Paige and Reggie Bullock have each shown the ability to sling the rock, but the team still loses games it shouldn’t. That’s because the Roy Williams offense is at its best when the ball hits the hardwood least. In transition, the long pass ahead to the man with the right angle to the basket is the key. In the half-court, it’s crisp ball reversal on the perimeter and a sharp eye for the cuts and screens that free up interior players. This ain’t no dribble-drive; Carolina needs to find someone who can drive this buggy at top speed without over-steering. On offense and defense, where the Heels are giving up way too much.

Stocking stuffer:  More from McAdoo

Yeah, he’s already the team’s leading scorer. Yeah, he’s just a sophomore. Yeah, he doesn’t have someone like Harrison Barnes to take some of the scoring load. Tough nuts. You don’t come to Carolina to be “pretty good.”

McAdoo is shooting 47% from the floor, which sounds pretty good until you turn the pages back and see that Ty Zeller shot well over 50% in the final three seasons of his UNC career. When you’re considered to be one of the year’s most likely breakout stars and one of the best big men in the ACC, you have to make opponents pay every time down the court.

Planning on re-gifting: Charity

‘Tis the season for giving. But you know when you give someone a new gadget and then notice that they never use it? What was it, the wrong color? You can’t at least set it on the table when I come to visit?

The Heels are  337th in the nation in Kenpom’s ratio of free throws attempted per field goal attempted, so they’re really not getting to the line much. And when a stingy opponent finally does reluctantly hand them a nicely-wrapped present, they squander it. They’re shooting 65.3% from the charity stripe as a team. Worse yet, they’re giving until it hurts on the other end, putting dead-eye shooters on the line far too often. These other guys know: when someone hands you a gift, the only gracious thing is to say thank you and make the most of it.

Eric Angevine is the editor of Storming the Floor. He tweets @stfhoops.