THE ESSENTIALS

THE OVERVIEW

Michigan meets a familiar foe in a similar spot: it's North Carolina for the third time in four years, and both teams are amongst the more disappointing outfits in the country after 2021-22 campaigns that saw the teams make it in the tournament in the "also receiving votes" area of the bracket.

Much more was expected out of UNC after they got four starters back and plugged the gap with coveted transfer Pete Nance; the Tarheels were your preseason #1 team. That held up for five games until a four-game losing streak against Iowa State, Alabama (in four OTs), Indiana, and Virginia Tech. They rebounded for a 5-point OT win over Kenpom top-20 team Ohio State a few days ago, and enter this game in better shape than Michigan as a result.

This is a massive game for Michigan's tourney chances; it's their last opportunity at a meaningful nonconference win after narrowly missing against UVA and UK. This one is almost a must-have.

THE US

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THE LINEUP CARD

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THE THEM

[Campredon]

Michigan played UNC last year and their standout transfer is from Northwestern, so this team will be familiar.

Senior C Armando Bacot will face off with Michigan for the third time in his career. He remains a paint-bound center who's good defensively and a monster on the boards. Early returns in this season are a little distorted by a preponderance of buy games on the UNC schedule, but they have played five KP top 100 games and in those Bacot is more or less the same guy he was a year ago. Since you can say the same about Hunter Dickinson, looking at last year's game may be instructive: a year ago he had 11 points on 5/10 shooting and one and-one, three OREBs, three TOs, and not a whole lot else.

Bacot's main impact in that game came on defense. Dickinson was limited to 18 minutes with foul trouble; in those 18 minutes he went 2/4 from two, missed a three, and had three TOs against no assists. Dickinson will strive to do better. Bacot's allowed just 32% shooting on post-up attempts this year, but last year that clip was 50%. Bacot was just 30th percentile as a post defender, probably because he's still a bit of a beanpole at this late stage in his career.

PF Pete Nance is even more familiar to Michigan fans. At Carolina he's been moved from center, where he was always a vastly exploitable post defender, to the four. That shift in his role has seen Nance become much more of a perimeter-oriented player; now he's splitting his FGAs equally between threes and twos after being a 70% twos guy a year ago. Nance has also gone from being the #1 option on a beleagured Wildcats team to the #4 option on UNC, which has caused his efficiency on twos  to skyrocket. he's shooting 67/35 and getting to the line a ton, where he is hitting 81%. Last year he scuffled to 51% on twos and 47% in KP top 100 games. If Nance's deep shooting gets anywhere near where it was a year ago, look out.

Nance offers nothing on the offensive boards but once you move him to the four his block rate goes from disappointing to somewhat intriguing; the one regression from a year ago is a slight spike in turnover rate that might be transitory.

SF Leaky Black remains a ghost offensively, with an 11% usage rate heavily dependent on cuts and garbage points plus the occasional three-pointer. He dumps all his effort into defense and will be a difficult matchup for Jett Howard, who has not yet faced a wing defender of equivalent size. Black has that, and while Synergy individual defensive stats are always subject to interpretation I think there's enough there to say that Black is the defensive specialist his playing time implies.

His performance against spot-ups is very bad but that looks like an artifact of sample size—unlikely to be his fault that 44% of threes attributed to him are going down—and the shape of his defensive usage is interesting. He pushes shots away from spot-up opportunities (something that UNC does very well team-wide) and into other, generally less efficient buckets, and he's been dominant there. Synergy PPP percentiles in other major categories: 82, 80, 90, 66, 75.

Black will chase over screens and use his 6'9" frame to dissuade jumpers, then crowd attempts to go off the dribble. Attempts to hide Howard on him will be made but it's a lot easier to force an iffy defensive team into switches that expose Howard to non-Leaky offensive players than vice-versa.

[Campredon]

Combo guard Caleb Love isn't supposed to be here anymore. He arrived as a recruit in one-and-done territory, ranking 14th in the composite two years ago; now he's a junior at UNC. This is because his production has not matched the hype. Love has rather held back UNC the last two years, which for them have been eight-seed disappointments. He shot 35% and 38% from two(?!?) as and underclassman and has been pretty iffy from three, as well. He's at 32% on his career. It doesn't take long to figure out why:

Love adores pull-ups and long twos. He's also bizarrely miserable at the rim for such a highly touted player. Last year he split his two point attempts about 50/50 between rim attempts and other twos, hitting just 48% there and 29% on longer twos. Meanwhile almost half his threes from a year ago were unassisted.

Meanwhile he's struggled to get his assist rate above his TO rate. Things are better in the early going this year, with a notable drop in TOs that sticks when you restrict it to the better teams on UNC's schedule. His shooting has also improved on other twos. It still seems like the play is to lay off of him and if he beats you with long pull-ups oh well.

Finally, fellow combo RJ Davis is spiritually similar to Love. 50/50 rim/jumper split inside the line? Yes. Real bad at the rim? Yes. Lots of unassisted threes? Yes. Mostly unassisted twos? Yes. Davis has been marginally better at getting the ball into the basket—47/37 shooting split last year—but has had dead average usage compared to Love's high twenties until this year, when he's gotten a few extra blips.

Davis was a solid three point shooter a year ago but has started this year off at a 28% clip. He is lethal at the line (85%) career.

The bench is very thing, with only 19% of UNC minutes. The Tarheels are 359th in bench contributions:

• UNC does not have a backup five, so when Bacot goes to the bench it's Nance sliding over.
• Junior Puff Johnson has been so sparingly used that there's not a whole lot to discuss. He's at 20% on threes for his career but has been successful inside the line on assists and putbacks. The over/under on FGAs for him is 1.
• Similarly, freshman Seth Trimble is getting 10-12 MPG and has 13% usage. He's shooting 42% from two but only has 5 FGAs in UNC's six KP top 100 games and has shot only three triples on the season. He does nothing else.
• Fellow freshman Tyler Nickel is a stretch four ranked 83rd in the most recent composite; to date he's profiling as Just A Shooter. 

THE TEMPO FREE

UNC is extremely bad at threes (302nd) and doesn't take many (262nd); they excel at converting at the line and are highly efficient once inside it. They play a lot of one on one basketball, with an assist rate hovering around 300th.

Defensively they are middle of the road in most drill-down stats. It is notable that they're extremely good at getting back; 20% of opposition shots come in the first 10 seconds of the shot clock and eFG on those is actually a hair worse than non-transition. They are not a great halfcourt D but you have to face it almost all the time.

THE KEYS

Dickinson renaissance now? This was an unpleasant beat down last year largely because Dickinson had the worst game of his career. Bacot does not profile as a dominant low-post defender who should be able to handle him one-on-one. He's been a meh post defender over the course of his career. Hard to see Michigan winning without an efficient 15, at least, from Dickinson.

Jett vs Black. Another matchup that has to be a win for Michigan. Howard faces a long and lanky guy who can contest his shots and profiles as an excellent defender. Black isn't going to do anything on the other end but if UNC is able to get some switches that unbalance the D and lead to good shots Black's lack of existence on the offensive end will be well-compensated for.

Foul trouble. Two very thin teams that can afford to lose maybe one specific starter for extended stretches (Black and Terrence Williams) with next to no depth. Any foul trouble for Bacot, Dickinson, or any of the guards will be potentially game-shifting.

Make or miss league. Michigan doesn't really have the ability to prevent Love and Davis from getting up pull-up twos and just has to hope that those go down at historic rates instead of the increased clip they're going down this year. With largely the same cast of characters UNC's other twos shooting has gone from 35% last year to 45% this year.

Corollary:

Make it a make or miss league. If UNC is getting downhill and to the bucket the issues with their O largely go away. Michigan's D is really struggling in this department.

THE SECTION WHERE I PREDICT THE SAME THING KENPOM DOES

UNC by 5.