Barring catastrophic injuries in the offseason, next year’s UNC basketball team is going to begin the season ranked in the top three, and potentially as the first-ranked ball club in the nation. It’ll likely garner more hype than any other team in the country, even if the Tar Heels aren’t ranked No. 1 when the first AP Poll is released in October.
In the wake of Caleb Love’s announcement that he’s returning to Carolina for his junior year, I was more excited about the next college basketball season than I’ve been in years. Four of the five starters who carried Hubert Davis’ Tar Heels to the national championship earlier this month are returning to next season’s starting lineup, and Davis has two high-ceiling freshmen on their way to Chapel Hill this summer to bolster his formerly short bench.
But then I thought about what the team would look like in Davis’ second year at the helm, and I’d be lying if I said that I’m not at least a little bit concerned.
Since fifth-year “super seniors” using their extra COVID year to return to college basketball will count against teams’ scholarship limit next season (Brady Manek’s commitment last season didn’t count toward the 13 that Davis had to work with), Leaky Black will take up UNC’s final scholarship and Davis won’t be able to pursue any of the top transfers. So, Carolina’s roster is set.
And I have a feeling that the national media that didn’t watch every UNC basketball game all season is underestimating Manek’s importance to this past season’s team.
The Oklahoma transfer didn’t just contribute 15.1 points, 2.5 made threes and 6.1 rebounds per game in his only year in Chapel Hill, he was the X-factor. And that’s not a particularly common term used to describe a team’s third leading scorer.
Sure, Armando Bacot was a walking double-double last season and should’ve won ACC player of the year; RJ Davis’ complex understanding and execution of his coach’s offense single handedly won the Heels a game on more than one occasion; and Love, well, you all saw the shot—or rather, shots. But none of that happens without Brady Manek.
Modern basketball is all about spacing—more so in the NBA than in college, but coach Davis runs an NBA-style offense. RJ Davis and Love struggled through their freshman seasons trying to create offense when they had two teammates who thrive in the low-post clogging the floor.
Roy Williams almost always had two of Bacot, Garrison Brooks, Walker Kessler and Day’ron Sharpe on the floor at the same time, which made it difficult to make any sort of dribble penetration from the guards effective. With Manek and Bacot on the floor the majority of the time in coach Davis’ system, the sophomore guards had more space to run the offense and create opportunities for their teammates.
And Bacot, although he’s an All-ACC level performer in his own right, doesn’t put up the stat-line that he did last season if Manek isn’t on the team. When the Tar Heels’ offense is firing on all cylinders, like it often was in the final month of the season, it’s impossible for opposing teams to double team Bacot in the post. As soon as whoever was watching Manek in the corner went to help Bacot’s defender, the ball got kicked out, either directly or through one of the guards, to Manek. And more often than not he made the other team pay for their mistake.
Without the versatile four’s effect on the offense, it’ll be interesting to see how coach Davis schemes his offense to give next season’s surefire preseason ACC Player of the Year enough space to work near the basket.
Ultimately, someone is going to have to separate themself from the rest of the pack to emerge as the fifth starter in the fall. Whether it’s Puff Johnson, Dontrez Styles, Jalen Washington or someone else, they’re going to have big shoes to fill. It wouldn’t surprise me if, come next March, the major storyline surrounding UNC’s performance throughout the season is how well or how poorly the fifth starter slot was filled (and how significant of an impact Manek’s departure had on Carolina’s formerly explosive offense).
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