The ACC has been the best basketball conference in the country to this point, and on Wednesday night two of its frontrunners will clash in the biggest non-rivalry game left on the league schedule. First place in the league standings is on the line as North Carolina, currently with a one-game lead, welcomes Louisville, tied for second place with Duke, to the Dean Dome.
It’s the second top-10 matchup of the season for the Tar Heels -- the other being a 103-100 loss to Kentucky in Las Vegas, one game before Louisville would beat the Wildcats by three at home -- and seventh straight time the two teams have played as ranked opponents. You’ve got Hall of Famers on each sideline with Roy Williams and Rick Pitino, a pair of coaches that speak glowingly of each other and love to compete on this stage, and rabid fan bases that smell March around the corner and expect to see their team making a run in the NCAA Tournament.
Three big stories to watch for in this potential Final Four preview in late February:
- Justin Jackson vs. Donovan Mitchell for ACC Player of the Year
The game within the game for ACC basketball fans will be seeing two of the league’s best go at it in an up-and-down affair that should favor volume scorers. North Carolina’s Justin Jackson and Louisville’s Donovan Mitchell are not only two of the most prolific scorers in the ACC, but also two of the top candidates for conference player of the year. At 18.6 points per game, Jackson is currently second place in the league and on pace to be UNC’s best scorer since Tyler Hansbrough. A streaky shooter and scorer in the past, Jackson has exploded as the Tar Heels’ go-to guy and logged 14 20-point games on the year.
Mitchell has experienced a similar jump in 2017, doubling his scoring average from a year ago and seeing a huge boost in his three-point shooting percentage. Louisville’s stud sophomore also plays a huge role in the Cardinals’ aggressive defense and leads the ACC in steals, adding to his argument for ACC Player of the Year.
2. Work done vs. work left to do for a 1-seed
Rick Pitino was outraged when he saw the way the Cardinals’ schedule was laid out. He called some of the travel turnarounds in the ACC slate “unfair” and finished his all-caps criticism of the “toughest schedule a team could encounter” with a request to pass the Pepto. More than five months after those remarks, the Cardinals are 22-5 with a shot to claim a 1-seed in the NCAA Tournament.
“If you would have said to me, 22-5 with our schedule, I would have said ‘Give it to me right now, I’ll take it. I won’t sign with the devil, but I’ll take it.’ Right now, to have this [record] with the schedule we’re playing is awesome,” Pitino told reporters after Saturday’s 94-90 win against Virginia Tech.
“We’re 22-5, we’re going to step into North Carolina and play for first place and that to me is an amazing feat by the young men in that locker room.”
It’s true, Louisville has one of the best resumes in the country right now. The Cardinals have wins over four ranked teams currently competing for conference titles -- Duke, Kentucky, Purdue, Wichita State -- and no losses to teams outside the top-25 of the RPI. Beating North Carolina would put the Cardinals in position to not only win the ACC regular season championship but enter the conversation for the 1-seed in the South Region.
Even being in the hunt for one of the coveted 1-seeds, Pitino sees plenty of room for improvement, particularly on defense.
“Defensively has been a struggle all season,” Pitino said Monday on the ACC coaches call. “We’re getting better in small stages but we’re still nowhere near where we’ve been the last four years.”
For those keeping score, that’s Pitino saying that Louisville, carrying the No. 5 adjusted defensive efficiency in the country, sees a lot of room for improvement on defense. If the switch gets flipped on Wednesday night, or especially in the postseason, it could take the Cardinals over the top.
North Carolina, on the other hand, is in the heat of its toughest stretch of the season, playing four of its final five games against top-25 opponents. The Tar Heels, like Louisville, are currently projected to be a 2-seed according to Jerry Palm but could elevate their status with an ACC regular season and/or conference championship. With Louisville and Duke just one game behind in the standings and a trip to Virginia next Monday, winning on Wednesday night is as must-win as it gets for those ACC title efforts.
3. Size, pace and space
Louisville is one of the few teams in the country that can match up with North Carolina’s size and length. The Cardinals have three players in their rotation that are 6-foot-10 or taller and, like the Tar Heels, have been using that size to beat up teams on the offensive glass. Rick Pitino said this week that North Carolina is an exciting team to play because of its exciting style of play, and did not hide the fact that his team is excited to meet another team that likes to get up and down the court.
It will be a shock if the shot clock hits single digits more than a handful of times on Wednesday night.
The pace will be a big change for the Tar Heels coming off Saturday’s win against paint-drying Virginia -- which is, interestingly enough, the only team to beat Louisville twice this season. Roy Williams said the apparent easy victory came as a result of good play but also Virginia missing some open looks, and stressed the need to be ready for a “a completely different game” against the Cardinals. For casual fans, that “completely different game” might be music to your ears. It’s not going to be as up-and-down as the NBA All-Star Game because Louisville is far too strong defensively, but it’s going to be a high-level game demanding every bit of your attention.
