North Carolina is college basketball’s invisible gorilla
By Chris Stone
Don’t overlook UNC’s potential to make a third straight Final Four.
Way back in 1999, psychologists Daniel Simons and Christopher Chabris released the results of a scientific study focused on the idea of inattentional blindness, a phenomenon that occurs when an observer’s attention is diverted to one action causing them to miss another obvious action.
In the experiment, participants watched a video of two teams of three individuals dressed in white or black shirts, respectively, passing a basketball back and forth as they walked in a circle. Participants were asked to count the number of passes made by one of the two teams as they watched.
I’d recommend taking a second to watch only because it’s hilarious:
Midway through the video a person dressed in a gorilla suit walks through the middle of the circle, thump its chest and walk out of view.
Roughly half the people who watched the video reported they never noticed the gorilla. Simons and Chabris’ results were consistent with prior work done on inattentional blindness. Basically, humans are awful at literally recognizing the gorilla in the room.
Which finally brings us to college basketball and the North Carolina Tar Heels. It feels odd to call a program that made the title game two years ago and cut down the nets in 2017 college basketball’s invisible gorilla, but here we are.
The Tar Heels are frequently and noticeably absent from conversations centered around Final Four and national title contenders despite having a resume that suggests they could pull off one of the more impressive college basketball dynasties in recent memory.
Yes, North Carolina was felled by the Virginia Cavaliers in the title game of the ACC tournament over the weekend, but plenty of teams have lost to Virginia this season. The Tar Heels still rank in the top 10 nationally in nearly every all-in-one metric:
The Heels own 14 RPI Quadrant 1 wins, the most of anyone in the country, as well. So, what makes this North Carolina team so good and why is everyone ignoring them?
Like most Roy Williams rosters, these Tar Heels are elite offensively and a bit suspect on the defensive end. They still dominate the offensive glass — grabbing 38.4 percent of their own misses, second-best nationally — and want to score quickly on the secondary break. 32.6 percent of their initial field goal attempts come in the first 10 seconds of the shot clock, 12th highest in Division I, per Hoop-Math.
2017-18 North Carolina also takes more 3s than any team Williams has coached since at least 2001-02 with 34.9 percent of its total field goal attempts coming from behind the arc. That’s thanks to the floor-spacing frontcourt of Pitt transfer Cameron Johnson and former walk-on Luke Maye. Both players have knocked down better than 37.0 percent of their career 3-point attempts.
That two of the team’s best players are a Pitt transfer and a former walk-on is probably part and parcel of why the team is not discussed alongside other title contenders, including Virginia, Villanova, Michigan State and Duke. Thanks in part to an academic scandal, the Tar Heels have missed out on some of the sport’s elite recruits in recent seasons. Williams hasn’t brought in a top 10 recruiting class since 2014 — when current players Theo Pinson and Joel Berry II committed — and his roster this season doesn’t have a projected 2018 NBA Draft pick.
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From a ceiling-level talent perspective, North Carolina’s a bit behind the field. Still, the numbers suggest the Tar Heels are just as good as the schools who have more NBA talent.
It’s been over 10 years since a college basketball program repeated as national champions and this is the 10th anniversary of the last time a team made the Final Four three straight seasons. North Carolina certainly isn’t a favorite to do either of those things, but to ignore the possibility of the Tar Heels doing so is to ignore the 800-pound gorilla in the middle of the room.
All statistics sourced from KenPom unless otherwise noted.