North Carolina basketball: 5 questions the UNC Tar Heels must answer in 2020
3. UNC basketball questions: Will the depth be more potent than last year?
Heading into last season, one of the possible issues for the Tar Heels was the quality of depth on the roster. North Carolina was going to be banking heavily on graduate transfers Christian Keeling and Justin Pierce to provide meaningful minutes as reserves. Unfortunately, one of the several reasons why the team failed was that the depth proved to be quite uninspiring throughout the year, which hurt the team’s potential for success.
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Considering that UNC won just 14 games last season, it would be hard for the depth and the performance to be much worse than it was in 2019-20. But one thing that inspires optimism about the Heels is that this glaring weakness from last year has real potential to turn into a strength.
As mentioned when talking about the frontcourt, the depth is tremendously improved there as Brooks and Bacot return and are now joined by two impact freshmen with Sharpe and Kessler. That stands in stark contrast to what that group had to show last season. Meanwhile, Jeremiah Francis should be a valuable backup point guard as he came along well over the course of the season.
Meanwhile, the depth on the wings should be improved as well. Put simply, if the Tar Heels don’t suffer horribly bad injury luck in the 2020-21 season, North Carolina should be ready to take a big step forward in terms of their depth, which substantially raises their ceiling.