North Carolina’s offense is going to have a different kind of conversation next season, and it starts with how Michael Malone sorts out the scoring load.
The Tar Heels are bringing in a roster full of players who already know what it feels like to be featured. That makes the job less about convincing guys they can score and more about figuring out who gets the ball, when they get it, and how that balance settles in once the games start counting.
Terrence Brown, Matt Able and Neoklis Avdalas are all part of that puzzle. Their college paths suggest they’re used to playing with real responsibility, but that responsibility came in different forms.
Brown arrives after averaging nearly 20 points per game at Utah last season. Cameron Fens, a recent addition and likely starting center, averaged 14.4 points at South Dakota.
Avdalas put up 12.1 points at Virginia Tech. Several transfers on this roster came from programs where they carried major offensive duties, even if the efficiency behind those numbers wasn’t always steady.
“Terrence Brown comes from Utah, where he averaged nearly 20 points per game last season. Recent addition and likely starting center Cameron Fens averaged 14.4 points at South Dakota, and Neoklis Avdalas averaged 12.1 points at Virginia Tech. Several transfers on this Tar Heels roster came from schools where they carried a significant offensive workload, but their overall efficiency varied throughout the season.
”With Malone now assembling these players before his first season as head coach, how he distributes offensive opportunities can have a major impact on the Tar Heels’ ceiling,” Kade Nix wrote.
That’s the real issue here: someone has to become the lead option, or at least the first option among equals. North Carolina can have two or three guys who do a little bit of everything and help on both ends, but the scoring distribution still has to make sense. Somebody is going to lead the team in touches and points, and Malone’s task is to keep that from turning into a mess.
The encouraging part is that the players involved don’t seem consumed by chasing numbers for their own sake. And if North Carolina needs one of them to go get buckets in a hurry, the résumé says that’s possible too.
Brown and Able, in particular, look like the kinds of players who can take on that kind of role. If the Tar Heels need a scorer to separate himself, one of those two feels like the most likely candidate to do it.
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The changes dont stop there, either. The network will also be saying goodbye to chief engineer Ben Alexander after the UNC opener against TCU in Dublin, another notable shift for a broadcast crew that has been part of the programs routine for years. For listeners, the voices and the cadence around Tar Heel football will sound familiar in some spots and very new in others once the season gets rolling. [Read more 🡒]