In the second half of the No. 7 North Carolina men’s basketball team’s 92-89 loss to Texas on Thursday night, head coach Roy Williams seemed to try everything.
He experimented with different lineups in ways he hadn’t all season. When Texas guard Kerwin Roach II posed an impossible matchup for the Tar Heel guards, Williams sprinkled in a 2-3 zone for a few possessions. And later, when his team needed to force the action, he decided to double team all ball screens.
In some stretches of the contest, these ploys worked.
But with a deflected ball bouncing idly in the Tar Heels’ backcourt — and with the final second of game time evaporating before senior guard Kenny Williams could grab the ball and make a move to close the game’s final margin — the positive outputs from said experiments couldn’t overshadow some of UNC’s glaring deficiencies.
Here are three takeaways from North Carolina’s first loss of the season.
Seventh Woods was sorely missed
A week ago, Roy Williams was singing the praises of point guard Seventh Woods — the junior who’s currently acting as understudy for first-year Coby White. Woods had just put together his most complete individual performance of his career against Tennessee Tech; in 17 minutes of action, he scored seven points, notched eight assists and didn’t commit a single turnover.
On Wednesday, though — a day before the Tar Heels’ (5-1) first real test of the season against Texas (5-0) — the team announced that Woods had a concussion and was out of commission for the tournament over Thanksgiving.
And on Thursday night, UNC missed his presence.