CHAPEL HILL — As part of the buildup to this season’s first Duke-North Carolina showdown, ESPN analyst Jay Bilas spent some time this week discussing the history of the rivalry and also dissecting the current players involved for a group of reporters.
“There are matchups at almost every position that are going to be really compelling,” Bilas said Thursday. “But Paolo Banchero’s the matchup nightmare on the floor.”
The star freshman Banchero presents an evergreen concern for any opposing basketball team, whether in the Atlantic Coast Conference or beyond. And in the case of North Carolina, his elite combination of inside-outside skills indeed could become a haunting problem Saturday night.
The Tar Heels (16-6 overall, 8-3 ACC) meet ninth-ranked Duke (18-3, 8-2) at the Smith Center with first place in the league hanging in the balance, and having been torched by a trio of ACC forwards with similar size who feature a blend of face-up versatility to their games.
Notre Dame’s 6-foot-10 Nate Laszewski, Miami’s 6-10 Sam Waardenburg and Wake Forest’s 6-8 Jake LaRavia all delivered field days last month while helping propel their teams to victories against North Carolina, a common disturbing thread that links the losses the Tar Heels have suffered in the league.
Laszewski (who dumped a season-high 20 points on the Tar Heels), Waardenburg (career-high 25 points) and LaRavia (career-high 31 points) connected on a combined 78.8-percent shooting from the field (26-for-33), including 80 percent from 3-point range (12-for-15) — unconscious performances that had North Carolina reeling defensively.
None of those forwards will be confused with potential first-round picks in the NBA Draft. And now, here comes the ultra-talented Banchero, the possible No. 1 overall selection in the draft this summer.
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The 6-10 Banchero leads all scorers in ACC play with 19.1 points per game, and his 9.4 rebounds per game against conference opponents ranks second only to North Carolina big man Armando Bacot.
Banchero has delivered nine 20-point efforts this season, six of them against ACC teams. He’s averaging a comprehensive 17.8 points, 10.7 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game while shooting 50.6 percent from the field across Duke’s last six games.
“Who are you going to put on him?” Bilas said from a North Carolina perspective. “If you put Leaky Black on him, Banchero is going to try to overpower him. If you put Brady Manek on him, he’s going to try to overpower him, and then take him away from the basket and go around him.
“They’ll isolate him. They’ll put him in different spots, whether it’s low block or on the elbow, things like that. Put him in screen roll situations with (Duke 7-1 center) Mark Williams at times, where they’ll have to make a decision. Do you switch and then Bacot’s got to jump off on him, or do you try to get through and you’ve got a difficult matchup from the beginning?”
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The 6-9 Manek, the Oklahoma graduate transfer who’s proven to be a proficient 3-point shooter capable of stretching defenses, had considerable trouble trying to defend LaRavia at Wake Forest. And North Carolina played slow-footed in general as a collective unit on defense at Notre Dame and Miami, when Laszewski and Waardenburg kept finding clean looks and bombing away from downtown with little resistance.
Black, the stretchy 6-8 senior swingman, doesn’t possess Banchero’s height or bulk, giving up 2 inches and 50 pounds to the Duke freshman. But he’s the Tar Heels’ acknowledged defensive stopper on the perimeter, and has handled the primary assignments while suffocating a pair of the ACC’s top scorers on the wing in Georgia Tech’s Michael Devoe and North Carolina State’s Dereon Seabron. Both made only one shot from the field and scored just two points apiece against North Carolina in Chapel Hill.
Might Black be the Tar Heels’ best hope for limiting Banchero? Could he perhaps be better suited for choking off the Duke freshman’s chances from the outside and maybe limiting his room to operate in the high post area?
“I don’t know,” North Carolina coach Hubert Davis said Thursday in response. “Paolo is an unbelievable player. With his size and athleticism, his ability to be able to score in many different spots, pretty much anywhere out there on the floor. He can dominate points in the paint by posting up. He can finish with either hand. He can shoot the ball from the outside and he’s an excellent ball handler, and he’s a really good passer, as well, a willing and a really good passer. And he’s very aggressive on the offensive end.
“He’s one of the most skilled bigs that I’ve ever seen in college basketball, and he’s having a terrific season. So whoever is guarding Paolo, it will be a difficult task because he’s that good of a player.”
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Tip-off
Who: No. 9 Duke (18-3, 8-2) at North Carolina (16-6, 8-3)
When: 6 p.m. Saturday (ESPN)
Where: Smith Center, Chapel Hill
Series: North Carolina leads 141-114, including 65-37 in Chapel Hill and 20-16 at the Smith Center. Coach Mike Krzyzewski’s Duke teams are 49-48 all-time against the Tar Heels.
Up next: Duke plays host to Virginia on Monday night, the first of two meetings for the teams this month. North Carolina plays at Clemson on Tuesday night in the only meeting between the teams in the regular season.
Adam Smith is a sports reporter for the Burlington Times-News and USA TODAY Network. You can reach him by email at asmith@thetimesnews.com or @adam_smithTN on Twitter.
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This article originally appeared on Times-News: ‘Matchup nightmare’: Duke star Paolo Banchero’s size, skill could have UNC haunted again
