Armando Bacot evaluates difference in Caleb Love’s shooting
Armando Bacot and North Carolina noticed a difference in Caleb Love against Syracuse earlier this week.
During the Tar Heels’ big victory over the Orange, Love looked to be more efficient, more cerebral with his shooting. It worked out wonderfully for North Carolina, as he took just seven total shots, but went 4-7 with three three-pointers made.
Alas, Love was efficient — his teammates noticed, as Bacot explained to the media afterwards.
“I don’t think his confidence has ever wavered, but I thought it was kind of a different feel for kind of like, how he got to his shots,” started Bacot. “More in rhythm. He had some conviction behind it. I thought that really worked out.”
Moreover, it’s evident Love came into the game against Syracuse with a plan, one that he executed the way he wanted earlier this week.
Of course Caleb Love would’ve been happy to score more, but he’s happy his team got the victory. Moving forward, we’ll keep an eye on whether Love continues his new fangled shooting mentality.
Hubert Davis happy with shot selection from Caleb Love
Continuing, Caleb Love is a sporadic shooter, to say the least. It’s hard to rag on his shot selection too much after he sent the final arrow through Coach K’s heart with his game-clinching pull-up three in last spring’s Final Four. However, he’s simply not shooting the ball well this year. Love is shooting well below 40% from the field in 2022-23, and is only knocking down 28% of his threes despite jacking up seven triples a game. His inefficiency is a primary reason North Carolina has underwhelmed this season. It doesn’t help that he shoots 14.7 times per game, good for first on the team by almost three whole shot attempts.
In order for the North Carolina offense to find any rhythm or efficiency, Love either has to shoot less or make more — or maybe even both. Against Syracuse earlier this week, he did do both. Now, it would’ve been easy for him to float around the three-point line and fire off 15 shots beyond the arc against the Syracuse zone, but he didn’t. Instead, Love took just seven total shots and five three-pointers, finishing 4-7 along with three made threes vs. the Orange. An efficient night for Caleb!
Tar Heel head coach Hubert Davis was thrilled to see his slump-breaking performance. Per Davis, Love just needed to find a groove and take smarter shots, which he did.
“Caleb is a really good shooter,” said Davis after the ‘Cuse win. “One of the discussions that we’ve had, for whatever reason there are times where you’re just out of rhythm, you’re just not making shots. The thing that you have to do is you have to continue to shoot. We have to continue to shoot good shots. I felt like the shots that Caleb took tonight were good shots. Once that first one went in, I knew he was ready to go.”
Davis added that he saw signs of what was to come in practice, where Love had started shooting the ball much better leading up to the Syracuse game.
“I saw a sign of Caleb being able to shoot the ball better because he was shooting the ball a lot better in practice. That’s really a sign. You could be struggling in practice, struggling in a game. But once you start to find that rhythm in the game, it doesn’t take long to find it on the court during the game and he was in a really good rhythm at the beginning of the game, and I was really proud of him.”
A contained and effective shooting night from Caleb Love against the Orange. Now, open shots won’t come so easy every night, because Jim Boeheim’s club is brutal on defense and leaves shooters open left and right in their zone. However, Carolina fans are hoping this is the game that sparks a hot streak from their inconsistent guard.
On3’s Alex Weber contributed to this article.