I've shared some frustration with others this season regarding Caleb Love's progress as a Tar Heel. A player that shot 26.6% from 3 his freshman year, Love returned for a sensational sophomore season with 36% shooting from behind the arc. Of course we remember the last minute heroics in the UCLA and Duke games in the tournament, which make it that much more frustrating to see Love fall back and shoot 27.7% thus far in his 3rd year in Chapel Hill. Defensively Love is one of the worst players we've seen in years and the team suffers a palpable handicap on defense when Love enters the game, especially compared to freshman Seth Trimble. There was one bright spot; in the Wake Forest game when Love and Trimble were on the floor together, Love appeared to be inspired by Trimble's defensive prowess.
If we look at the scoring per minute for Love in his 83 games thus far in Chapel Hill, we actually see improvement over time. With the exception of the last two games, Love has shown much more consistency this season. Play in each of seasons 1 and 2 reached higher highs and lower lows than the current season. As well, se are seeing that Love is more consistently outperforming the rest of the team this season. If we put a trendline on the graph, see see progressive improvement, as well.
Maybe Love is just in a weird shooting slump. Who knows. I will be surprised, though, if we don't see the 2022 version of Love return at some point this season. While this analysis doesn't track defensive performance, it does show that Love is still a very important offensive weapon for this team. Hopefully Hubert will try using Trimble with these guards to force more defensive pressure. That benefitted everyone on the team in the last quarter of the Wade Forest game.
In researching Love's numbers, I came across a couple of interesting statistics:
- UNC only played 5800 minutes in 2021 compared to 7875 minutes in 2022. They have logged 3125 to date this season.
- UNC has progressively gotten more potent at scoring since 2021, as its per minute scoring as a team has risen from 0.37 to 0.39 point per minute. That's 0.8 points for a typical game. Modest, but an improvement at an even rate.
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