Hubert Davis addresses success of North Carolina’s four-guard lineup

North Carolina trailed UCLA by 16 points on Saturday in the CBS Sports Classic at Madison Square Garden before a late lineup change by coach Hubert Davis helped spark a comeback.

The Tar Heels began running a four-guard lineup, which helped take some of the attention away from star RJ Davis.

It’s a lineup change Hubert Davis said he’ll absolutely go back to in the future.

“Yes. I mean the lineup change that we made in the second half, I just felt like they were just loading up on RJ and he had got it going offensively, as well,” Davis said. “So just having multiple scorers out there I thought would be really good for us because it puts teams in a situation do you want to go big or do you want to match up with us?”

UCLA couldn’t quite figure it out and the four-guard lineup went off for North Carolina.

Ian Jackson scored a team-high 24 points off the bench, while Davis scored 17, Seth Trimble added 12 and Elliot Cadeau notched eight. That was enough to overturn the big deficit and come away with the 76-74 win.

But the four-guard lineup also had some other benefits for North Carolina beyond just scoring.

“Extending that pressure, we may not have tremendous size, but we do have athleticism,” Davis explained. “So you pick up full court, speeds teams up, you can get steals and deflections and the pace that we want.”

North Carolina recorded only four steals in the game but they came at key times and helped flip the momentum.

All in all, the four-guard lineup worked quite well. Don’t be surprised to see North Carolina use it more.