UNC’s Elliot Cadeau inherits unenviable task of breaking streak of futility at Virginia

Elliot Cadeau, North Carolina’s ascendant freshman point guard, has a chance on Saturday to do something no one in his position at UNC has done in almost 12 years. No one at UNC has done it during that span, period, and yet there’s a special kind of pressure that surrounds those at his position, given its stature in the sport.

Point guard at UNC is something like playing center field for the Yankees, or quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys. There’s everything that comes inherent with the position and then there’s even more, given the history and lineage and the Tar Heels’ place in the sport. And for most of this season, Cadeau has handled it all with a calm deftness.

He doesn’t often rattle, an important characteristic for any player but especially one who most often controls the ball and the offense. His vision and passing ability have been as advertised or perhaps better. And recently, Cadeau has shown an affinity for scoring, too, and has, at times, proven a capable complement in that regard to RJ Davis, UNC’s prolific senior guard.

The most recent example of that came during the Tar Heels’ 75-72 victory at Miami earlier this month. The Hurricanes, like a lot of teams during the second half of the season, attempted to limit Davis and dared Cadeau to make shots. He did, and finished with a season-high 19 points. Against Miami, he made his first 3-pointer since Dec. 29.

Then he made another, which gave Cadeau his first game of the season with more than one 3-pointer. Afterward, he spoke quietly of the toll his overall shooting woes – he’d missed his previous 11 3-point attempts, and often had been too reticent to attempt perimeter shots – had taken on his confidence. He’d taken notice of defenses sagging off of him, daring him, inviting him to shoot.

He’d taken notice of his hesitation, too. Hubert Davis, UNC’s head coach, tried to instill belief.

“He just tells me if I’m open, he wants me to shoot it every time,” Cadeau said after that victory at Miami. “And he wants me to have the confidence in myself to knock it down.”

Whatever shot-making or scoring Cadeau can provide Saturday would be something of a bonus for UNC, given the difficulty it has (that everyone has) scoring against Virginia. The Tar Heels haven’t won on the road there since 2012, back when Kendall Marshall was their point guard.

Perhaps that’s a promising coincidence, given the comparisons Cadeau has often drawn to Marshall this season. Like Marshall, Cadeau benefits from an enviable ability to see the court, and particularly see passing lanes that others miss. And like Marshall, Cadeau has proven his knack for making the difficult or even the extraordinary pass.

And now, like Marshall and every other UNC point guard before him over the past decade-plus, Cadeau has inherited the daunting task of trying to lead the Tar Heels’ up-tempo offense, built on the fast break and secondary break and pushing the pace, against a Virginia team that aspires to do the exact opposite.

If there’s one broad, simple commonality about UNC’s decade-long streak of futility at Virginia, it is this: The Cavaliers, as they’re prone to do, have done a much better job dictating their preferred style, while negating UNC’s. It has happened that way time and again. And again. And again.

The last UNC team to win at Virginia’s John Paul Jones Arena was led by the likes of Marshall and Tyler Zeller and Harrison Barnes, among others. Roy Williams was still only halfway through his 18-year head coaching tenure at UNC. Tony Bennett was only in his third season as Virginia’s head coach, and still weeks away from his first NCAA Tournament there.

Saturday will be almost 12 years to the day since Feb. 25, 2012, and UNC’s 54-51 victory in Charlottesville. When the teams tip-off, 4,382 days will have passed since the Tar Heels last won there. They’ve lost eight consecutive games at Virginia, most of them playing out in the same maddening way for UNC.

Which is to say they’ve usually been plodding, slow, deliberate, defensive affairs. Just the way Bennett likes. (And the way Williams, especially, abhorred before his retirement.) During UNC’s eight-game road losing streak in the series, it has broken the 70-point mark just once. It has scored 60 points twice. Four times, it has failed to score even 50 points.

The intrigue and central conflict on Saturday will be the same as it always is when these teams play – or at least the same as it has been since Bennett arrived at Virginia in 2009. The Tar Heels will want to play fast. The Cavaliers will want to do the opposite. Rosters turn over and players come and go and the transfer portal giveth and taketh, but some things remain constant, at least.

The Tar Heels. according to kenpom.com, rank 39th nationally in adjusted tempo, a measurement that essentially tracks the number of possessions in a game. Virginia, meanwhile, is not merely among the slowest teams in the country, but the very slowest. There are 362 Division I college basketball teams. Virginia, according to kenpom.com, ranks 362nd in adjusted tempo.

Further, only two teams in the country, according to kenpom.com, force opposing offenses to burn more than 19 seconds per possession. Marquette is one. Virginia is the other. The challenge for UNC, then, is the same as always when it travels to Charlottesville: How can it speed things up, while maintaining efficiency? How can it break through one of the nation’s toughest defenses?

A long line of very good UNC point guards have tried and failed and left John Paul Jones with a stinging, humbling loss. Marcus Paige knows what it’s like. So does Joel Berry. And Coby White. And RJ Davis. And now it’s Cadeau’s turn to try to reverse a trend that has continued since he was in elementary school. It may be his most formidable challenge yet.