UNC Basketball: Why Marcus Paige Is Tar Heels' Most Indispensable Player

After Marcus Paige’s tremendous sophomore season, there’s not much question that he’s the best player on the UNC basketball roster. In spite of being backed up by two of the Tar Heels’ most promising young prospects, he’s also the one Roy Williams’ team can least afford to lose.

North Carolina not only has one of the country’s deepest teams for 2014-15, but also features plenty of positional versatility. Wing players J.P. Tokoto, Theo Pinson and Justin Jackson in particular are all equally capable of matching up with shooting guards or small forwards, making an injury to any one of them comparatively easy to weather.

Up front, Williams doesn’t appear to have settled on a starter in the pivot, with Kennedy Meeks and Desmond Hubert each getting one start on this summer’s Bahamas trip. Both wide-bodied centers offer similar skills, so the Tar Heels would again see minimal drop-off if one of them were to go down for a few games.

Prior to the Caribbean trip, there would have been a strong argument to make that Brice Johnson was even tougher to replace than Paige. Not only is the 6’9” junior the most proven interior scorer on the team, but he’s also the best shot-blocker available to Williams.

However, even with Johnson missing most of the game with an ankle injury, Carolina looked overpowering in its second exhibition, a 109-52 victory. The key to the Tar Heels’ dominance, and their ability to weather Johnson’s absence, was Isaiah Hicks. The sophomore looked like a completely different player in the Bahamas games, dominating as a scorer after accumulating all of 42 points in his entire bench-bound freshman season.

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While Hicks was proving that UNC’s power forward spot is in good hands, though, the rest of the Tar Heels were proving how badly they need Paige. The superstar junior isn’t just a dominant scorer and floor general—he also solves the two worst problems facing this year’s squad.

Firstly, Paige is a magnificent free-throw shooter (.877 last year) on a team whose struggles in that department are both widespread and severe. Consider that among potential veteran starters Meeks, Hubert, Johnson, Hicks and Tokoto, the best free-throw percentage from 2013-14 is Johnson’s ugly .622. As the Heels showed no sign of improvement in that category in the Bahamas (14-for-32 over two games), Paige’s steady hand will be vital this season.

At least at the foul line, though, backup Nate Britt (.794) could provide a reasonable facsimile if Paige got hurt. The factor that really pushes Paige into a unique position is his three-point shooting.

Last year, his 86 treys accounted for 58.9 percent of the team’s total. That trend also continued in the summer exhibitions, in which Paige buried as many three-pointers (five) as the rest of his teammates combined.

Freshmen Jackson and Joel Berry (who's stuck being the nation's best third-string point guard) offer some hope of long-term improvement behind the arc. Until they prove they can get the job done, though, Paige’s three-point touch cements his position as the player who absolutely must stay healthy for North Carolina to compete on a national level.