UNC Basketball: Brice Johnson Must Follow Offensive Blueprint Set vs. Kentucky

With a few more Brice Johnsons on the court, North Carolina might have actually had a shot to knock off top-ranked Kentucky last Saturday.

But since none of the researchers in Chapel Hill have perfected cloning to that extent, the Tar Heels will have to settle for Johnson just replicating parts of that performance game after game.

The 6'9" junior had his second straight impressive offensive performance in the 80-64 loss to Kentucky, scoring 15 points on 7-of-12 shooting to follow up a 19-point, 17-rebound effort in the previous game against East Carolina. It's the first time this season Johnson has been able to string together two games with that kind of scoring output, and it's what the Tar Heels need from him every night.

"I just have to help my team anyway I can," Johnson told InsideCarolina.com. "I don't want to be the guy that's just sitting there on the bench and cheering them. I have to be one of the leaders on this team."

Johnson is averaging 11.7 points and seven rebounds per game this season, shooting 51.2 percent from the field. He's taken 84 shots, but 42 of those have come in three games (27 in the past two and 15 against Robert Morris on Nov. 16), showing how Johnson has come and gone with his aggressiveness.

One of those soft games came in the 60-55 home loss to Iowa, when Johnson played only 12 minutes and was 1-of-7 from the field.

Game	Minutes	Points	Field goal attempts
Nov. 14 vs. NC Central	18	12	6
Nov. 16 vs. Robert Morris	21	23	15
Nov. 22 at Davidson	15	9	8
Nov. 26 vs. Butler	25	11	9
Nov. 27 vs. UCLA	22	4	5
Nov. 28 vs. Florida	26	10	7
Dec. 2 vs. Iowa	12	2	7
Dec. 6 vs. East Carolina	23	19	15
Dec. 13 at Kentucky	24	15	12

A spindly 187 pounds when he got to UNC two years ago, Johnson has put in maximum effort to bulk up since then. He began this season at 228 pounds, enabling him to handle himself better against bigger opponents in the paint.

But that size increase hasn't translated into much increased toughness, according to coach Roy Williams, who is still looking for Johnson (among others) to show more aggressiveness in the half court. On Saturday, Johnson had eight of UNC's first 12 points, scoring 12 of his 15 before halftime, but when the game slowed down in the second half he made only one of five shots.

"Brice did hurt them in the first half, but most of that was in the open court," Williams said in the postgame press conference.

In half-court sets, junior guard Marcus Paige tends to be the one trying to do everything to generate offense, and that hasn't been successful many times this season. But when Johnson has stepped up and made the effort, it's led to more balance and kept UNC from being a one-man team as it was most of 2013-14.

With Johnson getting bigger and fellow frontcourt starter Kennedy Meeks dropping 50 pounds to have better stamina and athleticism, UNC has the capability to control the boards. But if aggressive play inside doesn't happen, those post players are doing more sitting around than forcing the action, so if Johnson takes more shots, he can carry that forward into better play grabbing rebounds on both ends.

Follow Brian J. Pedersen on Twitter at @realBJP.