UNC Basketball: Armando Bacot and Leaky Black earn All-ACC honors

The ACC player awards were announced this afternoon, and the Tar Heels have a couple of players that made the cut. UNC senior big man Armando Bacot was named First-Team All-ACC for the second straight season, and Leaky Black was named to the All-Defensive team.

Despite the team struggling for most of the season, Bacot has been the most consistent and dangerous player for the Tar Heels. He finished the regular season averaging 16.5 points, 10.8 rebounds, and 1.2 blocks per game, and shot 55.2% from the field. His presence in the paint drew a lot of attention against just about every opponent, yet he somehow found a way to do a lot of damage most nights anyway. This season Bacot managed to set the school record for double-doubles, and is now has one of the highest career point totals as well.

As for Leaky Black, his defensive performance this season has been as good as one would expect. He was asked to defend some of the best players in the country, and there wasn’t really anybody out there that managed to do a lot of damage against him. What has been nice about this season in particular is that he was able to perform a bit better offensively as well, making the Heels more of a threat than they would’ve been otherwise. Hubert Davis is almost certainly going to miss Black’s defensive presence next season, and his ability to guard each position is hard to replicate.

Two more names worth noting are RJ Davis and Caleb Love: they received All-ACC honorable mention honors despite having a roller coaster season. Davis finished the regular season averaging 15.8 points, 5.1 rebounds, and 3.3 assists per game, while Love finished averaging 16.7 points, 3.7 rebounds, and 2.8 assists per game.

Now that the regular season is over, all eyes turn to the ACC Tournament in Greensboro. This may be UNC’s last chance to make it into the NCAA Tournament, so we will see if they are able to cut the nets down this weekend.