SYRACUSE—Exactly five and a half weeks ago, Christian Keeling played only nine minutes in a double-overtime game at Virginia Tech, a contest in which North Carolina was woefully shy on perimeter depth and Roy Williams elected to play Andrew Platek 49 minutes and Jeremiah Francis 23 rather than put Keeling on the court for any extended time.
This is not an indictment of the head coach. At that point, Keeling had earned that level of trust—or lack of trust. He'd shot 0-for-4 in the previous game, a loss at Pittsburgh, and was in the middle of a 2-for-12 shooting slump.