March Madness is happening again, and the University of North Carolina is represented by its most talented, experienced and generally lovable squad in years.

The strength of this team is in our frontcourt, where we have multiple starting-quality players. Our rotation consists of aerial predator Brice Johnson, human center of gravity Kennedy Meeks, and noted large person Joel James. But there is one more. A McDonalds All-American coming out of high school, a player on the UNC basketball team as a freshman, Most Improved Player as a sophomore, ACC Sixth Man of the Year as a junior and absolute wild card all the goddamn time, he is known by many names in many nations across space and time. His home state of North Carolina knows him as Isaiah Hicks.

Hicks is not necessarily the best player on the team at any one particular thing, with the possible exception of trying really hard. However, he is pretty good at a lot of things, and he will try literally anything. Flying one-handed offensive rebound? Play the wild card. Spinning two handed dunk over the entire opposing team? You know who to call. Will it work? Maybe. Wild card.

Isaiah can play in any of our lineups, against big teams and small. He can start fast breaks and finish them. He can score, defend and rebound. He doesn’t make it look effortless out there. However, I’ve got some hot, juicy stats coming up which suggest that he is a deceptively efficient offensive weapon. Prepare yourself.

Isaiah is a hair behind Brice Johnson for the team lead in True Shooting Percentage, a widely used metric in basketball analysis that measures how many shots a player uses versus how many points he/she scores – in other words, how efficiently they shoot from the floor. Isaiah and Brice have TS%s of .645 and .646 respectively. Next best is Joel Berry, with a significantly lower .565. Why are Brice and Isaiah so efficient? Most of their shot attempts are dunks, layups and free throws. Hicks draws a lot of fouls with his aggressive play. He leads the team in free throws taken per 100 possessions – Brice has a higher total because he plays more - and he shoots them well, at 74.6%.

When the Heels play teams without a skilled, NBA-sized post scorer, Isaiah can guard every player on the floor. (Good news, fans! That’s most teams.) He’s quick enough to stay on speedy guards when UNC rotates on defense, and he’s strong enough to fight for position down low with physical forwards. His long arms make him a constant menace. It looks like one of those inflatable tube men grew a bunch of muscles, escaped the car dealership, and now stalks the hardwood extinguishing layups.

I’m not saying Hicks never makes defensive mistakes. That’s not how the wild card operates. He commits the most fouls of any UNC player, and gets caught out of position more than he should. But at any time, against any team, he can shut down plays. Sorry, come back later, you got blocked/stolen from/tube-man contested into a horrendous jump shot by Isaiah Hicks. Wild card. Fear it.

There will come a time this March when UNC is on the wrong end of a 9-2 run, when Xavier or Indiana or Oklahoma is firing on all cylinders, Roy is scaring his doctor, and we need a stop but don’t really deserve one. We will need to call on Isaiah then, even if he has missed three contested layups in the last six possessions and hurled a rebound directly off of Marcus Paige’s face and out of bounds. For the wild card giveth even as he taketh away, and the timing thereof cannot be known until it has come to pass. When nothing is going right, we will need greatness to come from a place that makes no sense.

Sometimes you need a player to get right in front of a charging, corn-fed beast from an underseeded team that burned out their fear receptors long ago. You need that player to rise for the ball like it’s the last rope dangling from the last helicopter out of Krzyzewskiville, and you need him to smack the hell out it, gallop down the court, and dunk it with one outstretched arm through a collision that sends three players to the hardwood in a single flailing lump. This March, we will need our wild card. Survive and advance. Go Heels.