University of North Carolina Athletics
THM: Keys to the Season: Shot Selection
November 17, 2004 | Men's Basketball
Nov. 17, 2004
This year's Tar Heel Monthly basketball preview includes a five-part "Gateway to St. Louis" series focusing on the five keys for this year's team to reach the 2005 Final Four in St. Louis. One of those stories is reprinted below. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly and receive the basketball preview, click here.
By Adam Lucas
Roy Williams doesn't want his team to take good shots.
He wants them to take great shots.
The difference seems negligible. Good shots, great shots, is there really a difference? To Williams, there is, and he's now spent a full year trying to teach his players the difference. It's not a simple concept. There are times when a player might have a wide-open look at the basket. That's a great shot, right? Not if just one pass away there's a teammate with an even more high-percentage shot opportunity.
"Getting a great shot means making an extra pass," Jawad Williams says. "We might have a situation where I have the ball and Rashad is on the wing. I might have an open shot that is a good shot. But the stats show that if I kick it to Rashad, he has a better chance. That's a great shot, whether he makes it or misses it."
The statistics are simple: when the Tar Heels shot 50 percent or better from the floor last year, they were 8-0. When they made less than 50 percent of their field goals, the record dropped to 11-11.
Those sub-50 performances weren't always the product of cold shooting nights or bad luck.
"It's about unselfishness and we didn't have that often enough last year," Williams says. "Sometimes we felt like, `I'm open, and I'm going to shoot. Let somebody else rebound.' That hurt us. At the beginning of the year we did a pretty good job, but at the end we got too caught up in individual things."
Correcting the problem begins with the same person who keys virtually everything about the Tar Heel offense--the point guard. It's not entirely fair to him individually, but for Carolina to be successful, Raymond Felton has to be willing to keep everyone else happy before thinking about his own scoring. It's the equivalent of a baseball pitcher who works quickly, getting everyone else involved and not allowing any mental lapses.
The Latta, SC, native spent the summer working on two key parts of his game: his jumpshot and his leadership ability. To demonstrate the latter, he may have to take less of the former. Don't believe it? In games the Tar Heels won last year, his scoring average actually decreased--notching 12.7 points per game in losses and 10.8 in victories.
The implication is simple: Carolina is at their best when Felton is directing the offense, not when he's trying to be the offense. He's a gifted passer, one of the best in the country, and he has an inherent understanding of the game. Those are the assets he needs to utilize first. It doesn't mean he's not an integral part of the offense, it just means he's more valuable as a creator. Entering his junior season, he seems to have developed an understanding of what it means to play point guard at Carolina.
"What I'm really interested in this year is winning," he says. "That's what other Carolina point guards are known for. Jimmy Black won a national championship, Derrick Phelps won a national championship, Ed Cota went to three Final Fours. That's what it's all about...That's how Carolina fans remember their point guards, by what they won. And I want to be remembered by the very best."
Inside out
It almost seems antiquated, the notion that the best shots in the game of basketball can be found close to the hoop. We've been hypnotized by the three-point-happy barrages we often see in the NCAA Tournament, dazzled by the big men who can step out and hit a jumpshot. It even happened to the Tar Heels last season, as they were mesmerized by an 11-of-24 three-point shooting performance (which Roy Williams would later call "fool's gold") on the road at Florida State, lost all view of the gameplan, and eventually shot themselves out of a disappointing 90-81 overtime loss.
But there's no substitute for a big man who is exactly that--a big man. As long as anyone over 6-foot-7 still considers college a viable option, that's the way Roy Williams will coach his team. He wants the Tar Heels to look inside first, swing the ball around the perimeter, and look inside again. Looking for a good--make that great--shot? Take a quick glance into the paint.
The good news is that upon looking into the paint, Felton will now see more options than just a lonely Sean May. The junior big man has basically been the extent of Carolina's back-to-the-basket offense over the past two seasons, but help has arrived in the person of 6-foot-9 Marvin Williams. The freshman's presence on the court has two benefits--it provides the Heels with another post scoring option and allows Jawad Williams to play his more natural face-up game.
"The way Jawad has been shooting lately is unbelievable, and that's going to free me up," May says. "And Marvin's game with his back to the basket is better than his face-up game, even though he's so good facing the basket. With the three of us rotating, it's going to make things so much easier inside."
Not only should it make it easier, it should make the lane a less trafficked area. Any time May got the ball last season, defenses collapsed on him. His assist/turnover ratio of 0.58 was the worst of any Tar Heel in the regular rotation, caused primarily by frequent double-teams and an inability to find the open man once opponents blanketed him. This season, with reliable shooters finding comfortable spots at the other four slots, double-teaming May is a risky proposition.
More shots...better shots
In addition to Felton, who has tried to make his shot more reliable, the players who have made the most adjustments to their shooting form over the offseason are Jackie Manuel and David Noel. When Manuel arrived in Chapel Hill as a freshman, classmates Jawad Williams and Melvin Scott declare he was the best shooter of the trio. That reliability quickly vanished, however, a victim of his decreased confidence. One of Roy Williams's first moves was to curtail Manuel's frequent three-point attempts. The West Palm Beach native acceded to his coach's request and finished his junior year with a career-high 55.9 percent mark from the field, but he'd like to expand his range at least slightly this season.
To accomplish that, his shot was the subject of intense video review by assistant coach Joe Holladay. After reviewing the tape, Manuel made a list of the fundamental points he needed to address with his shot. The list went up in his locker, and he reviewed it frequently during a summer in which he regularly hoisted between 500 and 1,000 jump shots per day.
"Everything about my shot is more fluid," Manuel says. "The form, the rotation, and the accuracy have all improved. A lot of people told me the past couple of years that when I shot the ball, it looked like it was coming out of both hands. I've worked on that, and now when I get ready to release, you're only going to see it coming out of one hand."
Similar technical corrections were made by Noel, who led the squad in field goal shooting last year with a 56.2 percentage. But he only attempted 89 shots, most of them coming from point blank range. The junior from Durham may see more playing time on the wing this season, so he made an effort to mold his offensive game into a more suitable form.
Gone is the flat trajectory of years past, the one that caused 10 of his 12 three-point attempts to go spinning off the rim last year.
"I've made some changes," he says. "I've brought my elbow in, and instead of bringing the ball back behind my ear, it's more above my forehead. When I catch the ball, I don't drop it, I just catch and go straight up. That helps me get more arc on my shot...Now I'm catching, jumping, and shooting at the peak of my jump."
The marksman
Orbiting these offensive weapons is Melvin Scott, the one player who truly fits the description of a player intent on destroying opponents from the perimeter. 150 of his 240 shot attempts were from beyond the three-point line last year, with 37.3 percent of them finding the net. When he was hot--as he was against Clemson and at Wake Forest--he was an essential part of the offense. When he wasn't--as when he hit just 5 of his last 20 three-point attempts down the stretch, eventually yielding his starting spot to Manuel in the NCAA Tournament--his confidence evaporated.
For Scott, who says a starting position is "very important" to him, the question is simple: can he make enough shots to keep that spot in the starting five? In the past, he's said that he finds it difficult to find a scoring rhythm coming off the bench. If that's the case, he'll need to provide some consistent shot-making from the perimeter to keep opposing defenses loose. Because he's not much of a threat to drive, he becomes much easier to guard when his shot isn't falling.
"A great shot for me is when my feet are set," Scott says. "Coach Williams has explained that to me. If I'm open, but my feet aren't set, that's not a great shot. But if I'm set, Coach Williams wants me to let it go."
Truthfully, Williams wants all his players to "let it go." But only if they're taking a great shot.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. His book on Roy Williams's first season at Carolina, Going Home Again, is now available in bookstores. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly or learn more about the book, click here.
