University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: UNC Basketball Mailbag January 18
January 18, 2005 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 18, 2005
By Adam Lucas
Here at Mailbag World Headquarters, we pride ourselves on being fairly reasonable humans. We're fairly even-tempered, except during Carolina basketball games, and we like helping fellow Tar Heel fans find the answers to their latest burning questions. We get hundreds of questions every week (if it takes a while to respond to you, that's why) and most of them are thought-provoking.
However, there are three common questions that threaten to cause us to do something drastic, such as hunting down the questioner in person and whacking them over the head with a copy of "Leading With the Heart: Coach K's Successful Strategies for Basketball, Business, and Life."
This is the last time the following questions will ever be discussed in the Mailbag. Please don't push us over the edge, it's much too far from March for that to happen.
Question One: Justin Bohlander is no longer a Tar Heel. He decided to concentrate on his academics and is still enrolled at UNC.
Question Two: The diamond sign Rashad McCants makes is borrowed from rapper Jay-Z and his "The Family" entourage. Feel free to use it yourself at the Smith Center.
Question Three: The "kid on the end of the bench" is Steve Robinson's son, Denzel. Despite what the person next to us at the Georgia Tech game said (seriously), he is not a "walk-on who played against William & Mary." He is not eligible to play and therefore will not be stealing any of Jesse Holley's minutes.
Whew, we feel better. So much better that we're going to ask for your help. As you doubtless are aware, Wake Forest shot 32-of-32 from the free throw line on Saturday after Maryland held them to 18-of-35 from the charity stripe in their previous game. NC State also shot 100 percent from the foul line two years ago in the Smith Center. Now, it is obvious to any rational person that Carolina needs to focus much more on their free throw defense. So, what are your suggestions? Shoot us an email and we'll post the best (or most entertaining) ones here next week. Of course, we'll also drop the best ones off with the UNC coaching staff so they can work on this significant deficiency with the team.
Also, don't forget that since it's Tuesday, it's time for Tar Heel Talk with Jones Angell and some other guy on 1090 AM, Triangle Sports Talk. You can listen online by clicking here and make sure you tune in early, as Auburn head coach and former Tar Heel sharpshooter Jeff Lebo will be our guest in the very first segment. We're also going to break down the loss to Wake and chat briefly about football recruiting with Winston-Salem Journal writer Bill Cole. If you've got a question for the show and can't call, just shoot us an email and make sure you note that it's a Tar Heel Talk question in the subject line.
On with the questions...
#1 Can you just tell the guys how much fun we are having watching them this year. We all scream and yell and show our support at the games, but I really think they need to know what they mean to us diehard fans. I hate to sound like Gomer, but tell them Thomas said "Hi" and "Thanks"!
#2 Is the games defensive grade something we can know about. Can you explain this part of Coach Williams' method?
Thomas Pittard, Oxford, NC
Wasn't it "Gomer says hey"? We told the team hey for you, Thomas. They said, "Surprise, surprise, surprise!" (There are some people staring blankly at their screens right now.)
Carolina's defensive grading system is extremely intricate. After every game, the entire coaching staff breaks down the game film before the next practice. They watch every player on every possession, a process that takes about an hour per half. Players can receive multiple "good checks" and "bad checks" on the grade sheet on each possession. For example, Sean May might get a good check for his post defense, a good check for defending the ball screen correctly, and a bad check for failing to box out. The coaches add up the good and bad checks, and the player with the best ratio of good to bad is the defensive award winner for that particular game. A ratio of 1:1 is usually considered above average, and a ratio of 2:1 usually puts a player in the territory necessary to win the defensive award for that game.
At the next practice, Coach Williams announces the defensive grades of every player on the roster. The defensive award winner gets two "plus points," which he can accumulate throughout the season and are used to excuse himself from post-practice sprints. One plus point is also awarded to the second- and third-place defensive player.
The same plus points are assigned to the winners in several other categories tracked by the coaches such as best screener, charges drawn, etc. Williams also announces the first through third place winners of those plus point-winners at the next practice, although unlike the defensive stats, he mentions just the winners, not everyone on the team.
Hey Adam, last week you mentioned when Maryland first beat UNC at the Smith Center. When did some of the other longtime ACC teams first win at the house that Dean built (ie Duke, State, etc)? And which team has the most wins there?
Neil Hullinger, Mapleton, Utah
Carolina's records in the Smith Center against ACC opponents look like this:
Duke 11-8
Maryland 13-7
NC State 13-5
Wake Forest 15-4
Florida State 10-3
Georgia Tech 17-3
Virginia 17-2
Clemson 19-0
Other than Clemson, the most recent team to get their first win at the Smith Center was Virginia, which was winless there until a 90-76 victory on Feb. 20, 2000.
Now that the round-robin ACC schedule is a thing of the past, is there a new/different system for breaking ties for conference ranking? And are there any updates on the possibility of the Heels going to the University of Arizona in the next couple of years? I'm a little late on this one, but I also wanted to offer the best solution for the space problem in the Smith Center; I am more than happy to volunteer to take any banners and/or jerseys that there is no longer room for.
Susie Raisher, Merrick, NY
As far as we know the league office hasn't released any changes to the tiebreaker system. You can expect head-to-head to remain the first tiebreaker--not good news for the Heels if they finish in a tie with Wake Forest. If everything else remains the same, the second tiebreaker would be comparing the tied teams' records against the top team in the league and moving down the standings until an advantage is gained.
If three teams or more are tied, a "mini-conference" is created and the records within that mini-conference are compared. If that still results in a tie, the tiebreaker reverts to comparing records against the top of the league and moving down the standings until an advantage is gained.
Arizona will visit Chapel Hill next season. The Tar Heels will make a trip to the west coast that includes Southern Cal and could potentially include at least one other opponent, but that hasn't been officially set yet. The Heels also have a trip to Lexington to play Kentucky next year.
And if you want the extra jerseys and banners, you'll have to get in line behind us.
We get reports on individual former players that are playing around the world and in the NBA, but what about former players and coaches that are now coaching? I know about Larry Brown, Phil Ford, and Pat Sullivan at the Pistons. Plus Jeff Lebo is coaching somewhere as well. So in college and pros (and even high school), who is coaching where?
Reid Downie, Denver, CO
Going into the high school ranks would create quite a list, so other than mentioning David Neal, who has the Mailbag's alma mater, Apex High School, ranked among the best teams in the area, we'll just go with the pro and college coaches. This list doesn't include front office positions.
Larry Brown, Pistons
Phil Ford, Pistons (asst. coach)
Dave Hanners, Pistons (asst. coach)
John Kuester, Nets (asst. coach)
ob McAdoo, Heat (asst. coach)
Mike O'Koren, Wizards (asst. coach)
Pat Sullivan, Pistons (asst. coach)
Jeff Lebo, Auburn
Tony Shaver, William & Mary
uzz Peterson, Tennessee
Scott Cherry, George Mason (asst. coach)
rad Frederick, Vanderbilt (asst. coach)
Looking at the box score after the win over Georgia Tech, I noticed that Rashad McCants attempted fewer shots than 5 of his teammates (J. Williams, Felton, May, Manuel, Scott) and the same number as Marvin Williams. I wonder if there has been any prior game in Rashad's career as a Tar Heel where he has not been among the top five in shots attempted for a game. I'm curious enough to shoot the question to the 'bag research staff, but not quite curious enough to try to figure it out myself.
Carter Newbold '88, Wellesley, MA
So what you're saying, Carter, is that you value your time more highly than the crack research staff's time. We see how it is.
But we're going to let you slide because your question prompted some interesting research. The Georgia Tech game was indeed the first time in his Carolina career that five teammates attempted more shots than Rashad McCants. Only twice in his career (the win over Virginia Tech this year and a loss at Wake Forest his freshman year) had four teammates attempted more shots than him.
Lost in Carolina's hot start this year has been the fact that they're much less McCants-reliant than they have been in the past. He's still one of the keys to the offense--as we saw by his absence Saturday in Winston-Salem--but he's no longer options one, two, and three when the shot clock is winding down. In looking back at last year's stats, it was a little shocking at how many shots he took--five games of 20 shots or more, 17 games of 15 shots or more. He averaged 15 shots per game last year and 15.6 in ACC games. That figure has gone down to 10.9 shots per game this year and 7.8 in Carolina's four ACC games; McCants has had zero 20-shot games this year and only two of 15 shots or more. Part of that is due to the decreased minutes of everyone in the regular rotation (his shot per game figure is likely to rise over the next two months, but that doesn't mean he's hunting his shot more--it's likely to mean he's playing more minutes as Carolina gets into the meat of the ACC season) and part of it is due to the presence of Marvin Williams, but McCants also deserves some credit for being more selective than he has been in the past.
Since it is a long standing custom of Carolina fans to have "turn down the sound" parties during both basketball and football broadcasts, can anything be done to match Woody and Mick to the delay of the televised games? Depending on the source of the televised broadcast it can be only a second or two to almost ten seconds. We have watched games while listening to Woody for over a quarter century but only in the last year or so has the delays been so length as to effect our enjoyment. I am sure that the television broadcasting network would prefer I listen to their announcers but loyal Tar Heel fans know that listening to Woody is something special.
David Spence
Good news, David, there is something you can do: buy your own satellite and launch it into orbit around the earth.
Unfortunately, short of that there isn't a satisfactory answer to this problem. It's not that Woody and Mick are just talking faster than they used to or that Woody has somehow become omniscient. Remember those word problems you used to hate in math class? This situation is a lot like one of those, and it involves the speed of light, speed of sound, the laws of physics, and a few other things sportswriters don't know anything about. Since we don't want anyone to have to break out their TI-85 graphing calculator, here's the short version: As the ways people get their TV signals have increased over the past few years (cable, over-the-air, digital cable, satellite), the problem has gotten worse. Each of those signals experiences a different delay. Those of you with digital cable in one room and regular cable in an adjacent room know exactly what this means--you can sometimes watch a play in one room and then walk into the next room and watch it again "live" a couple seconds later. That means that while your delay on cable might be three seconds, your neighbor who has DirecTV might be seeing a five-second delay.
Therein lies the problem for the Tar Heel Sports Network delaying the radio broadcast. They could select a delay that would work for your TV, but it wouldn't help your neighbor. And since we know you're not as selfish as Carter, that's not a satisfactory solution.
We don't have any personal experience with this product so we can't endorse it, but we have occasionally heard good things about the Delay Play Radio. You can get more information about it by clicking here. Again, we've never used it, so don't take this as an endorsement ("We're the UNC Basketball Mailbag and we did not approve this message.").
Adam Lucas will answer your questions about the Carolina men's basketball program this season in an exclusive column published each Tuesday on TarHeelBlue.com. Lucas, editor of previous Mailbags--please make sure to include your first and last names and hometown.
