University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Turning Defense Into Offense
December 28, 2005 | Men's Basketball
Dec. 28, 2005
By Adam Lucas
As the basketball bounced toward midcourt, Reyshawn Terry stared at it quizzically.
What was wrong with this basketball? Was it defective? Had it been underinflated?
Considering the circumstances, it was a jarring moment and these were reasonable questions. The score was North Carolina 50, UNC-Asheville 15, and there were two minutes remaining in the half. Virtually every Tar Heel fast break had gone flawlessly, with David Noel throwing through a couple of vicious one-hand slams, Terry dunking another, and Tyler Hansbrough adding another couple. Asheville was on their way to a 22-turnover first half, with 15 of those miscues coming by virtue of Carolina steals.
And now this basketball had the gall to refuse to follow Terry's whim. He'd attempted yet another dunk, and this one somehow bounced off the rim rather than rocketing straight through the net.
It was just a minor detail, though, and quickly rectified. The Tar Heels went on to hold a 33-point halftime lead, in the process scoring 53 points and more than doubling the output from their most recent half of basketball, a 24-point clunker at Southern Cal.
The constant barrage of dunks was fun to watch, but it's what created those dunks that likely made Roy Williams smile. Just a few minutes into the game Carolina unveiled some three-quarter court pressure, and the pressure combined with UNC's superior athleticism soon put the game out of reach. The Bulldogs are well coached and understand how to beat a normal trap. But it wasn't just the Carolina guards that were trapping--it was David Noel and Tyler Hansbrough, too.
"That pressure ups the tempo for us when we get out and press," Noel said. "We have a lot of quick guys. Even our center, Tyler Hansbrough, is quick. He can get out in the passing lanes. The quickness of our defense makes us a good defensive team."
And it helps to have an instinct for when to deploy it. Like a baseball manager who has a sense of the right time to call the suicide squeeze, Roy Williams goes by the flow of the game. He sees it, sure, but he also feels it.
"We got them a little shook early and we were quicker than them," he said. "God has blessed us in basketball terms maybe a little more than those guys. They were a little frustrated and nervous and timid and tight and that's always a sign to me to go press them again."
That's how Tyler Hansbrough finished with 8 steals, just one off the school record. Look down the UNC single-game steals list and you'll see some of Carolina's very best defenders. Derrick Phelps had 9 in 1992. He had 8 in 1991, a mark that equaled a record previously set by Dudley Bradley in 1977.
That's the complete list of Tar Heel players who had ever amassed 8 steals or more in a game. Phelps and Bradley, perhaps the two best defensive players in school history.
So what is 6-foot-8 Tyler Hansbrough doing on that list?
Trying to turn defense into offense, that's what. He got just 7 shots at Southern Cal, a number not high enough for him, and more importantly, not high enough for Roy Williams. But instead of just standing around in the paint and waving his arms, he decided to do something about it.
"I have to work harder to get open in the post," he said. "I have to run a lot more. Basically, I have to play a lot better defense because our offense is going to come from our defense most of the time. My movement has to be better."
And perhaps his decision-making has to be slightly better as well--he offset those 8 steals with 5 turnovers
Some of those were simply errors of being too aggressive, as four of them came during a second half that was largely a practice. Williams used part of the final 20 minutes as a chemistry lab, throwing Mike Copeland into the game with some of the regulars and also deploying a zone defense for a few possessions simply to get some game speed work on that alignment.
"Sometimes you need an easy game, especially coming off a loss," Noel said.
That's what Carolina needed against Asheville. For the most part, that's what they got--even if the ball didn't always obey everyone's wishes.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. He is the coauthor of the official book of the 2005 championship season, Led By Their Dreams, and 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 Going Home Again, click here.
