University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Eight Perfect Seconds
February 10, 2005 | Men's Basketball
Feb. 10, 2005
By Adam Lucas
DURHAM--Early Thursday morning--if not before--the tape will find its way into the VCR in the Carolina basketball office. The coaches will watch the entirety of the 71-70 loss to Duke in their usual fashion, clicking back and forth on every possession, watching all five Tar Heels every time down the court.
Then there will be 8 seconds left and they will see something no Carolina fan wants to admit: they will see a very good defensive possession by Duke.
It hurts me as much to write it as it hurts you to read it. But the Blue Devils defended Carolina's final possession about as well as they possibly could, and in a game ultimately decided by one trip down the floor despite the fact that the Heels had no business being that close, that was enough to earn the win.
The Heels went with their Long Beach set, the same one that won them the game against Connecticut last year and tied the home game against Wake Forest. But Rashad McCants noticed something almost immediately as Raymond Felton began to initiate the play: "They knew what the play was. They knew what we were calling and they were able to stop me from getting the ball."
McCants getting the ball is one of many options on that play. But J.J. Redick shadowed him around a Sean May screen and denied the pass, blowing up what would have been a good look at the basket from the left wing, a spot where McCants is very comfortable. That's the second straight trip to Cameron where Redick, more heralded as a shooter, has made a key defensive stop.
8 seconds...
But McCants not getting the ball didn't end the possession. Another option was to find Marvin Williams inside after he set a screen for David Noel, but Shavlik Randolph stayed glued to him, allowing Noel to run through freely but never leaving Williams. Randolph's play is one that won't show up in the box score, but it's the kind of play Duke has made frequently in this series.
5.5 seconds...
With those two options zapped, time was getting thin.
"Rashad wasn't open coming off the ball screen," Felton said. "Sean wasn't open slipping the screen. And the post-up wasn't open."
What that means is that after May set the screen for McCants, he could've slipped the screen and headed to the basket. But Shelden Williams blocked his path, ruling out yet another option. Coaches design plays with multiple attacks because they know at least one or two of them will be well-defended. It's unusual for a team to spear so many approaches at the same time.
4.5 seconds...
By that time, Felton's choices were few. There will be talk that he should've dashed into the lane and lifted a floater, but Randolph and Williams were within arm's length of him, and how many times has Felton made that floater during his Carolina career? That's not his game, that's Ed Cota's game. Felton's usual attack is to either shoot a three-pointer or drive all the way to the basket; he's not as comfortable with the in-between game.
His best remaining choice was cut off by Daniel Ewing. With 4.3 seconds left, Marvin Williams was posting up Shavlik Randolph and David Noel was coming free on the wing. But Felton couldn't get the ball to Noel (who could've fed it to Williams) immediately because of Ewing's ball pressure.
The remaining four seconds, even the full second that leaked off the clock when the ball went out of bounds, were frenzied. That failure to convert will overshadow a tremendous performance by Sean May, who not only scored 23 points and hauled down 18 rebounds, but played stellar defense on Shelden Williams, rarely letting him catch the ball anywhere close to the block. His offense was good. His defense was exceptional.
But that was individual defense on a night when Carolina, for the most part, played poorly. 23 turnovers would be a bad performance in a usual Roy Williams-tempo game. It's abominable in Wednesday night's slowdown pace, which featured significantly fewer possessions than most other Tar Heel games this year.
Roy Williams frequently tells his team they have to get "one good stop" before he'll end drills in practice. "We don't want a stop where they give it to us, we want a stop where we stop 'em," he'll say.
That, quite simply, is what happened Wednesday night. The Blue Devils just stopped 'em.
Coaches, players, fans, the 9,314 souls shoehorned into Cameron Indoor, will replay those final seconds in their minds for days to come.
There are numbers that define the Duke-Carolina series. Eight points in 17 seconds. 102-100.
And now, another: eight seconds of defensive perfection.
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.
