University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Too Poised for Pressure
January 26, 2006 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 26, 2006
By Adam Lucas
This was the moment to which we've grown so accustomed.
In the Roy Williams era, home games usually follow a simple script. The good guys plug along for a few minutes and then they see an opening. They gain some momentum, and then their head coach bounces off the bench and signals for a trap. The helpless opponent, more concerned about the ballooning score than paying attention to a changing Tar Heel defense, commits an easy turnover, Carolina makes a transition basket, and the rout is on.
This was that moment. Tyler Hansbrough had just converted an athletic alley-oop three-point play over the leading shotblocker in Boston College history, Sean Williams. 21,015 people were on their feet. These were the Tar Heels we know and love.
Williams called for three-quarter court pressure. David Noel and Marcus Ginyard closed in on Tyrese Rice.
Yes, this looks familiar. Rice looks uneasy, he's backing up, this is exactly what the Heels need...
And then Rice sprints forward and draws a foul on the freshman, diffusing the trap. Hansbrough would make another basket to make the score 24-15, but that was the biggest the lead would get. Less than 3 minutes after the Tar Heels enjoyed that 9-point bulge, Boston College had seized a lead they would never relinquish.
It wasn't that Carolina didn't have their opportunities. It was that those pesky Eagle guards would never cooperate.
"It was a little bit frustrating," Reyshawn Terry said. "We were counting on our speed to get us going. We thought we'd make some shots and run them to death. But it seemed like they did that to us instead of us doing it to them. We could never really stop their offense in the first half and that put us in a hole in the second half."
You'll read plenty about Boston College's inside force in the days to come. Craig Smith is absurdly strong and talented and Jared Dudley is a versatile player. But BC's starting backcourt of Sean Marshall and Louis Hinnant committed a total of zero combined turnovers. Toss in Tyrese Rice, who played 22 effective minutes off the bench, and that guard triumvirate totaled 11 assists and 2 turnovers in 86 minutes.
For the game, Boston College committed just 9 turnovers as a team.
Now you know why Wes Miller couldn't do much other than run his hands through his close-cropped hair.
"They don't make mistakes," he said. "That's the main thing. They're a pretty veteran group. They play with poise. We were trying to get back with them in the second half and get some stops and they would just run their offense, take care of the ball, and get layups. We wouldn't take care of the ball and didn't have a chance to get a shot. That was the difference there at the end."
It sounds pretty simple: they just ran their offense, took care of the ball, and got layups. But that's exactly right. What Boston College got on offense seemed to come fairly easily, which is why they shot 54.2 percent from the field. Part of that was due to a unique offense--the Eagles run their flex set in such a compact fashion that it prevented Carolina from denying the pass the way they usually do.
To step out and deny could have easily led to a backdoor layup or a lob dunk. So the Tar Heels mostly stayed out of the passing lanes and the Eagle guards took advantage.
Because forcing turnovers and getting out in transition is so essential to sparking a young group that can still get impatient in the halfcourt game, the Boston College guards essentially cut off the Tar Heel offense by playing good offense.
They are, as Miller said, a poised, veteran group. Some have the luxury of playing their fourth year of games together. Most on the Carolina roster aren't in their fourth month.
"That's what people are going to say," Bobby Frasor acknowledged. "They're going to say experience made the difference. But we just didn't make the defensive plays to win the game."
The last time these two teams met, Boston College won with brute force, hacking Carolina out of the 1994 NCAA Tournament.
This time, they did it with poise.
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.
