University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: UNC Basketball Mailbag
December 18, 2007 | Men's Basketball
Dec. 18, 2007
By Adam Lucas
Big news in the Triad book world: Wes Miller will be back in America next week and will sign copies of his book, The Road to Blue Heaven, on Wednesday, Dec. 26 at the Greensboro Barnes and Noble from 1-4. Come out, say hello, and find out how Wes's British basketball odyssey has gone.
That will be the day after our next Mailbag. As you'll remember from last week, that column will be complete with your Carolina Christmas memories. We've still got room for a couple more, so send `em in.
Hansbrough alert! He's probable for tomorrow night's game.
I have been poring over this year's statistics, and I have come across a very startling bit of information. We are averaging more turnovers per game this year than we are assists! This fact worries me, so I'm curious - how have we fared in the past with a team that has averaged more turnovers than assists? And, just as importantly, how have Roy's teams with that statistic fared?
Alan Daniel
Junior at UNC
Applied Science
We could have saved you some poring time: just check out the Tuesday Talking Points each week. A similar note was in that column recently.
Since Alan's email, Carolina's assists have edged slightly ahead of the turnovers. The Tar Heels now have 139 assists and 132 turnovers. As was noted in the previous link, no UNC team in history has finished with more turnovers than assists. The closest any Roy Williams-coached team has ever come to the negative side of that ratio was his 1999 Kansas team, which finished with 521 assists and 516 turnovers.
Carolina opponents, however, are well acquainted with piling up more turnovers than assists. For the last five seasons, opponents have had more turnovers than assists, and since team turnovers were reliably tracked with the 1980-81 season, there have been just eight seasons when opponents managed more assists than turnovers (the most recent was the 2001-02 campaign).
It seems to me that the overall number of assists is down this year compared to other recent teams. Is there really more one-on-one play this year or are the assists just getting spread out to more players? How does this team rank against Roy's other teams in overall and assist-to-FGM ratio?
Lewis Lankford
Asheville, NC
Assists per field goals made is a good indicator of team play. So far, Roy Williams's teams at Carolina have looked like this:
2007: .586%
2006: .639%
2005: .626%
2004: .616%
In other words, last year an assist was charted on 58.6% of Carolina's field goals. So far this year, that figure stands at 48.8%.
What? Less than 50 percent? Is it time to bench Ty Lawson?
Not just yet. It's fairly typical for a higher percentage of baskets to come without assists during the nonconference season, because a higher-than-normal ratio of hoops are coming off steals that lead directly to uncontested layups. Also, this has been a very good offensive rebounding team so far; the Tar Heels currently rank 16th in Ken Pomeroy's offensive rebounding percentage, which is the number of available offensive rebounds that are retained (Interestingly, all of Roy Williams's UNC teams have ranked in the top 20 in that category). Frequently, a player who grabs an offensive rebound goes straight back to the basket with it, eliminating the possibility of an assist.
Don't overlook the fact that Ty Lawson is scoring more this season. That's a positive--it's what Roy Williams wants him to do. But Lawson baskets (and he's scoring at a 12.9 points per game clip right now) are likely to come unaccompanied by an assist. Over 80 percent of his field goals are two-point hoops, so he's not just standing around the perimeter waiting for a pass to hoist a three-pointer.
And finally, Carolina has been a very good free throw shooting team this season. That's a positive, because it's something fans have been clamoring for. 23.3% of Carolina's points so far have come from the free throw line, easily the highest percentage of the Williams era. It's likely to go down once conference play begins, but right now it's also holding down the number of assists. Of course, longtime Carolina fans will remember Dean Smith crediting players for assists "the way we keep them," which included passes that led to free throws. Unfortunately, official statisticians don't let Coach Smith keep their stat sheet.
My question concerns how good Danny Green is, specifically within the historical context of the "sixth man," which he now is. Granted, it's only 8 games, but is he right now one of the best ever Tar Heel sixth men?
Creighton Abrams
Springfield, VA
Right now, the answer is yes. Now Green has to show the same production during the ACC portion of the season.
Especially in recent history, the discussion of Carolina sixth men has to start (no pun intended) with Marvin Williams. He's the only non-starter to score in double figures since 1994, and he was an essential part of the 2005 national champions.
Of course, you'd also have to consider the 1998 team, which utilized an alphabetical starting rotation. Who was the sixth man on that team? Vince Carter, Ed Cota, Ademola Okulaja and Shammond Williams didn't start six games, Antawn Jamison didn't start five, and Makhtar Ndiaye didn't start eight. The reaction of most Carolina fans would probably be to assign the sixth man role to Ndiaye. If that's the case, he averaged 5.8 points and 4.1 rebounds per game and it would be hard to characterize his contribution as more important than Marvin Williams's in 2005.
Prior to Williams, the previous holder of the best sixth man title was Jerry Stackhouse in 1994. As a freshman, he started just one game but finished plenty of them, scoring 12.2 points per game and winning the ACC Tournament's Most Valuable Player award.
We all know the best team does not always win the NCAA championship. What are the 3 best Carolina teams that did not win a NCAA title in men's basketball? My opinion is:
1984 team - Jordan's Junior year, the best Carolina team I have ever seen
1978 team - I think this is the year, the injury stricken team that lost to Marquette in the finals
1994 team - the defending champs with all the talent but poor chemistry
What do you think?
Jeff
uies Creek, NC
I felt like this topic had been covered in a previous column, but I couldn't find the evidence. Jeff's actually thinking of the 1977 team, which was before my time but always gets plenty of support in these types of discussions (one more substitution might have toppled Marquette).
My era would probably start with 1984, and that team certainly must be included. Prior to Kenny Smith's injury (and by "injury," I mean "senselessly brutal takedown by LSU's John Tudor that changed the entire season"), that team wasn't just beating people. It was annihilating them. If Smith stays healthy--and remember, Dean Smith has said he probably tried to mix his freshman point guard back in too quickly--it's hard to imagine that team losing to Indiana.
I'd also include Kenny Smith's senior squad, the 1987 group that spent the entire season in the top five and the last three months of the season in the top three. Unfortunately, they ran into an angry Syracuse team in the regional final.
And then I'd nominate the 1998 team. The loss to Utah still stings, as does the mental image of Antawn Jamison kissing the Alamodome floor on his way off the court.
I would not, however, include the 1994 or 1995 teams. Everyone always likes to talk about the '94 squad as a disappointment, but did anyone ever honestly get the sense that that team was going to get it together? It was obvious from November forward that chemistry was lacking. It probably would have been more of an upset if that team did win the title. The next year's team was more enjoyable because they seemed to get along better, but they also seemed about one body short.
We want to hear your thoughts on this topic, too, so let us know.
Hey, are the Heels going to be doing anything "charitable" this holiday season? Like last year, they went to Target and bought items and gifts for those less fortunate.
Corrie P.
Philadelphia, PA
Charity is a consistent part of the basketball program's existence. At the beginning of each season, the team signs buckets full of basketballs--this year, they signed over 1,000. Those balls are sold to fans (yes, they're already sold out this year) and the proceeds are used to fund some of the team's charity endeavors. One of those ventures was last week's trip to Target, when the team went shopping for underprivileged families. Later this month, the team will put on its annual holiday clinic, and in January they'll hold a similar clinic for Special Olympians.
Those are the big events that are easy to notice. What's less acknowledged are the hundreds of smaller gestures that flow out of the basketball office every season. Whether it's a signed poster for someone who is sick or tickets for someone from the Children's Hospital, you'd be proud of the way the basketball team involves itself with the community. One of Roy Williams's most often-quoted statements when he returned to Chapel Hill was that he wanted to build a program instead of a team. His distinction was that a team exists for just one year; a program is something that is part of the fabric of the community. He's built some very good teams at Carolina--but he's built an even better program.
Brownlow's Down Low
After watching the last 2-3 games I've noticed that we struggle early when Tyler struggles, like the Ohio St. and Kentucky game (which I attended). Although I think that these two games wasn't the best called games either. The UK game I think that he was 2-8 with 13-14 points and most of the came from the line. I think with him just getting 8 shots a game we will struggle.
Kyle Jennings
Lauren writes:
Actually, Kyle, Roy Williams has been pretty clear on this point this season and you are right to notice that with Tyler getting eight shots, Carolina may struggle. However, what Roy wants is not for Tyler to have a certain number of shots from the field but instead to follow this formula:Tyler field-goal attempts + Tyler's free-throw attempts = 20 total attempts (or more)
So far this season, Carolina has had just one game where Tyler did not have 20 or more touches, and it was the season-opener against Davidson. In that game, Hansbrough had 16 attempts and scored 14 points. His season-high attempts were 27 against Iona (12 field goals and 15 free throws), and he scored 27 points. His best performance of the season so far in terms of attempts versus points is the Penn game, when he had 24 attempts (16 from the field, eight from the foul line) and scored 29 points. This season marks the first in his career that he is averaging more than 20 touches per game (22.7) and he is averaging 21.2 points. His game against Rutgers showed just how effective this strategy can be - Hansbrough is tenacious and refuses to quit, and a few missed shots didn't bother him. He shot just 6-of-15 from the field but scored 20 points and had 23 total attempts (eight free throws).
Last season, Carolina lost seven games and in those seven, Tyler failed to have 20 attempts in three of them (Gonzaga, Maryland and Georgia Tech). But that is not necessarily an indication of the team's success or failure. In Carolina's 37 games last season, Tyler got 20 or more attempts in only 16 out of 38 games. Of the 22 games where Tyler did not get at least 20 attempts, Carolina had a 19-3 record (see above for the three losses). He even went through a seven-game span without 20 attempts, and Carolina won each of those games fairly handily in that span. To be fair, five of those games were post-broken nose. But even then, Tyler set a season high with 34 attempts against Michigan State and proceeded to score 33 points. On the season, he averaged 19.7 attempts per game (11.4 field-goal attempts to 8.3 free-throw attempts).
For Tyler's career, his highest attempts in a game are 36 against Georgia Tech in his freshman season. He proceeded to score 40 points (highest ever in the Smith Center) and literally lead the Tar Heels to a victory. As a freshman, he averaged 18.9 attempts (11.2 field goals to 8.2 free throws). Carolina was 11-5 in the 16 games in which Hansbrough had 20 or more attempts and 12-3 in the 15 games in which he failed to do so (although four of those 15 were early-season blowouts). So since he has been at Carolina, the Tar Heels are 31-9 whenever Hansbrough has had 20 or more attempts. The odds are pretty good that even if Hansbrough is not shooting the ball well, he will get to the line. The only game in which Hansbrough failed to have at least one free-throw attempt in his career was the fateful loss to George Mason.
It's important to keep in mind that even if Hansbrough gets his attempts, he needs to knock them down. More often than not, of course, he does that. The worst differential he has ever had between his total attempts and his total points was this season against Ohio State, when he had 23 attempts (19 field goal tries, four free throw attempts) and just 13 points for a -10 difference. He has had a -5 or more difference between attempts and points just 10 times out of 78 career games. Just six of those were Carolina losses. Three of those ten games were against Kentucky, who he has traditionally struggled against - combined, there has been a -22 difference between his attempts and his points. The good news is that now, Carolina has enough offense around him that even if he struggles, it doesn't matter as much. But only good things happen when he touches the ball.
Adam Lucas most recently collaborated on a behind-the-scenes look at Carolina Basketball with Wes Miller. The Road To Blue Heaven is available now. Lucas's other books on Carolina basketball include The Best Game Ever, which chronicles the 1957 national championship season, Going Home Again, which focuses on Roy Williams's return to Carolina, and Led By Their Dreams, a collaboration with Steve Kirschner and Matt Bowers on the 2005 championship team.
