University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Not Enough Stops
January 19, 2008 | Men's Basketball
Jan. 19, 2008
By Adam Lucas
Officially, the Maryland mascot is Testudo the Turtle.
Unofficially, it's Greivis Vasquez.
He's listed at 6-foot-6, 190 pounds. He is wiry, he is tough, and he is talkative. The Montrose Christian product was on exactly zero All-America teams. He does not do anything particularly well, other than infuriate opposing fans and players. He shoots less than 43 percent from the floor, less than 33 percent from the three-point line. His assist/turnover ratio is 1.42, well behind the league's better-known point guards.
Vasquez is the perfect embodiment of the Terrapin program under Gary Williams: slightly unpredictable, prone to outbursts, but especially dangerous when wounded.
Williams, who takes some heat for his sideline antics but has never been anything but gracious towards Carolina--perhaps more gracious than any other coach in the league, a trend he continued by using the first part of his postgame press conference to send good wishes to Dean Smith--saw his point guard hand out 11 assists, score 12 points, and grab 6 rebounds. That Vasquez did it while chatting up anyone within earshot masked the fact that he was outplaying the more heralded Ty Lawson.
"I don't really have anything to say about Vasquez," one Tar Heel said in a quiet Carolina dressing room.
He's that kind of player. But he's also the type of Terp who will win a lot of games for Williams.
Down 78-74 with 2:29 remaining in front of a hostile crowd, the Terrapins turned the game over to their sophomore point guard. First, he dove into the lane and dropped in a shot that touched every corner of the rim to cut the lead to two. After rebounding a missed Carolina shot, he resisted the urge to overpenetrate and pulled the ball back out to set up the Maryland halfcourt offense.
That's where Saturday's game was decided. When the shot clock dipped under 25 and each team had a chance to set up their offense, it was pretty simple--Maryland continually pounded the ball inside, where their starting frontcourt players amassed 40 of their 64 shot attempts thanks to a combination of burly positioning and struggling post defense. When the Tar Heels were in the same situation, too often they ended the possession with a hurried jumper.
"They were bullying us down low," Danny Green said. "They were getting the ball where they wanted."
Exactly. The Terps, evidently copying a page from the Clemson and Georgia Tech playbook, decided the best way to limit Tyler Hansbrough offensively was to pound him defensively. Play after play, they posted Bambale Osby and allowed him to operate; his 13 shots were his second-highest total of his season. Don't fully pin the blame on the Tar Heel post players, however. Too often, those entry passes to Osby were made by Maryland guards who had a clear line of vision into the paint.
"Our bigs were battling as much as possible," Green said. "Their bigs were getting a lot of easy baskets because we weren't getting a lot of ball pressure. Pressure on the ball stops a lot of things. It makes the passes harder, makes them have to repost and gives our big men a chance to get around and get in front."
After pulling the ball out with 90 seconds left, Vasquez eventually earned a trip to the free throw line after recognizing a mismatch against Green. Of course, he sank both shots. Then he did what he'd done all day, which was sprint back to the three-point line and wait for Lawson to bring the ball up the court. After 18 games of beating opponents down the floor, the UNC sophomore finally ran into a team not willing to allow him to zip down the court for layups.
With 43.4 seconds left and the game tied at 80, it was simple. On a day when the Tar Heels hadn't been able to get many stops, they needed one big one.
They couldn't get it. Vasquez patiently waited for a high ball screen. As soon as he recognized a Carolina switch--Osby on Green, 250 pounds against 210 pounds--he sent the ball to the David Noel-like James Gist, who had a perfect angle to find Osby for the winning basket.
Opponent field goal percentage is a handy way to measure defense. But sometimes, where they're attempting those shots from is just as telling. It's easy to play defense once your man has the ball and everyone is watching. It takes more effort to play that same way when the ball is 40 feet away and one momentary lapse results in your man being on the low block instead of the high block.
"You have to do your work early on defense," Hansbrough said. "You can't let them establish position."
With the clock under four minutes, Maryland had four halfcourt possessions. On those four possessions, they took five shots--every single one of them from inside the paint.
During the same timespan, the Tar Heels attempted four three-pointers, two Wayne Ellington leaners, and five shots in the paint. Just one of those paint shots was by Hansbrough, who got just one field goal attempt over the last seven minutes.
Those two paragraphs are the easiest, simplest, most basic explanation of what caused Carolina to lose its first game of the season. Sometimes, you just don't have enough stops.
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.
