University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: From Good To Great
October 17, 2008 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Oct. 17, 2008
By Adam Lucas
Michael Copeland very rarely does anything with a lack of enthusiasm, so it wasn't particularly noteworthy that he seemed especially passionate on Friday afternoon.
"Have you seen the practice plan for today?" he asked.
He was talking about the practice plan for the first Tar Heel practice session of the year, which was held on Friday afternoon at the Smith Center.
He leaned in close, as if he was about to divulge a serious secret.
"I've heard it's 12 minutes of conditioning and, like, two hours of defense," he said with a raised eyebrow.
As Roy Williams himself would later reveal, Copeland's information was only slightly incorrect. In fact, it was 12 minutes of conditioning and an hour and 48 minutes of defense.
If it's the preseason--and thankfully, it finally is--it must be time to talk about defense. Two things happen in mid-October: the leaves begin to change colors and college basketball teams talk about their renewed commitment to the art of defense.
By the end of last season, Williams had come around to offering some begrudging compliments of his squad's defensive play.
"Last year's team did get better defensively, but at the end of the year we were just a good defensive team," the head coach said. "I'm hopeful we can be a great defensive team."
Maybe you had to hear him say it, but the way Williams tossed in that "just"--his team was just a good defensive team--made it sound like he was describing a fish that he would have thrown back.
"Didja catch anything?"
"No, just a couple small ones."
For the record, the 2008 Tar Heels ranked in the top third of the NCAA in field goal percentage defense, allowing opponents to make 42.8% of their field goal attempts.
How does a team transition from just a good defensive team to a great one? Williams already knows the formula.
"We want to do it in two ways," he said. "We want to force more turnovers and we want to hold teams to a lower field goal percentage. That's hard to do, because if you're forcing more turnovers you're gambling. And if you're gambling more, you give up better shots."
Forcing more turnovers means increased pressure on the perimeter. And if the Tar Heels are going to increase the pressure on the perimeter, they're going to have to do it without Marcus Ginyard, their best perimeter defender, for the first month of the season.
You'll never guess who wants to fill Ginyard's role.
"I would like to be that guy," said heretofore offensive specialist Wayne Ellington. "Coach has emphasized that with me since I've been here. I've worked on it, and I'm excited about it. I want to guard the other team's best perimeter player. When Coach sat down with me after last season, that was one of the things he talked to me about. I want to be able to guard that guy and stop him."
During his previous two seasons at Carolina, the junior has learned that it takes more than quick feet or good awareness to be a solid defender. It also takes something that's difficult for any player to accept: a willingness to occasionally be beaten.
"You have to get past knowing that sometimes the other guy is going to beat you," Ellington said. "When you put our kind of defensive pressure on people, it happens. To apply pressure and force a mistake, you have to get past that fear of your guy going in and getting a layup."
Spoken like the kind of perceptive veteran that seems to populate every corner of this year's roster. Of course, we've heard them say most of this before, right? After most every loss last season--yep, all three of them--players would comment about a renewed commitment to defense, about the need to get that one big stop when it was required.
But most of these players have two or three years under Williams. By this point, is there any room for improvement? At some point, don't we already have a fairly clear picture of how they're going to play defense, with no room for change?
"No," said Deon Thompson. "There is potential to get better. We will be able to score points like no other, but we have to stop people. The main focus of this team is defense."
So let's imagine that Ellington turns into a lockdown defender, Thompson and Tyler Hansbrough dominate the paint, and Ty Lawson controls the opposing team's point guard--and in turn, the game's pace.
At that point, then, Roy Williams would anoint his team a great defensive team. Right?
"I don't think so," Thompson said with a laugh. "I don't think he'd ever call us a great defensive team. He wants us to continually get better and not settle."
But he might scale back the defensive work in practice. Fifteen minutes of conditioning and an hour and 45 minutes of defense sounds about right.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of four books on Carolina basketball.
