University of North Carolina Athletics
Penn Game Guide
November 14, 2008 | Men's Basketball
Nov. 14, 2008
By Lauren Brownlow
The Basics
No. 1/1 North Carolina will host Penn in the season-opener for both teams. Carolina is coming off of a record-setting 36-3 season and its 17th Final Four. Carolina returns all five starters and lost just two scholarship players last season. Penn is returning four starters from a team that finished 13-18 last season but 8-6 in the Ivy League, good for third place (despite being the youngest team in the conference). The Quakers were picked to finish second in the Ivy League this season. Carolina is 86-12 all-time in season-openers and 91-7 in home openers. Carolina has won three straight season-openers after losing at Santa Clara in 2005; the Tar Heels have lost just two home openers since 1928. Carolina has a record of 166-28 all-time as the nation's No. 1 team including a 30-5 record this decade. Carolina was also the first-ever unanimous No. 1 in the AP poll since it began in 1981-82.
The two teams have met seven times with Carolina holding a 5-2 lead. Three of the seven meetings were in NCAA Tournament play. This will mark the third meeting in the last three years in the regular season. The last time Penn had a victory in the series was on March 11, 1979, the infamous Black Sunday in which the top two seeds in the East Regional - North Carolina (No. 1) and Duke (No. 2) - lost in back-to-back games at Reynolds Coliseum in Raleigh in the second round. Penn knocked off the Tar Heels, 72-71, right before the Blue Devils lost to St. John's.
Game Time: Penn at North Carolina, 4:00 PM.
Last Time: No. 1 Carolina defeated Penn at the Palestra on December 5, 2007 by a score of 106-71. Carolina got out to a 50-37 halftime lead but allowed Penn to hit 17-of-30 shots (56.7 percent). Carolina hit 66.7% of its field goals in the second half and held the Quakers to 39.4% shooting, outscoring Penn 56-34. Carolina outrebounded Penn 49-24 (including a 20-7 edge on the offensive glass) and shot 57.3% for the game. Carolina also had 16 assists, 19 turnovers and 13 steals. Penn had 14 assists to 22 turnovers.
Tyler Hansbrough led the way for Carolina with 29 points in 25 minutes on 12-of-16 shooting. He also had ten rebounds. Deon Thompson had his first career double-double with 12 points on 6-of-10 shooting and ten rebounds. Danny Green was the second-leading scorer on the night with 19 points on 9-of-12 shooting, adding five rebounds, four steals, two assists and a block in just 16 minutes. Ty Lawson led Carolina in assts with four and added 14 points on 5-of-7 shooting. Wayne Ellington was a little tight in his homecoming game at the Palestra, getting a hard-earned 13 points on 5-of-14 shooting. Freshman Tyler Bernardini led Penn with a career-high 26 points on 10-of-17 shooting. The only other Quaker in double figures was last year's leading scorer Brian Grandieri who had 17 points on 7-of-13 shooting and a team-high six rebounds. Andreas Schreiber added nine points on 4-of-7 shooting.
Radio Coverage: Tar Heel Sports Network coverage begins at 3:00 and can be heard live and free of charge on TarHeelBlue.com. The football game, which kicks off at 3:30, will be airing on Tar Heel Sports Network stations. The men's basketball broadcast will be carried on a tape delay beginning at 8:00 PM on Saturday. Some markets will carry the basketball game on a second station live; check your local listings. For more information on the free internet broadcast of the basketball game, click here.
Injury Report: Marcus Ginyard will be out until mid-December after undergoing surgery on October 8th to repair a stress fracture in his left foot. Tyler Hansbrough has been held out of practice for the last two weeks with a stress reaction and is listed as extremely doubtful for this game. Michael Copeland tore his ACL in a pickup game in May and had surgery in June. He will be out until sometime midseason. Freshman Justin Watts hyper-extended his left knee in practice last week and is questionable for the Penn game.
Storylines
Playing without Tyler Hansbrough and Marcus Ginyard: Carolina might be one of the more loaded teams in the country but it will begin its season without two of its five returning starters in reigning National Player of the Year Tyler Hansbrough and defensive ace Marcus Ginyard. Even before Hansbrough knew he would be out, he was regretting what the Tar Heels would miss without Ginyard. "I think Marcus brings a lot of leadership to practice. He gives us a lot of enthusiasm. He's a vocal leader on this team so we'll miss that and definitely his defense. That stands out to everybody the way he plays defense," Hansbrough said. "Some guys are going to have to step up. Whoever it is, Danny Green or whoever, somebody's going to have to step up and make sure they play some defense. When Marcus is ready to play, hopefully he'll get back in there and do what he's always done."
Certainly, Hansbrough's absence will be much more significant in the short-term. Carolina will be missing an almost guaranteed 20 points and ten rebounds every game. Carolina has quite a few talented players that are capable of picking up the slack. But even Ty Lawson admitted that it's been easy to take for granted what Hansbrough brings to the table until it's gone. "It was kind of tough. I'm realizing how much he really does down there. He scores, gets rebounds, takes charges," Lawson said. "He's our inside presence, so he gets us a lot of easy buckets. We're a more two-dimensional team because we don't have to rely on our outside shot as much, so I hope he gets back soon."
Rebounding will certainly be an important area missing with the absence of particularly Hansbrough but also Ginyard. Against Pembroke, Carolina out-rebounded a team which lacked height by a slim margin, 44-37. In the first half, that margin was even slimmer at 22-20. At the end of the game, Pembroke had edged out Carolina on the offensive boards, 16-12. Between Hansbrough and Ginyard, Carolina will be missing 14.7 rebounds per game (with Alex Stepheson's transfer, it's 19.2) out of 43.5 per game. Without Stepheson, Ginyard and Hansbrough, Carolina is now missing 37.6% of its rebounding from last season and 41.9% of its offensive rebounds.
But Carolina was able to do something that it has struggled to do consistently - shoot three-pointers. Carolina made 10-of-21 three-pointers in the game (47.6%) and 5-of-9 in the second half. Four different players made at least one three-pointer and that is not counting Will Graves, a normally reliable three-point shooter who missed both attempts. Carolina might be missing Hansbrough and Ginyard but it retains three players - Lawson, Wayne Ellington and Danny Green - and adds another in Bobby Frasor that can all shoot the three-pointer. It's something that will help the Tar Heels become a more well-rounded team even when Hansbrough gets back.
"I think it's very important even when he (Hansbrough) is in there because it opens it up for the big men inside but it also makes teams not want to play zone against us," Green said. "So when a team goes zone and they're knocking down shots, they're going to want to change up and play man. When they play man, it's easier for us to get into our offensive sets and do more things. Knocking down outside shots opens up the floor for the big men to work inside. They can't really double as much because they have to watch for the shooters, especially when we're swinging the ball around like we did tonight."
Becoming an elite defensive team: When asked if his team had a `glaring' weakness going into this season, Roy Williams seemed a little surprised. "We were 36-3 last year. There's not a heck of a lot of glaring weaknesses out there, I don't think," Williams said. "Not `glaring' weakness. That's like my bunker game. That's a frickin' glaring weakness."
Williams' bunker game aside, he eventually conceded that perhaps the defensive end was a bit of a weakness - or at least something the team needs to improve. "We do have to get better defensively. I've said that since Day One. Last year's team for example, we did get better defensively, but at the end of the year, we were still just a good defensive team and I'm hoping that we can be a great defensive team," Williams said. "A weakness can be described as something you don't do as well as others and so I would say that would be a weakness for us that we do want to do better. We want to do it better in two ways - we'd like to force more turnovers and also hold teams to a lower field goal percentage, which is really hard because if you force more turnovers, it means you're gambling, and if you gamble more, you give better shots."
Against UNC-Pembroke, Carolina forced 29 turnovers and scored 36 points off of those turnovers. Carolina had 17 steals, ten of which came in the first half. On those ten first-half steals, Carolina wasn't being as efficient with the ball as it would like, shooting 4-of-6 from the field, scoring 10 points and turning it back over again three times. But in the second half, Carolina scored 11 points on seven steals, shooting 4-of-5 from the field and turning it back over just once.
Carolina allowed Pembroke to actually take an early lead, 8-2 with 17:33 to go in the first half, on the strength of 4-of-6 shooting. Carolina clawed back but was only up 20-10 with 9:34 to go in the half; it had allowed 9-of-17 shooting in the first 10:30. In the final 9:12 of the half, it held Pembroke to 3-of-15 shooting (at one point it was 1-of-13) and just six points. "I don't know that we were excited but we didn't have very much intelligence," Williams said. "We gave them two lay-ups just off very simple little back-screens and we work on that kind of thing all the time. I think we got better as the game went along. I think we got better defensively as the game went along."
Some have wondered if this team is capable of making the necessary improvements to become the type of defensive team it needs to be to win a national championship. With the absence of Hansbrough and Ginyard, two of Carolina's better defenders, Carolina's freshmen will certainly have to learn quickly. Larry Drew II showed flashes of brilliance on that end, ending the game with four steals in 14 minutes. Ed Davis had three blocks.
What made the 2005 national championship an elite defensive team was that it would get in the opponents' face, force turnovers and execute a flawless fast break. That team was able to do something that the ideal Williams-coached team can do - play fast on both ends. It's certainly a tough balance but if this team wants to be elite then it will have to pull it off. "I think that playing fast is a tangible way to try to get the depth to be more of a factor. That's what we have to do but we also need to try to do it defensively," Williams said. "It's a huge battle for me because I say I want us to go crazy defensively but be fundamentally sound. Those are really, really hard to do and very few teams can, but I think we can."
At The Game
Listening to the Tar Heel Sports Network at the game: The in-stadium frequency in the Smith Center will be FM 92.7. That station will have a non-delayed feed of WCHL 1360, the local affiliate.
Watching At Home
Turn down the sound: If you're watching at home while listening to the radio or over the computer via Carolina All-Access, there will inevitably be some delay. For the reason - and a possible solution - click here.
A full list of THSN affiliates can be found here.
Fox Sports Net South/NESN coverage: The game will be available on Fox Sports Net South/NESN. Bob Rathbun and Mike Gminski will have the call.
Names To Know
Ty Lawson: It's easy to forget just how good a healthy Ty Lawson can look. In the final 11 games of the season after returning from his ankle injury, Lawson averaged 11.0 points per game, 4.1 assists, 1.1 steals and 1.9 turnovers. Those are nice numbers. But in his first 21 injury-free games, Lawson had averaged 13.6 points, 5.7 assists, 1.9 steals and 2.3 turnovers. He also shot 54.3% from the floor in that span compared to 45.2% after his return. Fans were so thrilled to see the speedy point guard back in action that they might not have noticed the lingering effects of his injury. He had shot 82-of-133 (61.7%) from two-point range in his first 21 games. In his 11 post-injury games, he shot 28-of-56 (50%).
The old Lawson was back against UNC-Pembroke. His offensive numbers weren't particularly gaudy - 4-of-7 from the floor, 1-of-2 from beyond the arc and 5-of-6 from the line for 14 points - but he had six steals in just 22 minutes. Five of those steals came in the first half in 14 minutes. "I'm 100 percent healthy," Lawson said. "I can't wait for it now, since I missed a big part of last season and the part that I come back for I was still a little hurt and couldn't do my thing. I'm dunking again and I'm ready for the season to show people what I can do."
Carolina point guards are often held to a higher standard in terms of what is expected of them leadership-wise, both on and off the court. It's never been Lawson's style to be especially vocal. But with the way he was anticipating passes and picking them off against Pembroke, his play could set a tone, particularly on the defensive end.
Deon Thompson: The senior forward will undoubtedly have to play a much bigger - and different - role in the Carolina offense while Hansbrough is out. It's a role that he's not quite used to yet; as a freshman, he got to come off the bench to spell Hansbrough and Brandon Wright and even as a starter, he let Hansbrough carry most of the load. Most of the team did the same. Now he has had to readjust his game and remember what it is to be the main post presence in an offense. "It's actually even harder (without Hansbrough) almost in a sense, just because I almost forgot how to play with my back to the basket," Thompson said. "So it's just trying to get back to that and using my jump-hooks and things like that. I worked so much in the summer just trying to work with him. When he has double teams, he passes to me and things like that. So I've just to get back on working on my back to the basket until he gets back."
The adjustment period showed in the first half against UNC-Pembroke as he shot 2-of-6 from the field in the first half and had four points in 12 minutes. He did pull down six rebounds in the first half and blocked a shot. But in the second half, he shot 3-of-3 from the field, 4-of-4 from the foul line and had ten points in nine minutes. He also had another four rebounds to give him a double-double. According to Thompson, his biggest concern is his consistency (or lack of it at times). Thompson had nine games last season in which he had eight or more rebounds. In those games, he averaged 8.9 points and shot 41.8% from the field. In the other 30 games, he averaged 8.2 points per game, shot 50.2% from the field and averaged just 3.5 rebounds. In his 14 double-figure scoring games, Thompson shot 62.1% from the field and averaged 12.9 points and 5.6 rebounds. When he failed to reach double figures in 25 games, he shot 36.4% from the field, averaged 5.8 points and 4.4 rebounds.
Thompson himself said that at times last season, he would find that if he missed his first few shots, he would be mentally out of a game. It's something he's tried to work on in the off-season, as much as a person can work on something like that. "I put so much pressure on myself that mentally I was just all over the place. Now I'm just going to play basketball and not worry too much," Thompson said. "That's the biggest thing for me and that's what Coach tells me not to worry about it. If I miss a shot, don't get down on that shot. Go back and try to make up for it on defense. That's what I've been really trying to figure out how to do. I think once I get into practice, it will be a lot easier to start working on such things like that."
The Thompson the Tar Heels will need - both without Hansbrough and when he returns - is the NCAA Tournament version. That Thompson shot 70.6% from the field and averaged 10.8 points, 4.6 rebounds and a little under a block in 20.4 minutes per game. That version showed how far the regular-season one - which shot 45% from the floor and averaged 8.0 points - had come.
Tyler Bernardini: The 6-6 sophomore guard is the leading returning scorer for the Quakers, averaging 12.9 points per game last season. His efforts led to him being named the Ivy League and Philadelphia Big 5 Rookie of the Year. Since the latter award began in 1999, it was the first time ever that a Penn freshman won it. He also earned Honorable Mention All-Ivy honors and was the five-time Ivy League Rookie of the Week. He shot 44.5% from the field and 39.5% from beyond the arc, leading the team in three-pointers made with 45 and in three-point percentage. He also shot 77.6% from the foul line, making 83-of-107 (his 83 made free throws were more than all but one teammate attempted). He averaged 2.5 rebounds and 1.5 assists, adding 11 blocks and 22 steals on the season. Bernardini had his career-high against Carolina last season with 26 points. He shot 10-of-17 from the floor, 1-of-3 from beyond the arc and 2-of-3 from the foul line, adding six rebounds, two assists and a steal in 25 minutes.
Jack Eggleston: Eggleston, a 6-8 sophomore forward, is the leading returner rebounder for the Quakers (4.2 per game) and the second-leading returning scorer (8.0 points per game). He is tied for the most experienced player returning in terms of minutes, averaging 26.7 minutes per game. He is the leading returning starter with 29 starts last season. He shot 48.4% from the floor, 37.5% from beyond the arc (12-of-32) and 84.1% from the foul line, a percentage that led the team. He is also the second-leading returner in assists with 52 (1.7 per game) and also had 12 blocks and 27 steals. Like any freshman, he was inconsistent but in his first game last season, he had seven points, eight rebounds and hit the shot that sent the game into overtime against Drexel. Last season against Carolina, Eggleston had just two points on 1-of-4 shooting and had one rebound, three assists and one steal in 29 minutes. In his final game last season against Princeton, he had 15 points, six rebounds, three assists and three steals.
Quotables
"I think it's sort of stupid to talk about it (going undefeated). I did say `sort of' so if you talk about it, you don't have to say I said you were stupid but I'll say you're sort of stupid." -Roy Williams
"I will tell you that we did coaching talks at the end of August - Joe Wolf is with the Milwaukee Bucks and Jeff Lebo is at Auburn. Tyler (Hansbrough) came through and I introduced him to those guys. They left and Joe looked at (Jeff) Lebo and said, `Did they (Hansbrough, Frasor and Ginyard) jump off the same balcony we did?'" -Roy Williams on the infamous fraternity `balcony jumping' incident
"I kidded him (Larry Drew II) because he goes through and makes that lay-up and he was so happy. We have had a philosophy - for 21 years as a head coach, the point guard gives a signal of what defense we're playing. He still hadn't given a signal. He was trying to make sure his girlfriend saw that he had scored." -Roy Williams
"I'm teaching him (Larry Drew II) little things, especially things that get on Coach (Williams') nerves, to run the court, every little thing - whatever Coach says, goes. Even if he says `The moon is purple,' you've got to believe him." - Ty Lawson
Lauren Brownlow is the managing editor of Tar Heel Monthly.
