University of North Carolina Athletics
Marshall Game Guide
December 21, 2009 | Men's Basketball
Dec. 21, 2009
By Lauren Brownlow
The Basics
No. 10/10 North Carolina (8-3) will return to the Smith Center for a three-game home stand before 2009 ends to face Marshall (9-1). Carolina just ended a stretch of five games against top-25 teams in a month, going 2-3 in those contests. Just one of those games were in the Smith Center. Carolina dropped its last contest to No. 2 Texas, 103-90, in Arlington last Saturday. Marshall is coming off of a 109-76 win over High Point on Sunday night. Marshall has won seven games in a row and has scored 99 points or more in four of its last five games. Carolina leads the all-time series with the Thundering Herd, 2-0.
Game Time: Marshall at North Carolina, 7:00 PM.
Last Time: Carolina beat Marshall 116-62 on January 2, 1994 in the Smith Center. Carolina shot 58.2% from the floor while Marshall shot just 35.8 percent. Carolina also had 30 assists to 12 turnovers while Marshall had 12 assists to 25 turnovers. Six Tar Heels hit double figures, led by Dante Calabria who had 20 points on 8-of-10 shooting (3-of-4 from beyond the arc). Rasheed Wallace had 17 points on 8-of-8 shooting, adding 16 rebounds and five blocked shots. Eric Montross had 16 points, Brian Reese added 14 and Derrick Phelps and Jerry Stackhouse added ten each. Jeff McInnis had 11 assists and missed a double-double by one point. Marshall was led by Shawn Moore with 21 points. Malik Hightower had 16 points and Tink Brown added ten.
Radio Coverage: Tar Heel Sports Network coverage will begin at 6:00 PM.
Storylines
Getting to the line: Perhaps it's a little unfair to compare this team's ability - or inability - to get to the foul line with last year's bunch, a group led by a savvy and quick point guard and the NCAA career leader in free-throw shooting. But there is no question that this team has to figure out a way to keep teams off the foul line and get there a little more often, too. Carolina is averaging 23.5 free-throw attempts per game and making 15.2 per game. Carolina's opponents are averaging 15.4 attempts and making 10.5. But Carolina's top-25 opponents have hung with them on the foul line, averaging 20.8 attempts to Carolina's 22.6 and converting 66.3% compared to 64.6% for Carolina. But it was particularly a concern against Texas. Carolina's 19 free throws were tied for the second-fewest it has attempted all season, six behind the 13 it attempted at Kentucky. The 34 foul shots Texas attempted are 12 more than the previous high by a Carolina opponent; both Ohio State and Kentucky attempted 22. In fact, both Ohio State and Kentucky scored over 20% of their points from the line.
"I'm pretty straightforward - I said, `Guys, in the press conference I talked about the rebounding advantage and I talked about that they shoot 34 free throws to our 19. Those are two areas - you can't have somebody shoot 15 more free throws and get 19 more rebounds. That just means they're more aggressive. You can't have that and expect to win the game,'" Williams said.
Marshall has had trouble keeping its opponents off the foul line as well, allowing opponents to average 19.4 trips there compared to 23.3 trips for the Thundering Herd. But Marshall is a team that has penetrating guards capable of drawing fouls and Marshall has had seven games this season with 22 or more free-throw attempts. Carolina has also had seven such games, but in one more game than Marshall has played. An up-and-coming team with nothing to lose will have no problem being aggressive and going at the Tar Heels.
The opponent in the middle: This is the perfect kind of game to test Carolina before ACC play begins. This group has had a tough stretch of top-25 (and in most cases, top-10) matchups the last few weeks. Carolina has faced teams like NC Central, Gardner-Webb and Presbyterian, teams that have given Carolina a nice break from the rigors of its schedule but teams Carolina could beat without its best effort. And Carolina fans saw when Nevada came into the Smith Center that a tough "mid-major" opponent with some talent on its roster is not the type of team that Carolina can just out-talent. As college basketball shows us so often, as it did when Miami of Ohio nearly knocked off Kentucky in Lexington, anything can happen on any given night, particularly when young teams are involved. And Roy Williams thinks it's a good thing that his young team will be challenged in this kind of a way.
"We need some confidence right now. (Marshall) is a good game for us because we don't know if we're going to win. I didn't want it to be somebody that we're going to go out there and ... we play Presbyterian and we win by 40 or 50 and everybody says, `Oh, well we're okay.' Well, we didn't do some things very well in that game, either," Williams said. "This game against Marshall, they're really good. They're 9-1. Their only loss is to Old Dominion who beat Georgetown at Georgetown. The good thing is, if we go out and play well and do well, then that might give us some confidence. Presbyterian was false confidence. You need some of that confidence to know that you can make plays when the other team really is pretty doggone good."
Marshall is run by former Billy Donavan assistant Donnie Jones, who wants to play up-tempo basketball initiated by pressing. He wants to play a lot of players, and he has been doing that. Ten players average 10 or more minutes and another sees 9.3 per game. Of those 11, all average 4.1 points per game or more and nine shoot 45% or better from the floor. Eight players have 50 or more points this year and four average four or more rebounds. The team returns four of five starters from last season and has three seniors and a junior as part of their main rotation. Carolina has just two seniors and a junior in its rotation.
But Carolina's inexperience, never meant as an excuse, is something that has shown itself particularly in games like the Texas game. "It was 3:06 on the clock and there's a timeout and we're down (11). We had the talk in the huddle about, `Come on guys, get that frickin' look off your face. We can do this. We can make this happen. You guys have got to get more positive. We've got to get after it,'" Williams said. "We were sitting there down nine with 3:05 to play against Duke and I said, `If you do what I tell you to do to the best of your ability, we're going to win the game.' The guys said, `Okay.' (Against Texas), you've got to sort of swat them on the top of the head with a yardstick to get their heads up and to get them to understand that it can still be done.
"A lot of that is the experience and the confidence that you gain from being able to handle adversity. Right now, we're not handling it as well as I would like, but also it's not time to jump off the ship because those other teams that we've played are pretty doggone good. We're gaining something from that. I do believe that we have the make-up of some guys who can really do some big-time things for us."
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 South/NESN coverage: The game will be available on Fox Sports South/NESN. Mike Hogewood and Dan Bonner will have the call.
Names To Know
Marcus Ginyard: As a redshirt senior struggling with injuries and trying to lead a young team to reach its potential, Marcus Ginyard is taking a lot of the responsibility for this team on himself. And that's a tough burden for anyone to bear, particularly having to live up to a leader like David Noel in 2006 and to try to make this team live up to that 2006 squad, one that featured a Carolina great in Tyler Hansbrough. Then Ginyard gets banged up and has had to play as many as four positions in his career and more than one this year. So understandably, he is frustrated. He is still having a very good year, shooting over 50% from the floor and just under 50% from beyond the arc, averaging 10.7 points, 3.9 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 1.7 steals in 31.2 minutes.
But as one of the senior leaders, he feels ownership of the team's effort, which explains why he has been so despondent after not only the three losses, but also some of the poor performances. With Carolina down 78-66, Ginyard did his best to take over, making 3-of-3 shots and scoring eight of his 13 points in a little over three minutes, starting and finishing a 12-4 Carolina run that cut the lead to four. Sadly, Carolina would not get any closer, but after the game, Ginyard was asked about trying to take the game on his shoulders. "As a team, we just didn't have any energy. Their energy level was higher than ours. Their intensity was higher than ours. They were just competing out there and for the majority of the game, and we weren't. I'm just trying to show a little more effort out there and just try to get this team to compete a little better," Ginyard said. "It's just a decision that we have to make individually and as a team, to go out every night and give our best effort."
Ginyard has ended a Carolina possession, either by a free-throw attempt, a missed shot or a turnover, on average about 12 times per game. In two of Carolina's three losses, Ginyard ended 17 of Carolina's possessions, his highest amount of possessions in any game this year. The next-highest amount is 13, in two games. It's no coincidence that some of his best games - a 13-point outing against Ohio State and a 17-point day against NC Central - saw him end just 21 of Carolina's possessions combined in those two games, scoring 30 points and turning it over just three times. Simply put, Ginyard is at his best when he doesn't feel that he has to handle the scoring load by himself. And as this team improves and other players gradually gain confidence, Ginyard should be able to stop feeling the need to shoulder the scoring load as other players become more aggressive. But he has shown he is capable of doing all he can do to try to lead his team to a win.
Dexter Strickland: The freshman had been improving his play in the past few weeks, averaging 7.0 points on 50% shooting (3-of-4 from beyond the arc) in Carolina's last two top-25 matchups. He had shot 0-of-5 from the floor and scored no points in Carolina's first two top-25 games in Madison Square Garden. Against Texas, it was like a light bulb clicked on in his head and he attempted a season-high eight shots, making five of them, and scored a career-high 12 points. He also had three assists, one steal and two turnovers in 18 minutes, tied for the most he has played this season. He did all of this while coming off of a hamstring injury right after his first batch of final exams. In the second half alone, Strickland had eight points on 4-of-7 shooting and did not commit a turnover in eight minutes.
Strickland has averaged 1.0 points per possession in the last three games against top-ten teams and has just four turnovers in 26 possessions. In those three games, Marcus Ginyard and Larry Drew II have had 36 possessions each and have turned it over a combined 20 times (55.6% loss of ball). Strickland has just 15.4% loss of ball in those games after starting out the season losing it 37.1% of the time. He also had just 17 points on his first 35 possessions as a Tar Heel, averaging around 5.0 possessions ended per game, which means he wasn't being aggressive enough and if he was, he was turning it over. Well, the last three games, he has ended around 8.7 Tar Heel possessions and turned it over 1.3 times per contest. "Dexter is aggressive; he does have some intensity about him and I think that's what's put him in a position to get as much playing time and perhaps even more coming up," Williams said. "He got some valuable minutes and he's going to keep getting valuable minutes."
Strickland was often out on the court with Drew II against Texas and that appeared to be very effective, allowing Strickland to be more aggressive and Drew II to run the team without worrying about scoring. But Williams was quick to point out that Strickland has been under quite a load as a freshman trying to learn - and effectively play - two positions. "He needs to be a point guard, so we're giving him so much time at the point guard. Then the other day we put him in the game at the two and we try to run a play and he's supposed to go left and he goes right. How can we expect a kid to do that with 35,000 people, the pressure? We're asking a freshman who's just finished going through final exams for a whole week to not only play a position he's never played before, then we say, oh yeah, you've got to learn another position too so you can play two spots."
Hassan Whiteside: Whiteside is a true freshman 7-0 forward from Gastonia, NC. Those types of players tend to be pretty pumped up a trip into the Smith Center, but Whiteside has been playing very well all year long. As most freshmen do, he had a rough start to the season, scoring 12 combined points in the second and third games of the year on 4-of-12 shooting. In the last seven games, all Marshall wins, he has averaged 14.3 points, 10.6 rebounds, 6.1 blocks and shooting 63.6 percent from the floor. He has already notched the first triple-double in Marshall history against Brescia, scoring 17 points to go with 14 rebounds and 11 blocked shots in just 25 minutes. According to Ken Pomeroy, he is second in the nation in block percentage, blocking 20.8% and ranks in the top 60 in both defensive and offensive rebounding percentages. This year's Blue Ribbon Preview called Whiteside's offensive skill-set "raw", which is frightening considering he is their second-leading scorer.
Tyler Wilkerson: The 6-8 senior forward leads a very deep Marshall team in scoring with 13.5 points per game. He also averages 7.0 rebounds and 1.7 blocks in 22 minutes. He notched his first double-double of the season against High Point with 18 points and ten rebounds. He has shot above 50% in all but two games this season; one of the two was Marshall's only loss to Old Dominion. He has shown great ability but hasn't quite put it together consistently; he did average over ten points and shot 52.2% last season before breaking his jaw and missing the final ten games of the year. This season, after starting out the first five games averaging 12 points and shooting 46.7% from the floor, he has averaged 15 points in the last five games and shot 64.6 percent from the floor. He also has made 5-of-15 three's this year, showing that he has the ability to shoot from anywhere.
Quotables
"Coach Smith told me one time, `Just be yourself.' Regretfully, sometimes that's been bad." -Roy Williams
"How they're different, I have no idea. I started watching them play when they were freshmen and ... it's mind-boggling. I'm not going to tell you their GPA but after six hours of summer school, 12 hours in the first semester - it's exactly the same thing. Supposedly, David is a little more serious, Travis is a little more wacko but both of them are wacko as far as we're concerned - in a good way." -Roy Williams on the Wear twins
"It's not okay to play cool. I really don't like people to be cool. It's not part of my vocabulary." -Roy Williams
Lauren Brownlow is the executive editor of Tar Heel Monthly.
