University of North Carolina Athletics
Brownlow: Bag Of Tricks
February 6, 2009 | Women's Basketball
Feb. 6, 2009
By Lauren Brownlow
Sylvia Hatchell is no motivational guru, but she does have a "bag of tricks" she pulls from time to time. She even gave each of her assistant coaches an actual bag of tricks to mark her 800th win as sort of an inside joke. She has pulled something out of it that day against NC State when her team needed a spark on the court, and she has tried to pull things out of it off the court as well.
For Hatchell, it ranges from telling the girls to put on their `big-girl' panties last season to breaking out the fire hats, hoping to hose her team off after the game this year. She even has her popsicle sticks she keeps rubber-banded to symbolize her teams' togetherness.
But the beauty of her tricks is that there's nothing tricky about them. It's the simplicity and complete lack of subtlety that make them so effective.
That's why before her team played Virginia, she and freshman Laura Broomfield went into the rooms of the girls who live on campus right before curfew and taped huge posters that said `REBOUND' and `BOX OUT' to their ceilings above their beds. She's been saying she wants her team to eat, sleep and breathe rebounding - now, she wants them dreaming it.
"I actually kind of dream about it," Jessica Breland, who notched a double-double against Virginia Tech with 20 points and 11 rebounds, said. "I'll be twitching and jumping and stuff because I'll be thinking about rebounding when I'm sleeping."
Hatchell even taped a few extra signs around Breland's room, including a sign on her bathroom mirror. Since that game, the talented junior has averaged 8.7 boards and has three double-doubles in the last four games.
Basketball is a game that is often made more complicated than it is my coaches, analysts and fans alike. But in the end, it comes down to putting the ball in the basket more times than opponents. Carolina has been able to do that in recent games.
The 57.1% shooting performance not only marked the second-best shooting night of the season for the Tar Heels, it was also the first time Carolina has managed back-to-back games of 50 percent or higher since the first three games of the year. Carolina has averaged 95.5 points in its last two games and has made 18-of-36 three's. In two of its three losses against Connecticut and Georgia Tech, it made 7-of-32 three's (21.9 percent).
Just ask Rashanda McCants about making basketball too complicated than it needs to be. The senior star wants nothing more than to lead her team to victory in every game. There have been plenty of games this season where she has been trying so hard and not getting the kinds of results that she wants.
Starting with the Georgia Tech game, she fouled out of three straight games (two losses) and had 41 points in 76 minutes. In the last two games, she has shot 15-of-20 from the floor and has 37 points in just 40 minutes. She made her first nine shots in a row against the Hokies and didn't miss until fewer than five minutes remained in the game.
So it was a simple trick for McCants as well that helped her improve her game. She had a talk with a friend and simply tried to change her outlook and her focus. "I've just been thinking positive thoughts, attack the basket, small things that make a big difference to a player," McCants said. "I'm not thinking of the biggest goals, like `Oh, you missed a shot. It's going to lose the game.' Instead, it's, `You missed a shot. It's okay. Get back, play defense and you'll make the next one.' So just small things like that, I've been trying to focus on and keeping my intensity up to help my teammates."
She would have never known that she would have had 23 points in 25 minutes when she woke up this morning. She woke up and felt sick, something she attributed jokingly to "getting old" when she walked into the media room with ice on various limbs but later said was probably a combination of school and lack of sleep.
"I ate a Gatorade bar and by the time it was tip-off, I got the tip-off and fell on the floor, it was game time," McCants said. "I felt good whenever I got an offensive rebound and put it back. From there, I felt a spark. So I went from there and my teammates contributed by getting me easy shots. I just went with it."
It would seem so simple for McCants to dominate all opponents, and it's not that she hasn't tried. Virginia Tech simply had no answer for her; she's too quick for most post players to guard and too tall for many guards to stop. But sometimes, players can get too far into their own heads and have trouble getting out. McCants found her own trick to get out of her own head and it's important to Carolina that she stays out.
There were some little things that her team didn't do as well as Hatchell would have liked - the Hokies shot 49.2%, the highest percentage Carolina has allowed all season - but Hatchell will continue to pull things out of her bag of tricks to help fix it.
"We just weren't communicating. We just had the wrong people on players. Also, in some of our rotations in our traps, we were getting really out of sync when we were trapping. We didn't have people rotating and covering like they were supposed to," Hatchell said. "They'll see a lot of film tomorrow afternoon at 4:00 on that. I can guarantee you that. It will be on the film."
McCants and Breland sighed and smiled at each other knowingly. Another day, another trick for the Tar Heels.
