University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Team Defense
November 28, 2010 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Nov. 28, 2010
By Adam Lucas
The standard rules of defense don't apply when you're facing an opponent who singlehandedly attempts 27 shots.
That's how many field goals Andrew Goudelock attempted for the College of Charleston on Sunday night at the Smith Center. Some were long three-pointers; he took 15 shots from beyond the stripe. Some were driving rainmakers, arched just off the backboard and through the net. All of them made you nervous, especially after his overtime-forcing three-pointer against the Tar Heels last year in Charleston that impossibly scraped over the fingertips of 6-foot-9 Deon Thompson.
Goudelock tossed in his 20th point on a heat check-type three-pointer with 10:57 remaining. It was his third three-pointer in less than three minutes and it gave the Cougars a 52-49 lead. To that point, he was living up to every bit of the Carolina scouting report on him, which read, "Go-to guy, scorer, make him drive, get a hand up on every shot."
"He's capable of making bombs," said Charleston head coach Bobby Cremins, who added that his plan was to keep his team close and hope Goudelock got hot. This was a scary proposition, because if anyone knows how to keep a team close against Carolina and wait for someone to get hot, it's Cremins. Fred Vinson, Dennis Scott, and all the members of the Barry family can testify to the success of that strategy. All of them shot their respective Cremins-coached Georgia Tech teams--teams that were probably outmanned by the Tar Heels, in most cases--to victory over Carolina.
But Goudelock didn't--this time. He went 0-for-6 over the next 9:59, finding the basket again only once the clock was under 1:00 and the Tar Heels had built a 71-63 lead.
Much of the credit will go to Dexter Strickland, who drew the man-to-man assignment on the sharpshooter for much of that stretch. He spent the better part of 15 postgame minutes answering questions about his defensive efforts. By the time the crowd around him had thinned to just one, he was ready to make a very pointed comment about the Carolina defense.
"Everybody keeps talking about my individual defense," he said. "It's not just me. What's important is that the team defended him well. Larry (Drew) had to guard the point guard and pressure him so it was hard for them to get Goudelock to get the ball. Our guards did a great job pressuring their guards. I tried to limit his touches, but it was a team defensive effort."
That just sounds like a Carolina player, doesn't it? Somewhere, Dean Smith would really like that comment. He'd also have loved the way Strickland, a man who has taken the exact same number of shots this season (27) as Goudelock took in the game, found other ways to contribute. In the last 10 minutes alone, he defended, he picked up a key offensive rebound, he grabbed multiple crucial loose balls, and he made several good decisions on the fast break.
Oh, and also--Strickland is right. Harrison Barnes, Leslie McDonald and even Justin Watts had at least one possession on the hot shooter over the game's final quarter. But it was less about their one-on-one work and more about the total team awareness--that trait that sadly only comes with experience, something none of us have the patience to wait to develop.
Consider a possession with three minutes left, when the Cougars inbounded the ball at midcourt after a timeout. Strickland had to run through and around a pair of staggered screens just to be there when Goudelock caught the ball on the right wing. Strickland's trajectory had him off-balance by the time he arrived at his man, and Goudelock craftily guided him right into another screen.
This created the sliver of daylight that has launched many an opposing jumper. But Tyler Zeller wisely and alertly stepped out to get a 7-foot paw into the shooter's face, pushing him away from the basket and allowing Strickland enough time to recover. Drew stepped over to apply some token pressure and prevent Goudelock from moving easily around the big man. Barnes took two steps to his left to make sure Zeller's original man didn't flow unimpeded to the basket for an easy hoop. Watts maintained contact with his man to avoid an easy diagonal pass for a weak-side basket.
In that moment, five Tar Heels were defending the one man who could beat them. Not necessarily by guarding him themselves, or even by having eye contact with him. But by doing what their specific role was at that particular moment on that particular possession.
Spoiling the offensive opportunity gave the defense a chance to reset. Goudelock--who also battled cramping issues late in the game--was guided a couple feet back toward midcourt by Strickland and launched a 22-footer (one of those "bombs" Cremins was talking about) that was short.
It was, indeed, solid defense by Strickland. But the Cougars still figured out a way to spring their scorer from tight individual defense.
Tough team defense, though? There's no defense for that.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of six books on Carolina basketball, including the official chronicle of the first 100 years of Tar Heel hoops, A Century of Excellence, which is available now. Get real-time UNC sports updates from the THM staff on Twitter.
