University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Case For The Defense
January 11, 2012 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Jan. 11, 2012
By Adam Lucas
The best compliments are always the unexpected ones.
So it was for Dexter Strickland on Tuesday night. He'd just finished one of his best games of the season, shooting 7-for-9 from the field, scoring 14 points, and handing out three assists against zero turnovers. Combined with backcourt partner Kendall Marshall, the duo either scored or assisted on 23 of Carolina's 31 field goals in a 73-56 win over Miami.
Predictably, it was not his team's offense that impressed Roy Williams. "At times," the head coach said, "we were really good defensively."
When this comment was relayed to Strickland, he immediately understood its value.
"It means a lot whenever he talks like that," Strickland said. "He gets on us about defense a lot, and we know it was big for us to limit Malcolm Grant's touches and try to keep Durand Scott from driving to the rack."
Granted, the coach qualified his comment with "at times," but the truth is that the Tar Heels were good defensively any time that mattered. Starting Hurricane guards Grant and Scott finished their evening a combined 6-for-20 and 0-for-7 from the three-point line. It was, perhaps, the best defensive 40 minutes of the season.
"They took our perimeter players right out of our offense from the first TV timeout on," Hurricanes head coach Jim Larranaga said.
The former George Mason head coach was given the opportunity to divert some of the attention to the post, where Reggie Johnson eventually succumbed to foul trouble and Tyler Zeller and John Henson collected a combined 24 rebounds on the way to a 45-29 Tar Heel advantage on the boards. Larranaga was unmoved.
"It was our guard play," he said, "and the lack of getting quality shots for them."
That's because the Tar Heel guards wouldn't allow it. Strickland checked Grant, constantly doing those little details Williams recently identified as the missing pieces for a solid defensive team--retreating in the direction of the pass, living in the passing lanes, staying down on a shot fake. Marshall thwarted Scott, who tries to be more of a penetrator but never found access to the lane and finished with one lonely assist (for the game, Scott and Grant combined for five assists against six turnovers).
Bullock was relentless in 18 minutes off the bench. His best moment might have come long after the game was decided, when Carolina held a 71-49 lead with under 2:30 to play. The Kinston sophomore was defending Grant, who gave up the ball near the top of the key. This proved to be a mistake, because Grant couldn't find a way to get the ball back. He went around a screen and popped out for a three-pointer--Bullock was there, denying the pass. He ran around a double screen and cut across the free throw line, running the full width of the floor--Bullock was there, a hand in the passing lane. Eventually, Grant just stood off to the side of the court and watched a teammate heave a 30-footer as the shot clock buzzer sounded. The Tar Heel defense had reduced the preseason All-ACC pick to a bystander.
Remember: Bullock did all this with a 22-point lead.
"We had to play with intensity, and we had to play fundamentally sound defense," Bullock said. "Grant is quick with the dribble and they set a lot of screens for him. To come out and play good defense on him gives me confidence my defense is working."
Here's all the verification he needs of that defense: on a night when the Tar Heels went an anemic 2-of-16 from the three-point line, Harrison Barnes shot 2-for-12 and the trio of Barnes, Zeller and Henson combined to make just 13-of-36 shots from the field (36.1%), Carolina still picked up a 17-point conference win and controlled the game from start to finish.
Six times in the last two conference games, they've played the opponent to a standstill, forcing either a shot clock violation or a last-second desperation shot to beat the buzzer. That's the value of team defense, of the communication that comes with familiarity. Strickland and Zeller worked a seamless switch to solve a mismatch against Boston College. Marshall is becoming more comfortable identifying the proper time to shift his teammates into their late-shot clock change in the way they defend screens on the ball.
It's enough to make a hard-to-please coach see some possibilities.
"If we get to be really consistent defensively," Williams said, "the defense can always show up."
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 and Facebook.
