University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Rapid Reactions
November 29, 2014 | Men's Basketball
By Adam Lucas
1. Think back to how frustrated you were with Carolina's lackluster defensive effort against Butler on Wednesday. The Tar Heels were equally that good against Florida on Friday, essentially reducing the Gators to just firing away from the three-point line and hoping their jumpers would find the mark. Billy Donovan's club took nearly half their shots (15 of 31) from beyond the arc in the first half on the way to Carolina building a 39-23 advantage.
It wasn't just one player who stood out defensively. Instead, it was the Tar Heel team defense all over the court--good communication, good help, just a stellar 20 minutes of defense. Carolina even forced the fast-paced Gators into a shot clock violation at one point.
That quality start turned out to be important, because Florida put together a much better second half, and the Tar Heels needed that early cushion. The Gators still managed just 32 percent shooting for the game, including a miserable 22 percent from the three-point line on 27 attempted trifectas.
2. Carolina did a reasonably good job of handling it when Florida turned up the defensive pressure, trying to stress the Tar Heels over the full 94 feet. UNC did commit 19 turnovers, but in a high-posession game where every pass was contested, that's not an awful number.
3. As frustrating as it was to lose to Butler on Wednesday night, the Tar Heels probably leave Nassau with a good resume booster, getting a pair of victories over likely NCAA Tournament teams in UCLA and Florida. Those are wins that will matter in March.
4. Free throws are always a popular topic when Carolina loses, and rightfully so. But it's worth noting that the Tar Heels were very effective from the stripe on Friday night. They finished at 74% from the charity stripe, but even more importantly, made 20 of their final 24 charity tosses.
5. It's always interesting to see good coaches in these events that the Tar Heels don't get to see very often. Billy Donovan is clearly in the top tier of his profession, but displayed a very interesting use of timeouts that ran completely counter to the Roy Williams clutch-them-until-pried-from-your-fingers philosophy. Donovan called the first half timeout that his team would've lost anyway. Then he burned one with his team on the floor fighting for a loose ball in the first half. But the most curious choice was a timeout he called after five quick Gator points in the second half, leaving his team with just two for the rest of the game.
Those are stoppages he possibly could have used when Florida was making a second-half push, both to set up his defense and to allow his team a little bit of rest during the frenetic action. Neither the Donovan nor the Williams method is necessarily correct; it's just interesting to see the different ways of managing the game.
