University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Man In The Middle
February 18, 2014 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
Ask Kennedy Meeks about virtually any improvement in his game, and you're almost certain to get the same answer. At various times this year, he's offered the following responses:
Kennedy, why do you think the Tar Heels have played with the much-talked about sense of urgency over the last month?
"I think it's practice."
Kennedy, what enables you to make some of those uncanny outlet passes?
"It's practice."
Kennedy, you just shot 11-for-12 from the field at Florida State in a game the Tar Heels had to have. How did you do it?
"It comes with practice."
It's tempting to first suspect that Meeks' fanaticism about practice is just an interview fallback. All of us have that thing we say while we're trying to think of what we really want to say. Maybe "practice" is it for Meeks.
Except, what if maybe he actually is showing the benefits of practice--OK, maybe practice and a lot of long hours with Jonas Sahratian?
Meeks did indeed make all but one of his dozen field goal attempts against the Seminoles. That's an opponent with plenty of size and athleticism inside. In fact, Florida State entered the game in the top four in the Atlantic Coast Conference in defensive field goal percentage on two-point shots in league games, as they had allowed opponents to shoot a meager 44.4 percent from that range (for the sake of comparison, Virginia--a team that concentrates its defense inside the three-point line--leads the league in that category at 42.3 percent).
"He does give us some inside scoring," Roy Williams said after the game. "A huge part of it is our guys passing it to him with a bounce pass. He made one jump shot, but other than that you could cough it in (from where he shot), and I like that."
Indeed, Meeks' first shot attempt was a jumper. It clanged off the back rim, and the sum total of the distance of his final 11 shots probably wouldn't equal the distance of his first one.
"If you get him the ball down low he does have great hands, and he can use both hands inside," Williams said. "He has a big-time body. He needs to get more explosive."
Meeks' run of 11 in a row came against a stingy FSU front line that includes 7-foot-1, 290-pound Michael Ojo plus four other players who played significant minutes and stand at least 6-foot-9.
At 6-foot-9 himself, Meeks has occasionally struggled this year against similarly sized players who have more athleticism than he currently possesses. Against the 'Noles, though, he mixed power with craftiness. He's had more than his share of shots blocked this year, so he showed off some moves that used his opponent's aggressiveness against them. His first hoop came after he grabbed a weak side rebound, threw a pump fake, and then used the rim to shield the defender while he scored on the other side.
Although Williams mentioned Meeks' tendency to score off dribble penetration by the Tar Heel guards, that was actually only true during one stretch midway through the second half. His last three baskets came off penetration by Marcus Paige.
But most of his first eight hoops came through a combination of positioning, opportunity and dexterity. He scored via a pump fake (multiple times). He scored with his left hand. He scored with his right hand, over 7-foot-3 Boris Bojanovsky. He even scored on a little baseline jumper.
Virtually all of those points came during a torrid stretch of eight minutes and 51 seconds at the end of the first half and beginning of the second half; during that span, he scored 19 of his 23 points and took nine of his 12 shots.
The Tar Heels have seen similar stretches from him before--he was very good in the second half against Boston College and was similarly solid in the second half against Louisville. A quick reminder: he's only a 19-year-old freshman. The leap from last year at this time to now has been substantial. If he can make a similar jump from now until next year, suddenly Wiliiams has that low-post scorer who is so essential in his offense.
The next challenge for the freshman becomes putting that same type of productivity into an entire game. Hopefully, of course, that would happen on Thursday against Duke. As Williams said last week before the originally scheduled rivalry game, the Tar Heels have to get inside scoring against the Blue Devils.
You've probably already guessed what Meeks believes will enable him to maintain his efficiency for a full 40 minutes.
"Practice," he said. "We're very physical in practice for two hours straight, and that's helped me under the basket. Now I have to make the transition from two hours of practice to two hours in a game."
Adam Lucas is the editor of CAROLINA.
