University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Basketball Instincts
March 4, 2014 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
According to the scouting report, Marcus Paige was wrong. He knew immediately he was breaking assistant coach C.B. McGrath's Notre Dame scouting report when he committed to challenging Eric Atkins at the rim with seconds to play and a two-point lead rather than staying with his (potentially game-winning) man near the three-point line.
But he also knew something else.
"There was something about the way he was dribbling that made me think he was going all the way to the rim," Paige said of Atkins. "You could see it in his eyes."
That wouldn't have been a great defense at film study later this week if Atkins had suddenly whipped a pass to the corner, where Steve Vasturia was waiting, open, for a pass that never came.
The Tar Heel scouting report on the Fighting Irish was clear: they're a dangerous team from the three-point line. Especially playing without the injured Garrick Sherman, as they were on Monday night, Mike Brey's team is heavily perimeter oriented.
Already, as Atkins sliced to the rim, the Irish had hoisted 19 three-pointers. "All game," Paige said, "defensively we had been faking to the driver and then going back to the shooter, letting the big guys contest at the rim."
But that's not what Paige did in this case. This time, he chose to contest at the rim himself, rather than leaving it to the big guys. What makes a player do that with seconds on the clock, no timeouts to think about it, and the game in the balance? Vasturia is almost exclusively a three-point shooter (over 70 percent of his field goal attempts are three-pointers) and he was lined up to take his favorite shot. So what makes Paige, a savvy player, leave someone like that?
"I was in a tough spot, because Vasturia was in the corner and he is a good shooter," Paige said. "But I wanted to make Atkins do something different, especially once he got a step on Nate. At that moment, it's nothing but basketball instincts taking over."
And there's the part of the game you can't teach--the ability to know the game and feel the rhythm without waiting for the coach to tell you what's about to happen. Paige simply has it. Can't teach it, can't coach it, can't explain it. He just has it. And on this night, when those instincts translated into a blocked shot against Atkins, it might have saved the game.
Quietly, one of the other biggest plays of the game was also a blocked shot. It won't show up on the highlight reels like Paige's block, but it was equally important, being that it erased a certain two points in a game Carolina ultimately won by two points, 63-61.
It came with 12:15 left in the second half, with the Tar Heels slumbering through the first eight minutes of the half and Notre Dame fighting back to claim a 49-46 lead, their biggest advantage of the game. The Irish had the ball and the chance to go up five, and in what appeared to be headed for a low-possession game, a five-point lead felt ominous.
Roy Williams went to the 1-3-1 defense to try and give Notre Dame a different look, with Isaiah Hicks at the top of the zone, the long arms of Desmond Hubert in the middle, and James Michael McAdoo and Paige on the wings. That left Nate Britt as the man guarding the rim.
Notre Dame split the defense perfectly, as 6-foot-10, 242-pound Zach Auguste got behind Hubert at the free throw line and then had only 5-foot-11, 165-pound Britt challenging his path to the basket. It was going to be an easy layup, and it was going to be a five-point Notre Dame lead.
Except McAdoo, showing the same type of all-out aggressiveness that twice had him throwing his body on the floor to try and save loose balls, came from all the way outside the lane to reject the ball just before Auguste dropped it through, erasing a certain two points and ending the Notre Dame possession by deflecting the ball to Paige.
"If he'd have tried to go up and dunk it, he might have gotten it," McAdoo said. "But Nate ran underneath him and took away his momentum. Coach always says to defend the rim. I wanted to dig in and help the team just like everyone else would help me."
Two giant plays, two solid examples of help defense by two different Tar Heels. On a night that didn't feature much pretty offense, you have to get your excitement from some unexpected sources.
"I've never had a block at the buzzer like that," Paige said, as though he was mentally cataloging his complete archive of blocked shots. Still miffed about some errant late game free throws and eager to be self-deprecating, Paige quickly came clean at his own expense.
"Of course," he added, "I've only had about ten blocks in my life."
Adam Lucas is the editor of CAROLINA.
