University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: The Power Five
January 5, 2015 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
By Adam Lucas
Notre Dame arrives in Chapel Hill tonight as one of the nation's best offensive teams. The Fighting Irish are making over 40 percent of their three-pointers and boast an effective field goal percentage (weighting three-pointers more heavily than two-pointers) of 63.0%, a mark that leads the country.
It will be one of the toughest defensive tasks so far this season for Roy Williams' club. But the veteran head coach has assembled an athletic, versatile group with a unique characteristic: they lose very little defensively when Williams goes to the bench.
Williams often says his baseline for utilizing a reserve is that the team doesn't lose anything when the substitute is on the floor. If that's the case, then, he should be extremely played with his bench play in the Atlantic Coast Conference opener at Clemson. In six minutes and 30 seconds of game time when the Tar Heels had at least three of their primary five substitutes on the floor, they were +11. In a two-minute stretch when all five of the primary subs—Isaiah Hicks, Joel James, Joel Berry, Nate Britt and Theo Pinson—were on the court, Carolina expanded a 49-22 advantage to 52-24.
“Those five are providing us with a great amount of energy, especially on the defensive end,” Britt said. “We're matching the intensity of the first five, and when we have to score, we're getting some baskets off the offensive glass. When we're in, there's no letdown, and that helps us out a lot.”
Having Britt and Berry together gives the second unit two of Carolina's best on-ball defenders. Combine that with Pinson racing all over the court and getting in the passing lanes, plus Hicks and James guarding the rim, and it's a formidable defensive group.
In that six minutes of game action against a largely-reserve group, Clemson was 0-for-8 from the floor.
“We focus on defense first,” Hicks says. “We know we don't have Marcus in that five, so we want to focus on our defense and build off that. We feed off Nate and Joel and let them create some offense for us with their ball pressure.”
That pressure will be tested tonight against a Notre Dame team that has taken extremely good care of the ball. According to KenPom.com, the Irish have the third-lowest turnover percentage in the country.
Guard Jerian Grant, who headlines tonight's individual marquee matchup against Paige, makes very few mistakes despite playing nearly 85 percent of his team's minutes. It will be one of the best tests of the young season for the entire Carolina defense, and especially a second five that features three of the top five players on the roster in steal percentage, including the two team leaders (Pinson and Berry) in that category.
There were times against a depth-shy Clemson squad that it felt like Carolina's unrelenting pressure eventually had an effect on the Tigers. That could be a factor again tonight, as Notre Dame's reserves have played just 24.2 percent of the team's minutes, one of the lowest percentages in the country. In contrast, Tar Heel reserves have played 38.1 percent of Carolina's minutes, among the top 60 ratios in the nation.
“I love watching those five guys play,” Justin Jackson said of the UNC second unit. “To have them come in and contribute like they do is great for our team. They keep the pressure up, and they do everything the starting five is doing. If we can go nine or ten deep without a dropoff, we can be a really good team.”
