University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: 150 Seconds Of Defense
November 19, 2015 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
By Adam Lucas
Carolina played a stretch of its best offense on Wednesday night against Wofford. The Terriers still stayed in the game.
Carolina also played a stretch of its very best defense of the season on Wednesday night against Wofford—and that is what ultimately broke the visitors.
The Tar Heels played a very good first seven and a half minutes of offense, running out to 20 quick points and getting points from five different players. But Wofford was still within five at that point, because the Tar Heels were mostly paying cursory attention to the other end of the court.
In the second half, though, as Wofford began to wilt a little, a five of Joel Berry, Theo Pinson, Kennedy Meeks, Brice Johnson and Justin Jackson absolutely suffocated the Terriers, sending them on a stretch of two minutes and 29 seconds without ever getting a shot to the rim.
That doesn't mean making a shot. That means a Wofford shot never even got to the rim.
“We can be a great defensive team if we put our mind to it,” Berry said. “As you saw, those possessions we did a great job of helping one another out. That's what we have to do. When we talk on the defensive end, we are at our best. When we communicate and tell each other to switch and help, that's when we are at our best defensively.”
That's a nimble five Roy Williams put on the court at that juncture, and they made some plays because of athleticism. But it was something else Berry mentioned that enabled those nearly three minutes of asphyxiating defense. It wasn't as if Wofford was getting to the rim and defensive mistakes were being erased by blocked shots. It was a different kind of team defense, a cohesive possession of five players moving and working together defensively.
“Defensively, we talked more,” Williams said. “We were more consistent with it.”
It started at the 6:23 mark. Johnson did a great job showing on an attempted high handoff and denied the pass. That took Wofford out of what they wanted to run, and then Meeks made a nice switch, cut off a drive to the middle, and then ranged all the way over to the baseline to prevent Eric Garcia from attempting a desperation shot at the shot clock buzzer. The sequence resulted in a shot clock violation, and the way the Tar Heels were defending, Wofford could've gone old school and had a 45-second shot clock and still not gotten the ball to the backboard.
On the next Wofford possession, Berry recorded a deflection, and then Meeks picked up a block and recovered the rebound.
The next time down was the highlight, as Spencer Collins had what looked like an easy breakaway layup. But Berry ran back full speed and forced him to the other side of the rim, where Collins didn't realize Pinson was coming from behind him to swat the ball away.
“It was a team effort,” Pinson said. “First, Joel got back first and did a good job by slowing him down. That gave me time to get back and time up the block.”
The Tar Heels weren't done. Jackson and Berry teamed up to get another deflection on the next Terrier possession. Isaiah Hicks was substituted in and promptly picked up another deflection that should've been a Wofford turnover. The Terriers finally got a shot to the rim with under four minutes to play, but by then Carolina held a 69-53 lead and the game was essentially over.
“It takes the confidence away from them and wears them down,” Berry said of Carolina's defensive intensity. “We shadowed every screen, tried to contest every shot, got the ball out and ran. Towards the end of the game, they got worn down, and that's why we were able to stretch the lead out.”
It's one thing to do it for one possession. But this was five straight trips down the court. The extended stretch of quality defense gave you hope that it's something that could become a trademark of this year's team. That's how good they can be. The 2016 Tar Heels scored a lot of points in their first two games and got a lot of people excited about their offensive potential. But tonight's two minutes of defense, that's what could take them deep into March and April. That's the film Williams will show again at some point this year, to remind them of how capable they really are.
“That team can really shoot the ball,” Pinson said. “So today was big. That's the defensive intensity we need to play with. Today we showed we can do it. Now we have to do it in every game.”
