University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Williams Emphasizes Details
March 17, 2015 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
By Adam Lucas
When he gathered his team at his home on Sunday night to watch the NCAA Tournament selection show, Roy Williams emphasized three main points for this week's postseason preparation. They are:
Turnovers
Taken as a whole, Carolina's turnover numbers actually aren't as bad as you might expect. The Tar Heels have a turnover percentage of 18.2% according to KenPom.com, which puts them in the bottom third of the NCAA Tournament field but still ahead of teams like Maryland, Kansas and Baylor.
But the most frustrating thing about recent issues taking care of the basketball is how many of them have seemed to be lackadaisical or simply throwing the ball away. It's one thing to commit a turnover against intense defensive pressure. It's quite another to simply fire the ball out of bounds.
Those turnovers have a way of turning into points for the opponent. A big part of Notre Dame's game-clinching run in the ACC championship was due to five Tar Heel turnovers in 2:30. During that stretch, the Irish went from down by five to ahead by seven.
“Nothing careless and nothing casual,” Williams said on Sunday night. “Concentrate when you have the basketball. Don't try to be one of those quarterbacks who tries to force it between two defenders. Make the easiest play you can make. If you do that consistently, the easy play will get you a better shot. I've felt all year we can get better at that. Some games we have. Others we have not.”
Fouls
There was a time when Carolina was best known as a team that made more free throws than the opponent attempted. That hasn't been the case this year, as the Tar Heels have struggled to defend dribble penetration and have also committed plenty of fouls in the paint. His team's inability to defend without fouling has been a point of frustration for the head coach all season.
In the past five games, opponents have attempted 120 free throws while Carolina has taken just 80. In the championship game, Notre Dame held a 32-7 edge in that category; twelve of those came in the final 90 seconds when Williams instructed his team to foul, but that still leaves a 20-7 deficit against an opponent that took nearly half its field goal attempts from the three-point line.
The Tar Heel defensive free throw rate is 37.6. Only 14 teams left in the field are worse, and only three of those 14 are seeded better than a six.
“Fouls are a matter of discipline,” Williams said. “Last week, I was looking through my defensive notes from a hundred years ago and I saw something in there about how big guys should never commit a foul below their chest. We do that all the time. We also have to be disciplined enough to stop reaching in. A lot of times, guys will beat us on the drive and we try to slap at the ball from behind.”
Finality
One of Williams' favorite points of emphasis when the tournament begins is the finality of every game. In theory, he shouldn't have to explain that too much to this year's squad, which has a core of players who played important roles in the NCAA Tournament last season and experienced the disappointment of the round of 32 loss to Iowa State.
That game, in which Carolina held an eight-point lead and the ball with four minutes remaining but watched Iowa State storm back for an 85-83 win, remains fresh. And if anyone forgets about it, Williams plans to remind them.
“We will remind them how sick they felt and how bad they felt in that locker room in San Antonio after the Iowa State game,” he said. “We will remind them how quickly it can be over. Hopefully that will help us when we are trying to focus and getting ready to play in each and every game. It was a very tough locker room last year after that game. Hopefully, they will use that as they prepare.”
