Lucas: Whoa

By Adam Lucas

Christian Keeling had been answering questions about Carolina's 96-83 defeat to Georgia Tech for nearly ten minutes. He saw the game live, of course, and had played 17 minutes. He'd heard the stats repeated to him by a frustrated Roy Williams and then by reporters using them to bolster his questions.

But then he heard this one, and his eyes widened: the Yellow Jackets made 36 field goals in the game, a season high against the Tar Heels. Of those 36, fully two-thirds were either layups or dunks. That's right—Georgia Tech made 24 layups or dunks in the game.

Keeling's eyes widened. "Whoa," he said.

Whoa, indeed.

To give that some perspective, against UCLA in one of Carolina's better performances of the season, the Bruins made 12 layups or dunks out of their 26 field goals. In the Tar Heels' win over Oregon, a game Carolina seemingly completely controlled around the basket, 15 of UNC's 26 hoops (56.7 percent) were layups or dunks.

The two-thirds figure will require some research, but it may very well be among the highest ever in the Williams era. In the entire game, there was exactly one stretch when the Tar Heel defense went more than 3:41 without allowing Tech to convert a layup or dunk. During that stretch, a 5:00 span late in the second half, the Jackets had already built a 16-point lead and actually missed two layups.

As Keeling would say: Whoa.

"We played bad," he said. "When you have those kinds of numbers, it's not pointing out any specific person. It says that we played bad as a team defensively."

And that's certainly going to be a topic addressed by Williams in the days to come. Fortunately for the Tar Heels, Sunday is a scheduled off day that can't be adjusted due to NCAA rules. But Monday is a day when classes haven't yet resumed, which means it's likely to be one of the most intense practices of the Williams era.

The lack of intensity around the basket is not entirely a one-time occurrence. Recall that Yale—Yale!—blocked seven Carolina shots in the first half alone on Monday night. Suitably chastised at halftime, the Tar Heels came out in the second half and had zero shots blocked.

But Saturday's defensive lapses were never solved. Before the game, Georgia Tech head coach Josh Pastner relayed a statistic his team keeps that he calls "kills." A "kill" is any stretch in the game when his defense forces missed shots on three straight possessions and does not allow an offensive rebound. His research suggests that his team has over a 90 percent chance of winning if they record seven kills in a game.

Using Pastner's stat, any guesses as to how many kills Carolina recorded against Georgia Tech?

Zero. There wasn't one single instance in which the Tar Heel defense went three straight possessions without allowing a basket or an offensive rebound.

"We have to guard the ball better," said senior Brandon Robinson. "We have to stop helping up the lane. One time, I let a guy cut backdoor on me because I was helping up the lane. There are a lot of things we have to fix."

There's no statistic for the number of mental breakdowns Carolina had against Tech, or lines in the boxscore that illustrate the way the Tar Heels allowed the Jackets to open on a 22-4 run in the first 12 minutes and then responded by…giving up back to back dunks. How little intensity was there? The giant Smith Center video boards have two panels of stats. One is devoted to basic statistics like field goal and free throw shooting, and the other panel lists five separate categories—points off turnovers, second chance points, fast break points, bench points and assists.

With 6:25 left in the first half, the Tar Heels were sitting on zero in every single category. Not surprisingly at that point in the game, the visitors had a 34-10 lead and were on their way to the biggest halftime lead by an opponent in the history of the Smith Center. In the first half as a whole, Georgia Tech made seven dunks. Carolina had seven field goals total.

In that aforementioned win over Oregon, freshman big man Armando Bacot had a memorable six blocked shots in 30 minutes. In the seven games since then, with 140 minutes of playing time, he has seven blocks.

Bacot isn't to blame for Carolina's defensive challenges. As Williams said, other than the terrific performance by Garrison Brooks ("He probably fought more than the rest of the team put together," the head coach said), it was a complete team-wide breakdown. But Bacot's numbers are symptomatic of a defense—a team, really—that occasionally needs to compete more effectively. That's where the season-ending injury to Anthony Harris is so damaging, because Harris instilled that toughness and competitiveness that is often contagious. This is Atlantic Coast Conference basketball. Every single opponent for the rest of the regular season has been smacked around by Carolina and would cherish the opportunity to stick it to the wounded Tar Heels. Saturday night, the home team offered very little resistance.

Harris is unavailable for the remainder of the season, which means the remaining Tar Heels—and that personnel, as has been well documented, is depleted, as Carolina had to play Saturday night without Harris, Cole Anthony, Andrew Platek and Sterling Manley, all of whom might have been in the rotation on a normal night—have to figure out how to consistently find some pride without him.

Saturday's performance shouldn't happen anywhere. But it especially shouldn't happen in the Smith Center, with all those jerseys looming overhead and the history in every corner.

"North Carolina doesn't lose like this," Keeling said. "It hurts to get beaten like that. It should sting, and it's going to sting. We have to remember how this feels."

University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Cole Anthony

Armando Bacot

Garrison Brooks

Anthony Harris

Christian Keeling

Sterling Manley

Andrew Platek

Brandon Robinson

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