Lucas: Loud

By Adam Lucas

Hubert Davis stopped practice about midway through on Tuesday afternoon. The Tar Heels had committed a couple of turnovers, had miscommunicated on a couple of defensive rotations, and had a date with tenth-ranked Alabama looming in about 30 hours.

The Carolina head coach gathered the white team—made up mostly of the top eight or nine players in the rotation—around him. "You can't let this happen," he said, pointedly eyeing several upperclassmen. "When things like this happen, you have to say something to your teammate because doing it the right way is important to you. You have to grab him and say, 'Hey man, I want to win tomorrow night. This stuff matters and we have to do it the right way.'"

As he has said throughout this season, he needed his team to communicate. He needed them to talk to each other on defense and on offense. He needed them to be loud.

After the 94-79 loss to Alabama, he pondered whether that had happened when he sat down with Jones Angell on the Tar Heel Sports Network. "One of the things that I was most disappointed in was that before the game, I said, 'Guys, every game—not just specific to this one—you can't play in this game and be quiet. Your personality and your game cannot be quiet when you are on the floor,'" the head coach said.

This year's team has some flaws and some challenges that we will discuss further on Friday's edition of the Carolina Insider podcast. Those flaws and challenges make it even more imperative that they play as close to their potential as possible against a top-10 team like Alabama (remember, three of the four losses currently tormenting us are against three of the best teams in the country—Carolina is seeing a much higher consistent level of talent now than they will see in January and February against ACC peers).

Reaching that potential means being a cohesive unit on the court to try and compensate for some physical limitations. It means over-communicating in every situation to make sure all five players understand what the others plan to do.

Wednesday, it didn't happen.

Early in the game, Ian Jackson (who was very good, with 23 points in 28 minutes) and RJ Davis miscommunicated getting back in transition defense and allowed an easy Alabama layup. Early in the second half, Elliot Cadeau and Ven-Allen Lubin miscommunicated on a pick and roll, leading to another Tar Heel turnover. With 8:40 remaining, and the Heels frantically trying to mount a comeback, the five players on the court were discombobulated trying to get into a full-court pressure defense, eventually with multiple players being caught flat-footed. The sequence led to a 3-on-1 Alabama fast break, an easy layup, and a 17-point deficit for the home team.

Those layups were the story of the game. All week, Carolina coaches preached the Crimson Tide style of preferring to either shoot layups or three-pointers, with nothing in-between. "Layups or threes," a Tar Heel assistant told the team on Tuesday. "That's all they want to do."

And the Carolina defense was never able to take them out of those preferences. The Tide attempted 71 field goals on Wednesday night. All but eight of them were layups or three-point shots. They ran what they wanted to run and got what they wanted to get. It's been a troublesome trend against Carolina's best opponents.

Alabama used their offense to become the fourth straight opponent to score at least 85 points. The Tar Heels haven't allowed four straight opponents to reach the 85-point mark since the 2001-02 season. Let me suggest that if you don't remember, you don't look up that season to find out how it turned out.

Part of the issue is personnel, but it's not completely personnel. It is possible for a team to suddenly become more committed—and thereby more proficient—defensively in the middle of a season. It happened with last year's group, in fact, as they dug in against Oklahoma in Charlotte and mostly continued that defensive intensity for the rest of the season.

The defensive shortcomings prevented the Smith Center crowd from ever getting fully engaged in Wednesday's game. This had the potential to be a loud, impactful crowd similar to the one that helped the Heels beat Tennessee last season. Instead, the Tar Heels trailed by double figures for over half the game, 23:29. The one moment they appeared to be rallying for a push was when Drake Powell dunked to cut the deficit to nine points with 14:05 remaining. The sellout crowd momentarily buzzed.

And what happened next? The basketball universe somehow rewarded Grant Nelson for completely failing to get back on defense—the ball apparently does in fact lie on occasion—as he simply stood under the Alabama basket and waited for a pass for an easy dunk. The Tide lead never went under ten points again.

Carolina has two very, very important days of practice before the ACC opener against Georgia Tech. It was a Yellow Jacket transfer who perhaps had the most energy of anyone in Carolina blue on Wednesday; in just ten minutes, Ty Claude scored off an offensive rebound, dove on the floor to save a loose ball, and set a solid screen that freed Seth Trimble for a first half layup.

Everyone involved will get the chance to match that type of intensity over the next couple of days. "After the game, I told them they need to put on their Timberland boots, overalls, helmet and shoulder pads and be ready to get dirty at practice tomorrow," Hubert Davis said on the THSN.

It's going to be—needs to be, must be, has to be—loud.

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University of North Carolina Athletics

Players Mentioned

Elliot Cadeau

Ty Claude

RJ Davis

Ian Jackson

Ven-Allen Lubin

Drake Powell

Seth Trimble

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