I personally have been strongly critical of Hubert for what I considered a poor job last season, exactly what I feel, he poorly coached last season but read the title to this. After that awful excuse of a season, why would I be hopeful, even positively excited for the coming season? I want to try to explain...
Hubert basically inherited that first team, while he was an assistant coach, that was Roy's players, even the freshmen were Roy's decision to bring in. Garcia and Manek were Hubert's guys, Garcia didn't work out but Manek did. The season ending as it did created a false sense of security, returning 4 starters from a natty game team it isn't shocking that Hubert elected to try to ride the same hand. The problem was he had misfits for the offensive approach he really wants to play with. An approach that demands strong outside shooting simply is not going to work with Nance, Leaky, and Bacot all starting. Double down on that thought when you consider we really did not have knock down shooters on the bench. Puff could have been that other vital shooter we needed but Puff was not Manek, Manek had that hair trigger, was ready to shoot the instant the ball touched his hands, Puff needed more room to get his shot off but was not especially good at creating the space he needed. And really, to play the way I think Hubert wants, it just demands you have a natural PG to set it all up and we didn't, not in the starting unit anyway.
What Hubert, at least I think, is wanting to have as his offensive approach not only can work but it can actually work at a very high level with a couple of tweeks. Hubert wants solid spacing that makes it hard to double any of our guys, he wants guys taking clean open looks, and he as well wants it dumped inside to Bacot. Those open looks have to be drained and outside of RJ that did not happen consistently.
So Hubert has now brought in several guys that upgrade the ability to knock down open shots and they will get court time to do just that. It is all about structure and flow, he has got to get away from making this team robotic (and you get that from the shear number of set plays that were called, classic rookie mistake by a head coach honestly), got to stop the micro managing, got to let them play. POINT 1, spend the majority of practice working on free lance (motion offense) and little time on set plays.
Point #2 is bring back the primary and secondary breaking action, get back to Roy high octane high tempo running game. UNC should not be slow walking the ball up court unless we are up by 40 and there is a minute left in the game. Immediately after having to pull off the breaks if they are not there go directly in to the attacking motion offense, no wasted time from the attempted fast break attack to attacking from the motion offense, NO EAST WEST pounding the ball thru the floor boards, in fact strongly limit putting the ball on the floor, move the defense with passing before they have time to set. Saying for clarity, primary break leads directly in to the secondary break action if the primary is not there and the secondary leads directly in to the motion offense attack if the secondary is not there, it is bang bang bang. That is when the defense is not able to settle in, we get them scrambling and that creates wide open looks for shooters that can knock them down. Last couple seasons, way to many called off breaks, slow walking the ball up court, and wasting way to much time putting the ball on the floor to achieve nothing but a bad shot at the end. Be it Caleb taking a 40' fall away or Nance & Leaky proving yet again why they were left open, they were just the wrong type of skill sets to work in what Hubert looked to want to do.
But now we have the kind of shooters you need, guys that can knock down clean looks when their defender leaves them and we are led by an attacking PG that does not waste time going in to attack mode. We may not have the kind of stretch 4 Hubert really wants, he wants a great outside shooting 4 (you know, those NBA lotto stretch 4 guys) he has the next best thing in 4s that can consistent hit the mid range jumpers but will occasionally step to the trey and hit them at a better clip than we saw from Leaky or Nance. This bang bang bang always in attack mode approach can not only work it can be exciting and even more it is a style that can be imprinted on future UNC teams as well as lay out the blue print for the type of recruits or portal guys we bring in. Playing this way does not just allow you to play a deep bench, it forces you to, you can't play this way with a "Iron 5 or 6" for 40minutes. By getting more scoring from your 4s and getting something akin to what we got from Cam or Justin from the 3, you can be a dynamic scoring team that takes what Roy wanted to do to that next level. Roy's approach was good but he didn't get a ton of scoring out of the 4 spot consistently and I am not sure Roy's teams went as quickly from the breaks not being there to attacking directly from free lance motion. I as well think we needed to go deeper in to our bench, especially late season under Roy if for no other reason than to keep fresh legs on the floor to battle tired opponents.
See, I consider the running game to be directly linked to playing a deep bench rather than being separate issues. I consider "slow starts" to be linked as well because players know they don't have to try to save their legs for a 40min game, jump shooting directly linked because shots fall short on tired legs. Who gets that critical rebound late in the game, the fresher legged guy tends to have that advantage. How I want to see us play an attacking defense is as well linked to fresher legs just as being able to bring in guys (recruits or portalers) at playing positions that we already have a guy targeted to start at.
Hubert basically inherited that first team, while he was an assistant coach, that was Roy's players, even the freshmen were Roy's decision to bring in. Garcia and Manek were Hubert's guys, Garcia didn't work out but Manek did. The season ending as it did created a false sense of security, returning 4 starters from a natty game team it isn't shocking that Hubert elected to try to ride the same hand. The problem was he had misfits for the offensive approach he really wants to play with. An approach that demands strong outside shooting simply is not going to work with Nance, Leaky, and Bacot all starting. Double down on that thought when you consider we really did not have knock down shooters on the bench. Puff could have been that other vital shooter we needed but Puff was not Manek, Manek had that hair trigger, was ready to shoot the instant the ball touched his hands, Puff needed more room to get his shot off but was not especially good at creating the space he needed. And really, to play the way I think Hubert wants, it just demands you have a natural PG to set it all up and we didn't, not in the starting unit anyway.
What Hubert, at least I think, is wanting to have as his offensive approach not only can work but it can actually work at a very high level with a couple of tweeks. Hubert wants solid spacing that makes it hard to double any of our guys, he wants guys taking clean open looks, and he as well wants it dumped inside to Bacot. Those open looks have to be drained and outside of RJ that did not happen consistently.
So Hubert has now brought in several guys that upgrade the ability to knock down open shots and they will get court time to do just that. It is all about structure and flow, he has got to get away from making this team robotic (and you get that from the shear number of set plays that were called, classic rookie mistake by a head coach honestly), got to stop the micro managing, got to let them play. POINT 1, spend the majority of practice working on free lance (motion offense) and little time on set plays.
Point #2 is bring back the primary and secondary breaking action, get back to Roy high octane high tempo running game. UNC should not be slow walking the ball up court unless we are up by 40 and there is a minute left in the game. Immediately after having to pull off the breaks if they are not there go directly in to the attacking motion offense, no wasted time from the attempted fast break attack to attacking from the motion offense, NO EAST WEST pounding the ball thru the floor boards, in fact strongly limit putting the ball on the floor, move the defense with passing before they have time to set. Saying for clarity, primary break leads directly in to the secondary break action if the primary is not there and the secondary leads directly in to the motion offense attack if the secondary is not there, it is bang bang bang. That is when the defense is not able to settle in, we get them scrambling and that creates wide open looks for shooters that can knock them down. Last couple seasons, way to many called off breaks, slow walking the ball up court, and wasting way to much time putting the ball on the floor to achieve nothing but a bad shot at the end. Be it Caleb taking a 40' fall away or Nance & Leaky proving yet again why they were left open, they were just the wrong type of skill sets to work in what Hubert looked to want to do.
But now we have the kind of shooters you need, guys that can knock down clean looks when their defender leaves them and we are led by an attacking PG that does not waste time going in to attack mode. We may not have the kind of stretch 4 Hubert really wants, he wants a great outside shooting 4 (you know, those NBA lotto stretch 4 guys) he has the next best thing in 4s that can consistent hit the mid range jumpers but will occasionally step to the trey and hit them at a better clip than we saw from Leaky or Nance. This bang bang bang always in attack mode approach can not only work it can be exciting and even more it is a style that can be imprinted on future UNC teams as well as lay out the blue print for the type of recruits or portal guys we bring in. Playing this way does not just allow you to play a deep bench, it forces you to, you can't play this way with a "Iron 5 or 6" for 40minutes. By getting more scoring from your 4s and getting something akin to what we got from Cam or Justin from the 3, you can be a dynamic scoring team that takes what Roy wanted to do to that next level. Roy's approach was good but he didn't get a ton of scoring out of the 4 spot consistently and I am not sure Roy's teams went as quickly from the breaks not being there to attacking directly from free lance motion. I as well think we needed to go deeper in to our bench, especially late season under Roy if for no other reason than to keep fresh legs on the floor to battle tired opponents.
See, I consider the running game to be directly linked to playing a deep bench rather than being separate issues. I consider "slow starts" to be linked as well because players know they don't have to try to save their legs for a 40min game, jump shooting directly linked because shots fall short on tired legs. Who gets that critical rebound late in the game, the fresher legged guy tends to have that advantage. How I want to see us play an attacking defense is as well linked to fresher legs just as being able to bring in guys (recruits or portalers) at playing positions that we already have a guy targeted to start at.