ADVERTISEMENT

Quick stuff (Brown game)...

gary-7

Hall of Famer
Jan 27, 2003
21,318
17,588
113
Parts Unknown
...and some basketball basics never change.

- Lemme start with a quick disclaimer that from what little I knew in advance about Brown was that they had some guys who could put the ball in the hole if given the opportunity --- and boy did we give them opportunities. The elephant in the room is that was one of the worst displays of defense by a UNC team in my fairly long memory. Just P.U... el stinko.

- Let's get real: There's no way in hell that team should ever hang 50 on a UNC team in a half --- nope, not ever. OK, credit their staff with a solid game-plan that exposed our vanilla defensive approach, but (pardon the pun) we exposed ourselves. Look, one of those basics that never changes is that sometimes teams make shots --- even ugly ones --- but that's way more likely to happen when your defense offers little resistance. So, speaking of basics, much of that failure came down to the old staple of lack of effort.

- Expanding on that last point, I realize that many fans don't see this aspect, but to the trained eye, making that little extra effort to get to a defensive spot just a half-second sooner can be the difference between a stop and a bucket... or busting it across to your help assignment results in a charge or a blocked shot (didn't see many of those tonight, huh?). Did y'all notice how few team fouls we had? I'd like to say that lack of fouls was from smart defense, but that would be a lie. Fact is, we weren't even defending hard enough to pick up the normal inadvertent ones.

- Staying with the defensive breakdowns, Leaky is the only one I saw having even a decent defensive outing. Caleb (who is our best returning defender at Guard) had the worst outing I've seen from him. RJ always struggles with anybody with an inch of size advantage, and Kerwin --- oh dear Lord. The Bigs FINALLY stepped it up a bit down the stretch, but that was a long time coming --- I've never seen so many big bodies lost in no-man's land in what were supposed to be Help situations. And again, the difference was usually effort.

- Effort also makes a difference on the offensive end, particularly in getting to our lanes and spots on time in the Secondary, and crisp execution of set plays. Brown is NOT good defensively and we shoulda hung a buck-twenty on them, TBH.

- So, how'd we survive the stank and pull it out? Easy. Some basics never change, and one of those is that INSIDE-OUT ball wins. Dicking around the perimeter is for YMCA over-40s. We took back the game by pounding the rock into the Bigs, and then when they started doubling the block, passed out and made ball reversals, making the extra pass to find wide-open shots. Yes, RJ got hot, and that was facilitated by getting him rhythm-3s off the catch. And wasn't that stretch a far better result than all the forces off the bounce we were trying earlier?

Anyway, for all the general lack of effort, we pulled it out by deciding to finally exert ourselves in the last 8-10 minutes. That ain't gonna be enough against better opponents, so hopefully, that'll be lesson learned. These early games are partially about finding an "identity", so let us hope that going forward we make consistent effort (on both ends) a staple of that...
 
Straight to the point Gary, thanks.

From my vantage point in the dome....

Props to Brown and their team and coach for their efforts.

No doubt about this: Taking a team lightly and feeling that you have the game won BEFORE you have played, is still alive and well. Tonight's game is a quick and great reminder and lesson of not showing the due respect to your opponent. Other than Bacot, Leaky Black was the only other UNC player who played acceptable defense the whole game. What a shit show for our defense. If not for Leaky's defense, I'm not at all sure we win this game.

Yeah, the foul totals can tell you a lot. We had 14 for the entire game. Does it kind of seem off kilter or weird, to bitch about not fouling? At best, throughout this entire game until around the 7:35 mark of the 2nd half, we matador'd our defense and let Brown's players go and do whatever they wanted on the court. Brown has some good players and they played hard and defended as best they could, but we were so much more talented than they were and, in the end, that was our saving grace in this game. A coach should not have to coach EFFORT, however, it was absolutely missing on defense in this game and I very much agree with Gary on that.

Why Armando didn't get even more feeds, I cannot answer, there was no defender for Brown that could stop him down low. When he was double teamed, he made good outlet passes to open shooters. From about the 5-minute mark or so, we started feeding him in the post and it worked to our advantage in either him scoring or getting fouled or passing it back out to an open shooter.

The Gainey kid and the Mitchel kid fouled out in the 2nd half. The Gainey kid could easily have fouled out in the 1st half alone, as he pushed Manek and Garcia down in the block on at least a half a dozen plays with no whistle. During the 2nd TV T/O, I saw Sean May walk over to Roger Ayers and have a short discussion. Next thing you know, Gainey has 3 fouls and Mitchel 2, so, you cannot blame a player for playing defense by fouling, if the referees do not call the fouls. In this instance, I applaud Sean for getting an official's ear to correct that and as we saw, neither of those 2 played a lot due to foul trouble.

Tip of the hat to RJ, he was the difference maker in the end. We have offensive power, to be sure, it's our defense that lags woefully behind our offense at this time. Manek made mention of this in a post-game interview I watched and he is certainly correct. Just so you know, it's not unusual for a team's defense to lag behind their offense early in the season, and we are early in the season...., however, it should not lag so far that it's out of sight.

I thought Caleb did an outstanding job as the LG last night. He didn't force shots, although he did force several drives that were unsuccessful, but distributed and passed the ball, and shot well. Between Caleb and RJ, they had 11 assists and only 2 TO's, and that is exactly what we need consistently from those 2. Great to see that.

We shot 51.6% for this game and right at 43% from 3-point land, and those are real good numbers. We currently, after 2 games, are shooting above 50 % in games and over 40 % from 3 for the year so far. Small sample size I realize, but very encouraging to witness. Also, we are taking better care of the rock. In 2 games we have 19 TO's, which averages out to less than 10 a game, and that's good ball security.

Our effective FG% on defense was poor in this game, as we allowed Brown to shoot 60% in the 1st half, and bettered that in the 2nd by holding them to 42% in the 2nd, which still allowed them to shoot over 50% for the game. I have put defense prominently on my list of concerns, as after next Tuesday, we go into a stretch of games where the talent levels are much higher, and our guys will be defended much better than we have seen thus far, and that has me concerned very much.
 
Last edited:
I only caught the 2nd half of the game, but offensively shooting over 50%, 40% on 3's, solid from the free throw line, with very few turnovers. Very solid stuff.

RJ & Caleb played 36 & 37 minutes. Seems like that two headed monster in the backcourt is going to be rode hard, maybe a Todd Day/ Lee Mayberry type potent tandam on O ? But those 2 were dogs on D as well, not anywhere near a "40 minutes of Hell" type effort for sure. Tons of work needed in that area.

Defensively when the optimal "shooting" lineup is in, whoa, that is a challenged group on dee. Leaky may be rotated quite often this year to try to control some 5 alarm fires from the opponents featured top guns.

Mando is the only real traditional big. Maybe if the offensive firepower stays strong McCoy gets more time? But if not, Manek & Garcia will have to show they can guard a bit. Not a strong point at all for either to this point of their college careers.
 
  • Like
Reactions: TPFKAPFS
My quick stuff on the Brown game........it looked way too much like what we saw the last two years. Slow defensively, and had those annoying spurts where quick, bad, shots just get jacked up as folks decide to go one on five. This team has potential but I think they are going to look great one night, and then break your heart the next with inconsistent play. But it's early. We will see.
 
Some may call our defense 21. Others may call it 22. I’ll just call it zero defense.

If Hubert sticks to his quote of rewarding defensive standouts from game to game, then we should expect to see at least four new starters next game.

We’re early in this season, but we certainly have showed cause for concern in certain areas.
 
Some may call our defense 21. Others may call it 22. I’ll just call it zero defense.
I laughed.

I’m not going to overreact to this lack of defensive effort. Every team has a few games a season where they just come out with zero energy on that side of the court. The difference is this season we can score to make up for those few occasions.

We lose this game last year and in 2019.

Good opportunity now for Hubert to get into them in practice.
 
I laughed.

I’m not going to overreact to this lack of defensive effort. Every team has a few games a season where they just come out with zero energy on that side of the court. The difference is this season we can score to make up for those few occasions.

We lose this game last year and in 2019.

Good opportunity now for Hubert to get into them in practice.
Agreed. We probably don't come back and win it last year, and definitely not in 2019. Now, if we see the same effort (or lack thereof) in the next few games, then we need to worry.

Could part of it also be a combination of over-confidence, and a lack of film to review on Brown since they didn't play last year; and the only game this year so far they shot a ton of 3's?
 
Agreed. We probably don't come back and win it last year, and definitely not in 2019. Now, if we see the same effort (or lack thereof) in the next few games, then we need to worry.

Could part of it also be a combination of over-confidence, and a lack of film to review on Brown since they didn't play last year; and the only game this year so far they shot a ton of 3's?

This, & what @dadika13 said. We lose this game the last couple years but now we can score. Let’s win every game 95-85, whether it’s Brown, Purdue, Gonzaga, or dook! That’s way more exciting anyway, plus, the defense has to improve throughout the season, correct?
 
Some may call our defense 21. Others may call it 22. I’ll just call it zero defense.

If Hubert sticks to his quote of rewarding defensive standouts from game to game, then we should expect to see at least four new starters next game.

We’re early in this season, but we certainly have showed cause for concern in certain areas.
I didn't watch the Brown game, but I don't think this is a talented defensive team. We're going to have to outscore teams. It's a bad defensive combination. Our guards struggle against dribble penetration and we don't have elite rim defenders. Recipe for a really inconsistent defense.
 
  • Like
Reactions: dtodd4475
This, & what @dadika13 said. We lose this game the last couple years but now we can score. Let’s win every game 95-85, whether it’s Brown, Purdue, Gonzaga, or dook! That’s way more exciting anyway, plus, the defense has to improve throughout the season, correct?
I agree, we most likely lose this game last couple seasons, we lost games similar to this in those seasons.

Yes, the first half was disappointing defensively, it will always be when we give up a 50pt half. However, much rather we allow a 50pt half in the first half than in the second half. They scored 50 in the first half, they scored what, 37 in the second? Allowing a 37 pt half is not awful defense, allowing 50 is. We went for halves scoring of 47 and 48, solid consistent offense in each half. I did feel like we worked better off the ball to get good shooting looks.

I saw a LOT of poor communication on the defensive end last night, especially with the switches, guys have to talk better, calling out the screens does not mean to send the message imitating a telepath. Lot of easy penetration in to the lane and then either the finish, a slip, or pump fake that we read poorly. We took way to many risks looking for steals and missed and they tended to burn us when we did. Looked like we took fewer risks in the second half and the results was much better.

OK, so positives from this game, first and foremost, Bacot was really good, didn't matter if it was against a single defender or he being doubled, the still finished easily. Every time Bacot touched the ball they doubled him. Manek did miss some chippys but that kid comes in and gives us some juice. Garcia didn't have a great game but he did have a nice little stretch that was a key point in this game. Caleb, decent game from a lot of aspects, did struggle really bad defensively. But Caleb gave us 12pts and no TOs, hit a couple really clutch treys first half that kinda helped keep us close at the half. Felt like Leaky competed good, had a solid defensive stretch in that second half that blunted their hot guy.

Story of this game was freakin RJ3 and the fact he was getting clean looks all game and was not scared to lead, that is why he was named one of our captains by the players, last night shows me why they did, he is willing to step to the moment. We struggled the last couple seasons because we struggled to find guys willing to step up to the big moments. We had guys that would get us back to the moment, we would dig out of big holes and get the game close but having that guy willing to step to the critical moments seemed to be MIA. So far this season we have shown we have multiple guys willing to step in to the spot light but last night it was RJ3. But Manek, Bacot, Garcia, and Love have all shown this trait this season, bodes well IMO.

Look around, this time of the season you see a lot of upsets, defenses tend to lag offenses and our defense was for sure poor in that first half but it was not nearly as bad second half and we won a game that would have been very easy to lose had we dropped our heads or panicked.
 
  • Like
Reactions: TPFKAPFS
I wish our defensive woes could be attributed to lack of effort, but it just looked like we were outmatched at almost every position with Black being the on exception. Friday and Wojcik just blew by our guards most of the night and Owusu was quicker and dribbled right around our bigs. Thank goodness we were able to get their too best players to foul out or the score would probably be reversed. Hubert boasted after the Exhibition game that we had a lot of defensive options which he decided not to use because it was an exhibition. Well, last night was no exhibition and we were exposed again on defense. I saw no defensive options other than to switch Black to Friday which moved Love to Wojck. This seemed to help but again if Mitchell and Gainey had not fouled out???? Something has to change and I mean drastically and now. Perhaps we should go the way of Jim Boeheim this season? I saw no signs of any traditional Carolina switches, traps or fast breaks last night. I know this is the new generation, but some old strategies still have merit.
 
On any given night there are several UNC players that can put up 25 pts and make several key plays that help UNC win games.

Maybe it's just a phobia that I have, but I just don't want Leaky shooting the ball. It scares the heck out of me.

Look, Brown played really well offensively. Can we accept the possibility that it wasn’t just our defense? Although we surely need to improve there. As many have said, we’ve lost games to small schools at the beginning of seasons, even during championship years. This is a win and our guys showed some toughness. Turnovers are down over past years. We executed offensively and stuck to the game plan without forcing too many things. We have a bunch of guys that can score the basketball.

We are one monster dunk from Dontrez to to give other teams something else to worry about. I like the way Hubert is breaking him in.

Hubert will address the defense hard before the next game. The defense has to evolve. Whether that's switching, traps, getting flat, or all the above, we gotta change because our guards can't guard ball screens. We gave up way too many drives and lane touches. Our communication was really bad on scramble situations.

Lets be realistic. Quick athletic teams will always cause us problems. I hope Hubert mixes it ups with some zone defenses this year.

Again, we won a game that in the previous two years we would have lost.

Survive and advance.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: TPFKAPFS and dlew71
Brown game has me more than a little concerned. Brown had not played in over a year and was at a huge size disadvantage. Bigs (especially Bacot) should have been given two touches every possession before anyone else even though about shooting. Don't make the game harder - when you have major mismatch you take advantage and force the other guy to figure something out.

Defense was just plain awful, I am talking Larry Fedora type awful. The Brown guards easily created separation off the dribble and got off shots. ACC backcourts will feast on them right now. Buddy Boeheim would have gone for 40 Friday.

This team is not the offensive juggernaut UNC has put on the floor in past years that blows you away in transition or slices you up in the half court - they have to learn to defend or it's a looooong season. Hell if Hubert makes out starting line-up from defensive grades in previous game we are likely only starting 3 next game.
 
King of the Court... Just need to work on that A LOT. One on one defense. We mostly SUCK at it. Depending on "help" from another player that is only an average "defensive" player is NOT a good plan. Fact is ... we dont have a shot blocker that anyone is scared of. We dont have a Jackie Manuel shutting down there HOT shooter. (although as others have said...Leaky did a decent job). We just HAVE to work on staying in front of our man. It is pathetic to watch a no star recruit jab step and go right by our 4 and 5 star recruits.
 
Help is an integral part of D no matter how good peeps are individually! It takes time together on the court to figure out how to help cover each other's deficiencies! These guys have the athleticism to be good, they just need the practice to fine tune their rotations. Some like Kerwin have a ceiling as to footspeed, but all can improve by learning anticipation, scheme expectations, and practicing proper rotations!
 
ADVERTISEMENT

Latest posts

ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT