I have really been swamped with projects, and fell behind in my updates. Just wanted to give people the heads up that I have updated my points per possession stats through Saturday night.

What the stats tell us is that the team is better at defense than they are at offense. They are turning the ball over at a fairly high rate, but not as high as the 2006 and 2002 teams, and certainly not as high as the media will tell you. They are the worst rebounding team Roy Williams has fielded at UNC. Finally, they are forcing turnovers a lower rate than we’ve seen since the 8-20 team.

While the numbers are not staggeringly awful, there really aren’t many numbers that stand out as bright spots or easy fixes. This team is just not performing in all aspects of the game like they should.

So, in this case, all a coach can do is make the team make a new commitment to defense. No crafty scheme is going to get us out of this. You can’t control all of your shots’ trajectories, but you can sure control how much you move your feet, dive for loose balls, and go for rebounds. That’s the seed to improvement in which this team needs to invest.

Thanks to a dear couple of friends, I got the rare, thrilling opportunity to sit behind the bench for the UNC/ Va. Tech game. It was a game where the Heels found themselves down by 10 in the first half. Luckily we were within earshot of much of what the coaching staff said outside of timeouts.

It was a tale of two halves. In the first half there really was no "rotation" at all. Roy basically gave guys the hook for screwing up one way or another. We could hear him tell Strickland "you gotta box out!" (after Delaney missed that “3” from the corner in front of our bench, then followed his shot). He told Larry Drew "Larry go in…and DON’T CHARGE" in the second half. He was really frustrated with Tyler’s defense, with Drew’s inability to move his feet and defend Delaney, Drew’s running the wrong play, Drew’s out-of-control penetration, Strickland’s and Thompson’s not moving without the ball against a zone, and a few other things like guys not getting up and running to the scorers table quickly to check in. He said,”If I call you you better get your ass up there!”

I coached little league for 11 seasons and only now have I noticed a major point of in-game coaching dynamics. In the first half, teams always shoot in front of the opponents bench, which means that our defense is right in front of our bench. This means that our players’ defense is getting far more scrutiny from the coaches in the first half. Coaches like to proudly exert their will by giving guys the hook for their defensive lapses, much more than their offensive ones. Therefore, teams are more likely in the first half, to have disrupted rotations and punitive substitutions than they are in the second half. This is clearly what is going on with the bizarre rotations that this team has experienced in the first half of the season.

Second half seemed to flow much better. The keys were the inability of Delaney to hit shots, and the sudden accuracy of Will Graves from behind the arc. Delaney was clearly not 100% in the second half. He didn’t have the same elevation with his jump(er) in the second half, so he wasn’t able to continue hitting some of the really tough shots he made in the first half.

After this experience I just love John Henson. It’s not really for his on-court play, but rather for the way he receives criticism from the coaches. He is one of those players you just love to have on your bench.

Tyler Zeller has some major confidence issues right now. Twice tonight players on the bench said things to pump him up. In the first half Deon Thompson came over to Zeller, sitting on the bench, and said,"You are GOOD!”

Ed Davis is in his own world. He is very quiet, and the coaching staff says little to him (probably because they are still pressing the other guys with fundamental stuff – like don’t leave your feet, box out, etc.)

At one point toward the end of the game, Roy barked at Travis Wear on the bench tonight. Problem was he was looking at David Wear. Travis was sitting five players away! The managers all got a big kick out of that.

Recruits Bullock, Hairston, and McAdoo were sitting together on the baseline, opposite the tunnel from us.

In an interview with WRAL’s Dane Huffman today, Williams said that he thinks that the game of basketball has gotten much more physical over the last 20 years. I don’t particularly agree with that assertion, though. Remember 15 years ago when we watched Sharone Wright repeatedly undercut Carolina players and try to be more physical than Rasheed Wallace? How about the year before when Boston College played the most physical game I remember seeing in ousting the talented Heels from the tournament?

The year before that? I sat in those very same seats behind the UNC bench 17 years ago for the UNC/Duke game, and it was an extremely physical game. Just the year before that was the infamous “Bloody Montross” game. Even a couple of years before that we had the classic J.R. Reid/Danny Ferry matchups, highlighted by that very physical 1989 ACC Tournament game in Atlanta.

What if we jump back to the mid 80’s? Remember the games of Lorenzo Charles, Cozell McQueen, Brad Daugherty, and several big men at Georgia Tech? They were pretty physical players, too.

Coincidentally, my generous host for the evening leaned over to me during the game and asked if I think the game has gotten more physical.

Nobody is claiming that this isn’t a rebuilding year at Carolina. The team has some very talented, but inexperienced players. Perhaps no time has it been more interesting to sit behind a bench an learn, along with the team, from one of the best coaches in college basketball history.

The North Carolina Tar Heels sealed up their second national championship in five years. This is Roy Williams’ second championship, and the first to do it “with his own players”. The run was one of the most dominant the tournament has seen, with the Heels’ only challenge coming in the third quarter of a second round game versus LSU. Congrats Tar Heels! Next up, the Carolina Hurricanes in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

A month-and-a-half ago I postulated that UNC’s offense, not the defense, wasn’t good enough to win the National Championship. UNC has gone no more than 4 games in a row this season meeting its offensive goal of 0.95 points per possession. When UNC lost games this season, it scored 0.88 pts per possession or fewer. In those games, their defense was closer to its goal than the offense was. Therefore, it is UNC’s OFFENSE that really determines whether they win or lose.

Given that the NCAA tournament is a 6-game championship run, UNC was bound to have an "off" offensive game. That game was last night. During this tournament UNC has scored, respectively, 0.94, 1.09, 1.13, 1.01, 0.92 points per possession in each game. The sole reason the Heels were even as high as 0.92 last night was the trips to the FT line. As bad as the FT shooting was, it kept UNC on a more efficient pace than their play with a live ball.

Luckily the opponent last night only scored 0.70 points per possession. Given the pattern of scoring efficiency, UNC is due for a game above 0.95, possibly far above. For this reason, I feel UNC’s chances are extremely good of winning on Monday night, especially since UNC has not lost a game in which the offense clicked.

Michigan State would have to be extremely efficient on offense to win, so probably 3-point shooting for them is the sole means by which they have of winning. MSU shoots 26% of their shots from behind the arc.

No one shooter is stellar, though Allen, Summers, and Lucas are the ones to watch. Allen once hit 4 3’s in a game, and Summers hit 6, but these games were before Valentine’s Day. They were 8-16 from "3" against Louisville last week, and that is the only time they, as a team, have made more than 6 3-pointers in the last 18 games.

One problem for the Heels, though, is that they have not taken two steps yet. Last year, they avenged their Regional Finals collapse against Georgetown by 1 game. This year they have avenged their Final Four collapse last year by 1 game. If the team is continually recognizable on Monday night, they should win. However, they have a behavioral history of not taking the next step very well. They, themselves, are perhaps their own biggest enemies on Monday night. I like what I saw in the press conference last night, but this is why they play the game.

Not the game, the season. Entering the season, on the Heels of an embarrassing showing in the Final Four last season, this UNC team had one goal: win the National Championship. Unfortunately for some that hasn’t been a goal, but rather an expectation. I’ve long held that nobody can set winning the National Championship as an expectation. Too many freaky things happen at Final Fours to expect a team to perform a certain way. Because of that, my measure of success for this team has been to make the Final Four. Beset by injuries all season, the Heels stumbled along the way and earned much criticism for not being the greatest team of all time. I’ve had my own criticisms, but they weren’t based on all-time great comparisons.

I am elated and proud of this team. They have never been a particularly great defensive team, but they did what it took to completely rattle a very good Oklahoma team. The plan started with handling Blake Griffin, who is as good as billed. The Heels opted to double down on Griffin every time he touched the ball. Now, certainly Griffin has seen double teams all season. I am just bewildered at how poorly his coach and teammates responded. In the case of a double team, the teammate left alone is wide open for the return pass. Griffin should have passed it back out for either a shot or a pass to another open man who should shoot. All game long Oklahoma passed up open shots and never found any rhythm. In fact, their first made field goal outside of the lane came with just 5:13 remaining.

In the first half, the Heels played excellent defense, holding the Sooners to just 0.62 points per possession and 24% loss of ball. However once the Heels got up 61-40 with six-and-a-half minutes remaining, the Heels’ wheels nearly fell off. In a two-minute stretch the Sooners whittled the lead down to 12 points, and many Carolina fans, including myself, began to think about the Georgetown debacle two years ago. Thankfully the Tar Heels collected themselves with an appropriately timed “time out”, and burned the clock while taking smart shots down the stretch.

In the end, Oklahoma brought their game-long average up to 0.75 points per possession, which means they had a decent offensive second half. Their percentage loss of ball ended up being 18.8%, and they shot 44% from the field, 11% from “3”.

Carolina has now played four straight offensive games with stellar offensive numbers. With the exception of the so-so display against Radford, the Heels have played above 1 point per possession basketball in this tournament. Ever since the run ended by the Boston College loss, this is the longest streak, four, of plus-0.95 point per possession play. Yes, the Heels need to play good defense, but history shows that they are only beaten when the offense drops below their goal, 0.95 points per possess.

Final Fours are strange. People like Rick Fox, Shammond Williams, and Dante Calabria can attest to spooky shooting in Final Four domes. Just a year ago, a team wearing Carolina jerseys took the floor against Kansas and were unrecognizable to us, the faithful. Lawson and Hansbrough will be key members, however I think that to win the National Championship, we need a very strong game from either Ellington or Green. It won’t take 25-point games from the two, however if the Heels can present a reliable outside threat, watch out.

If they struggle early with their shooting (and I don’t expect this against Villanova, but do in the Championship, should they get there), it will be imperative for Roy Williams to call a time out to settle his team down. He has shown in the past 3 games that he is become willing to call a timeout for purely emotional reasons, and that is a good sign. All 3 possible opponents are skilled and will present some runs.

The real enemy that ended the past two seasons was the Heels, themselves. Can they stay focused, yet loose? Can they step onto the court and feel like they are playing just a normal game and run their stuff? Who knows? The scheduling of the early season game against Michigan State at Ford Field might provide such a familiar environment that we will, indeed, recognize the team in White on Saturday night.

This …is the most wonderful time of the year! I’ve warned my wife that if she has anything to say to me in the next three weeks, say it now. I’ll be parked in front of my TV watching The Madness.

To celebrate this splendid occasion, gogoraleigh and Tar Heel HOOPla bring you the complete downloadable tournament schedule for iPhones, Blackberrys, Treos, and other Outlook-dependent PDAs.

Updates will be made each night at midnight to reflect correct game times. On Wednesday, a new version showing team abbreviations will be available. This version will allow both teams to be displayed one iPhone screen line.

Downloads are found on the Calendars page.

Yesterday’s release of stats focused on whole-season offensive stats. Let’s look at some conference-only, defensive stats. The first, and most important, is defensive points per possession. That is, the rate at which teams allowed others to score. Low numbers are best.

As proposed in yesterday’s points-per-possession stat, NCSU was a pretty good offensive team, but they were not good defensively.

Yesterday’s stat that caused a stir was the possessions per free throw attempt. UNC was in the middle of that pack offensively for the season. However when one looks at opponents’ propensity to get to the line during league play, a huge disparity exists. UNC opponents rarely got to the free throw line.

Something interesting happens, though, when we look at the number of opponents’ possessions between foul calls.

Once again, UNC finds itself in the middle of the pack. We saw above that UNC is in the middle of the pack on defensive points per possession, and now they are in the middle of the pack on having fouls called on them. Why aren’t UNC fouls being translated into free throw attempts for the opponent?  Let’s look at another stat, the percentage of shots taken from outside the arc by the opponent in conference play:

Once again, UNC finds itself in the middle of the pack. I would assume that opponents just took a lot more shots outside the arc and didn’t bother taking inside on the Heels (UNC after all, has historically opted to guard the lane and give open 3-point attempts to opponents). However this stat doesn’t bear out the possibility.

Opponents propose that there is an officiating bias toward UNC, especially Tyler Hansbrough. If so, then why aren’t UNC fouls resulting in the normal number of Free Throw Attempts by the opponents?

As Part II of today’s essay on ACC stats, I want to do an overview of several team stats from the ACC season. In the first part a ratio was introduced to standardize the frequency by which a few teams get trips to the Free Throw line. If we invert the ratio, we get possessions per free throw attempt. A team that gets to the line frequently will have a low number, while a team that is a stranger to the line will have a high number of possessions per free throw.  

Next, let’s look at where teams shot the ball. This chart shows the percentage of shots taken from behind the 3-point arc by each team in the league. A low percentage shows a team that took a larger share inside the arc, while a high percentage indicates a team that relied on the “3” more than the league.

The next stat is the most important stat of all, points per possession. A possession is defined as the period during which a team has control of the ball. Thus, possessions end with either a turnover, a shot attempt, or a 1-and-1 or 2-shot foul situation. The goal, as defined by Dean Smith, is to exceed 0.95 points per possession.

Notice the strong correlation with this list and the final ACC standings. One outlier is N.C. State. The fact that they were the third most efficient offense, but finished 10th in the league. This shows that the Pack’s defense was what set them back. Another outlier is Florida State. They weren’t efficient, but assumingly gained much of their ground with their defense (opposition’s points per possession would reflect this). Also, these stats do include the entire season, so teams that got off to slow starts and finished strong will appear artificially low on this table.

The next stat is percentage loss of ball. Raw turnover stats are misleading because they don’t reflect the speed of the game played. 20 turnovers in a fast-break, up-and-down game is pretty good, while it is high in a slow-down, half-court game. A low percentage loss of ball indicates that a team is turning the ball over infrequently.

As you can see there is much more to basketball than just field goal percentage and turnovers. Standardized, we see that several stats explain much better how a team is really playing.

I commonly hear opponents and their fans lamenting the fact that opponents of UNC are far more likely to get fouls called on them. If this were the case, UNC should have a significantly higher FTA/Possession ratio.

UNC has always been an inside-first kind of offensive team. Given that players are more likely to be fouled when shooting in traffic, it would seem that UNC’s style of play is enough to get them to the free throw line more frequently than opponents. The best way to evaluate a team’s predilection for shooting inside vs. outside is to look at the percentage of shots taken that are behind the arc. Here are a few stats showing percentage of shots taken from “3” all season: UNC 27.7%, NCSU 33.1%, VT 31.6%.  So, UNC is clearly getting the ball inside more than this pair of opponents.

Looking at raw free throw attempt stats is intensely misleading. That stat doesn’t account for the number of games played, the speed of the games played, and several other factors. If a team that plays a fast pace attempts 20 shots in a game while a very slow-paced team got 20 free throws in a game, the slow paced team visited the line much more frequently given their fewer possessions. Consider these stats:

UNC got the ball 2,808 times and attempted 792 free throws. Their ratio is 0.282. N.C. State got the ball 2,354 times this season and attempted 615 free throws, for a ratio of 0.261. Virginia Tech got the ball 2586 times this season, and attempted 732 free throws. Their ratio is 0.283.

So yes, UNC attempted free throws more frequently than N.C. State did, but they only got there 8% more frequently (1-282/261). Given that NCSU took almost a third of their shots from “3” this season, a significantly higher proportion than UNC, it is surprising that there is only an 8% difference.

Virginia Tech’s coach Seth Greenberg believes that there is a different standard of officiating for UNC than for the rest of the league. His team got the ball 2,586 times this season and attempted 732 free throws. That’s a ratio of 0.283, which is 0.3% more frequent than UNC’s rate of trips to the line. Given that Virginia Tech jacked 3’s on 31.6% of their possessions while UNC only did so on 27.7%, it appears that Virginia Tech is more likely to be granted a free throw trip when they get the ball inside than Carolina is.

Fans and coaches get understandably emotional. Unfortunately their hearts are doing the thinking.

Just before the season started, the NCAA moved the 3-point line one foot farther away from the basket. The committee felt new distance, 20’9” would make the line a more equitable shot and balance the court better. Did it work?

During the regular season, ACC teams shot 34.8% from behind the arc. Problem is, they only shot  49.5% from inside of the arc, so the line is still devaluing action inside the arc. To put it differently, on possessions that ended in a 3-point shot, teams averaged scoring 1.045 points. On possessions that ended with a shot inside of the arc, teams only scored 0.989 points on average.

At this point, the “3” is still a better gamble on average than working it inside. The NCAA Rules Committee should keep moving the line back until the average points per possession inside vs. outside the arc are the same. In fact, the average outside of the arc should be up to 5% lower than inside (to promote smart possessions and off-ball movement)