Heels Prepare for Windy Dome

Staring the “death blow” in the face, UNC over the last two weeks has inexplicably morphed into one of the country’s best teams. How in the world did this happen? One of the things that is so fascinating about this run is that the cause is so vague. While there are tons of factors, I believe that the threat of an early-ending season, disgust with the critics, improved coaching intensity, and luck have all played a key role.

Certainly the team had heard enough of the critics. It was almost one year to the day that the critics’ song began when UNC started putting it together. The loss to Weber State was not only embarrassing, it incurred a level of denial with Tar Heel fans that would even impress Bill Clinton. UNC players were so overwhelmed and sure that the Weber State game was a fluke, they had a hard time remembering what it was like to be confident and play with fire. Perhaps everything culminated with the stunning loss in the first round of the ACC Tournament to Wake Forest. Reports from practices since that point were that Guthridge yelled a little louder, players hustled a little harder, and players thought with a little more purpose. THAT is what the critics have called for ever since the string of losses in mid-December.

Everyone knows that there is a certain degree of luck involved in March success. Arizona, Wake Forest, and Maryland are notorious for having none come March. The Heels are up there, too. Decades of March injuries, ridiculous three-point shooting by opponents, and bad officiating are in UNC’s March bag. This season, however, several threatening opponents were taken down by the likes of Tennessee, Tulsa, and Florida. UNC has shot the ball pretty well, and has seen opponents who rely on the “3″ struggle with that shot. UNC has also benefited down low with lax officiating. Usually the tournament’s physical play distracts the Heels and offers and advantage to “lesser” opponents. This season UNC, relying heavily on big interior men, has been able to rebound inside quite well, and has been able to fight for position unlike in previous seasons.

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What will become of the Tar Heels this weekend is totally out of our hands now. The Final Four carries such a huge bag of parameters, it is nearly impossible to predict a winner. Most likely the “best team” there does not win. Look at several Kentucky, Duke, and UNLV teams. Odds are that Michigan State will not win, so that leaves us with three Cinderellas. If UNC can get two good games out of Lang and continued excellence from Joseph Forte, UNC fans will get a chance to take Franklin St. like it’s never been done before on Monday night.

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What is with Dick Enberg? Not only is Jason Capel’s phonetic spelling clearly printed in the UNC media guide, it is also a name that nobody (except for the Cameron Indoor Stadium PA announcer) EVER screws up. The really weird thing is that Enberg only botches the name occasionally. Would he go to the caPEL rug outlet to buy some carPET?

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While Joseph Forte and Julius Peppers have been outstanding, Kris Lang has been a huge factor to UNC’s success. The presence of two big men has been more than opponents have apparently seen this season. Lang’s defense and rebounding have been much improved. Hopefully he can find his shot with the hook, and can explode to the basket stronger to avoid more embarrassing blocks.

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Is it me or is every single Capel 3-pointer “huge?”

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Looking for hard evidence of this team’s improved will? Look at the % Loss of Ball stat for opponents. During the ACC season UNC was forcing opponents to cough up the ball on 9-15% of their possessions. Over the last 4 games, though, opponents have lost it on 16, 15, 17, and 16% of possessions, respectively. This sharp increase is simply due to Cota, Capel, and Forte “getting a hand in” more than ever, and it has paid off. If UNC can keep this up while turning the ball over less than 20%, good things will continue to happen.

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Coach Bill Guthridge’s use of the 1-3-1 zone has been interesting. For most of the Tennessee game, UNC played man-to-man (fist), and was able to really throw the Vols off with a few surprise switches to 1-3-1. In the Tulsa game, however, Kris Lang’s injury forced Gut to save the team’s energy, so we saw the Heels in the 1-3-1 quite a bit. Julius Peppers has been outstanding on the baseline, which has made the 1-3-1 more effective than it was in January.

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Do you think that Tennessee’s Ron Slay is still thumping his chest? This Freshman nerd has a lot to learn. Hey Ron, you were 4-11 from the field. Act like you’ve made a basket before. So much to learn…

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Do you think that dinner on Saturday night was on Haywood? The guys really bailed him out. Haywood should NEVER have made that fifth foul. There is something to playing more conservatively with four fouls, and Haywood needs to learn it.

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Did Julius Pepper ever more get screwed against Tennessee? After Joseph Forte threw up a desperation “3″ with the shot clock winding down, Peppers was able to corral the blocked shot and guide it into the basket, all before the horn went off. Too bad that THREE refs couldn’t get the call right. Too bad also that Gut didn’t protest that one to the hilt. This was a correctable call and it could have cost us the game had Tennessee played with any brains down the stretch.

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Conventional wisdom says that UNC will not with the National Championship. Usually National Champions go 7 or 8 players deep. This Tar Heel team is much like the 1998 team in that it only goes 6 deep. The lack of a developed Max Owens could be the difference in winning it all or not.

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UNC will be attending the Final Four in the Hoosier Dome (RCA slapped its name on) for the third time this decade. In the first trip there the 1991 Heels experienced a remarkable shooting slump by Rick Fox. After going 23-46 in the run to the Final Four, Fox shot a miserable 5-22 (23%) from the field and was 0-7 from behind the arc. Six years later Shammond Williams entered the same building shooting 21-48 (44%), but went 1-13 (8%) from the field and 1-8 (13%) from behind the arc against Arizona. At the ‘97 Final Four we learned that the air movement in the RCA Dome is incredibly swift. Even the media had a hard time keeping their papers down on the table. Williams also said that he felt cold, literally, in the Dome.

All eyes will be on the hot-shooting Joseph Forte. Having never played in a dome, Forte faces a real challenge Saturday. Not only will it be windy, he also must compensate for the altered depth perception and also must chase away UNC’s Final Four ghosts.

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Essential to UNC’s cause is attacking Florida’s full-court press. Florida is certain to use the press quite a bit as they play 10 players for more than 10 minutes each. More importantly, though, UNC’s history with the press this season is shaky at best. UNC turned the ball over on Virginia’s press all season (24% LOB @UVA).

What UNC must do is attack the zone and not cower from it (see “Read the Book” 2/22/00). The best way to attack the zone, according to Dean Smith, is to send one big man long. This will pull one defender out of the trapping system, so there is a 4-on-4 situation. This really hurts the defense if FOUR players stay back to bring the ball up. By keeping offensive players back, the defense extends deeper into the backcourt. Once a key pass is made over the defenders, the play becomes a track meet. After a few times of burning the defense with that strategy, we won’t see Florida use the press any more.

There is always the possibility that Gut has been sandbagging this whole season. Smith admitted in his book A COACH’S LIFE that he would save strategies for the end of the season. To date, we have not seen UNC attack the press well. It very well could be that we see this strategy on Saturday.

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As we near the end of one the most interesting chapters in UNC’s history, it is still hard to fathom reality. What is real is the chance of another National Championship. Now THAT would make an unbeatable chapter!

All week we have heard and read comments saying that UNC has “silenced the critics” with its improbable Final Four trip. Brendan Haywood said this week,”I always said to myself,’If we turn it around, all those people criticizing us will be jumping on our bandwagon.’ It’s like I’m a prophet. People who were doubting us now are saying,’Carolina is my team.’ Yeah, right.”

What Haywood didn’t realize is that while he was blabbing on about critics, his very teammates in the same room were proving the “critics” right.

Jason Capel – “Coach Gut is the only person who really believed in us and stuck by us…We let him down.”

Ed Cota – “I was shocked at the intensity we had – for 40 minutes…We had the capability all year.” “We had to have a lot of patience with the guys. It’s crazy how much patience (Guthridge) had with these guys. If I were in his position, I probably would have been ready to slap people or hit people.”

To which critics was Haywood listening? The general unrest in January and February was based on disapproval of the team’s lack of 40 minutes of effort, abundance of turnovers, and lax defensive play; all in the shadows of an embarrassing loss to Weber State last season. With Capel’s and Cota’s comments of late, we critics feel more validated than ever. There should never be a person shocked by 40 minutes of hard play. There should never be a problem with players not listening to the coach. According to the players, the team never tried their hardest until they were faced with sudden death. This is absolutely the players’ and coaches’ faults, and none other. And who is to say that this sudden fervor would have risen had the critics kept quiet? Things happen for a reason.

People have always mistakenly let the season’s result determine the team’s accomplishments. This flawed logic leaves fantastic teams like those in 1985, 1987, 1989, and 1994 behind team’s like this 2000 team. I knew these teams. I rooted for those teams. And believe me, this team is not those teams.

UNC’s post season run over the last 2 weeks has been remarkable. It has been so weird and unexpected that it has been difficult to fully appreciate. My fullest congratulations go out to what these guys have accomplished (so far). Better late than never, right? Let’s hope that all of this positive emotion and unity can carry over to next year just like the contrary did last summer.

What an outstanding victory. While this win doesn’t top the ‘90 win over OK, it still rates way, way up there. UNC seems to play Mike Montgomery’s Stanford teams well year in and year out. hmm…

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Do you remember discussion a couple of years ago about rotation size? Remember arguments about whether or not Gut needed to get an 8 or 7-man rotation to do well (back then Haywood was coming off the bench as the 7th man. I said we needed another guard to step up). If you look at the box score you’ll be amazed…2 minutes for our 7th man Max Owens means that Gut is using that 6-man rotation again. Interesting…

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I do have to say that “mad dog” is one of the worst nicknames I have heard given the subject. Why didn’t they call him the “leaning tower” or something. With all of that leaning and wrapping, it is almost criminal that he picked up only his 2nd foul with about 4 min. left. I am still fuming.

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Now all the cheering begins about Gut’s coaching job. Against these last two teams he has sent guys out to disrupt 3-point shots. All that media coverage and not ONCE did they credit the fans who have been calling for perimeter defense all year.

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I hope that Ed Cota can find his shot.

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Did you see my Scout ‘em for this game? The last words there were something like “…Lang will probably be the key”. I thought he had a great game. We really lost the air when he went out. Does this guy get more mysterious illnesses and injuries than anyone in history? My diagnosis is: the CRUD (Chronic Recurring Undiagnosable Disease)

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It is interesting that a lot of the media has said that Haywood doesn’t like physical play. Interesting that he has excelled with the lax officiating over the weekend.

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I think that UNC may have gone farther in several tournaments were it not for the ACC’s refs. All season long we and the team get seasoned to the closely guarding refs in the ACC. This has always been kept as a finesse league, even when Rick Barnes told his team to put the smack down on us. (the undercut of Wallace @Clemson that year still has me boiling). Then we get to the tournament and are not used to the physical play with non-ACC refs. Bad officiating favors weaker and smaller teams (See Dean Oliver’s dissertation on that – go to my page and then to non-UNC links) usually. Never was this problem more evident than in 1994 when Boston College elbowed and undercut there way to the Sweet 16. Last year almost topped that as Weber State’s YMCA grunts pushed us out early. So isn’t it interesting that now when teams are physical, we respond positively instead of bitch ourselves into an “L”. Brendan Haywood may not be a rocket scientist, but I’m sure he remembers quite well what the score is in the NCAA tournament.

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Hey Virginia, Maryland, Notre Dame, Cincinnati, Louisville, NCSU, and Wake Forest fans: did you see that game today? How about Clarence Gilbert, the Missouri Mouth who said UNC wouldn’t get past Stanford?

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Somebody said that Forte shouldn’t have been the ACC ROY and Williams should have been. I told him to lay off the crack. Forte was Rookie of the Week 4X, more than any other. Williams was 2X. Forte led his team in scoring (16.3ppg), was 6th in the league in scoring, 10th in the ACC in FG%, 5th in 3PFG%, and 8th in the ACC in Steals! Williams had a very good season, but was certainly not the best. Some of Williams’ shot down the stretch almost cost Duke some games. Forte has been a silver bullet. Today’s 3’s are a perfect case. Game-set-match.

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Check out these numbers:

     Score   Tot Pos. Turno's   %LOB    Pts/Poss
    UNC Opp  UNC Opp  UNC Opp  UNC Opp   UNC Opp
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Miss 84 70    97 83    15 13    15 16   0.87 0.84
Stan 60 53    66 73     8 11    12 15   0.91 0.73
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Avg. 77 71    82 84    15 12    18 14   0.94 0.84

These are the stats of the last two games. The bottom is the season average to date. Notice the key differences? UNC took care of the ball better than their average and forced more turnovers than average. I have seen several more steals on penetrating guards in these two games than we’d see in weeks in the regular season. UNC has also gotten out there on the perimeter and gotten pressure on the shooters. 0.73 pts per possession on Stanford is outstanding. Also, notice that Friday’s game was MUCH faster than our average, yet today’s was slower than average. This team is not dictating tempo so much, but is adapting to things quite well. I will definitely score one for Gut there.

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I LOVED seeing Kris Lang in “prayer mode” today. It shows the world that this team has some heart and truly wants to win, pretty badly, I might add. I can definitely do without the bench clowns, though. simply joy is fine, but someone tell Melendez and Brooker to keep their hands to themselves.

Once again the lethargic, indifferent bunch of underachieving cry babies that comprise this Heel team came out expecting to win, and were shown up, once again, by an NIT-caliber team. On Friday the Heels were unable to apply any measurable amount of pressure defensively, scored 0.71 points per possession (almost a season low), and shot 38% from the field. The outgoing Ed Cota showed up trying to score and was a colossal flop. Shooting 5-13 from the field, Cota amassed 10 points, but had 1 assist and 1 turnover.

While the loss put the Tar Heels back on the NCAA Tournament bubble, the Heels will still likely get an NCAA bid as a 9th or 10th seed. However if the Heels were passed over by the NCAA, several players on the team would not want to play in the NIT. This begs the question: Just why in HELL THEY ARE WEARING OUR UNIFORM? It is a disgrace to the program and the university that Cota and Haywood would even think of not “wanting” to play an NIT game. If we are paying their scholarships, we expect nothing short of a near-regurgatory effort by these guys no matter whom they are playing.

It’s appalling. You’d think that the guys that comprise one of the most underachieving teams in history would have a little humility. No, they keep on and on. I, for one, am proud to have the name of one of the top dental schools in the world emblazoned across my proverbial chest. Somebody PLEASE give me just 3 minutes alone with these guys in a room.

While few fans are satisfied with this 2000 campaign, we can’t forget that Clemson, Georgia Tech, and FSU (a third of ACC) would love to play in the NIT.

There are also problems with the assessment of unsatisfied fans. What the self-appointed experts think is that UNC fans expect 20 wins and an NCAA bid just because it has happened so many times; the old “name on the chest” phenomenon. However, nothing could be farther from the truth. UNC fans’ disappointment purely rides on the results given the relatively whopping amount of talent on this Tar Heel team. Surely, this team is not one of the most talented teams in recent ACC memory. However, given the noted youth and recent recruiting misses in the league, there is no excuse for the Tar Heels to be as close to .500 in this league, this season.

This Tar Heel team is not “quick”, but has shown that it doesn’t have the resolve to overcome its weaknesses. In fact, the indifference that took over the Heels as the season progressed compounded the problem. As we watched Duke, Virginia, NCSU, and Maryland this weekend in the ACC Tournament, we saw teams that knew how to play effective defense, but more importantly wanted to play effective defense. “Want” is coachable, and is ultimately up to the coaching staff. If there are players that not foaming at the mouth to play the next game, it is time for the coaches to take action with harsh punishment, and move on to players that do “want” to play the next game, under all circumstances. Otherwise it is time to move on to coaches who can coach “want.”

We all witnessed a fairly talented team which lost time again to less talented, but motivated teams. THAT, my friends, has nothing to do what teams in the past achieved at UNC. If this indifference continues, alumni will lose their “want” to write checks for scholarships and excellent facilities.