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)

Just after the Maryland game there was much discussion about the UNC defense. However my contention has been that we haven’t been consistent enough offensively. What has happened since that game? We’ve scored 1.08, 0.96, 1.03, and 0.95 points per possession. In today’s game sans Lawson we turned the ball over on 10.8% of our possessions, so we really played a good offensive game today…and WON!

We have allowed >0.91 points per possession in 5 of our last 6 games, though. That may be our worst defensive stretch since I started tracking this stuff 14 years ago. This needs to improve, however the overriding point is that defensive stats have much less to do with winning than our offensive stats.

We’ve gone 4 games meeting our offensive goals, and won all 4. The only trouble with this is that we are due for a clunker. Hopefully it comes against a bad team in the first round next week! Consistency wins championships.

The Heels answered their week off with a fantastic performance against a bad Georgia Tech team. The UNC offense was fantastic today. We scored 1.08 points per possession and kept them to 0.80 points per possession. What was different in this 30-point win? Well, the offense was different. We were 0.13 ppp above our goal offensively. We surpassed our defensive goal by only 0.05.

Point is that our defensive play has much, MUCH less to do with the margin of victory than our offensive play. Coach Williams obviously spent A LOT more time on our offense this week than the defense. What was different? Tons, including shot selection, movement away from the ball, screen execution, and the role of Ty Lawson. Nobody is impressed by his 4 points today, but we are a much better team with him playing like he did today. On Sunday he took 26% of our shots. Today he took 4%. That’s probably a little low, but the point is that he ran the offense today instead of nobody’s open I think I’ll jack it up – something that has been a growing problem, actually. Lawson had 11 assists and 2 turnovers. As a team UNC got 26 assists to 15 turnovers. In the Maryland game we had 15 turnovers, but only 5 assists to go with it.

The defense was better today, but the offense was remarkably better which explains the overall result. Before we get too excited, though, we have to realize that the UNC offense has been in an off/on pattern for the entire ACC season, especially the last 10 games. We have two games in the regular season left. If we can sustain 0.95 points per possession on offense, we will win the regular season outright. The key lies in the team playing as a team as they did today.

The Tar Heels find themselves this Saturday in unfamiliar territory. With only 4 regular season games left on the schedule, the Heels have a 2 1/2 game lead over the rest of the conference. In all likelihood, UNC can clinch regular season championship with just two more wins.

This has been a strange team to watch this season. Injuries have been a problem, lack of bench production has been a problem, and defense has been a problem. With the Heels standing at 24-2 it is easy to be optimistic, however there are so many questions that linger:

With seven players carrying the PT load and five players carrying the scoring load, what impact will the return of Tyler Zeller have on this team. The rotation between Hansbrough, Thompson, and Davis was very constant, but is now quite disrupted. This can be a blessing or a curse. Before the return of Zeller, Hansbrough was best at handling the duties down low while Thompson was completely out of his league down low. Davis is the best defender of the big men, and doesn’t handle physical play very well offensively. A comfortable Zeller, which we hope to see emerge over the next couple of games, changes UNC’s frontcourt dramatically. He is a good enough player down low on both ends of the floor to completely distract opposing frontcourts, opening doors for the unstoppable version of Hansbrough and the early season version of Deon Thompson.

While Danny Green for a while was the only player to show dramatic improvement, Ty Lawson has come on strong in the mid-season. Ever since the Florida State game, which ended on a Lawson coast-to-coast, driving 3-pointer, Lawson has been a different player offensively. In the past his shooting was suspect and his penetration in the half-court set was not remarkable. Ever since he has been unstoppable with penetration. In his last five games he has averaged 2.4 made threes, up from his average of 1.5 per game.

A team is always a great threat to score well when at least three scoring threats are on the floor. As Green has cooled off a bit, Lawson and Ellington have risen to the occasion. The real question on UNC’s offense is what happens when Lawson leaves the game. Larry Drew is simply a ball carrier, and poses no scoring threat. Many times we’ve seen Frasor in with Drew, which is an awful combination. Frasor may shoot well in practice, but he is now the worst-shooting guard averaging 16 minutes a game that I have ever seen. If Frasor becomes the player he was before last season’s injury, UNC will be unstoppable and a very dominant choice to win it all.

UNC’s biggest problem is its defense. Peruse the points per possession stats for opponents and you’ll see that we have allowed more than our target 0.85 in five of our last seven games. The inability to shut down opponents may cost this team dearly in the one-and-done tournament because while UNC is a fantastic offensive team, they have only surprassed their offensive goal of 0.95 points per possession in 8 of their last 13 games. The real key to winning a championship is to reach this level of proficiency in four straight games (UNC will have a high enough seed in the tourney that the first couple of opponents won’t challenge them too toughly). Their best string since beginning conference play was only 4 games. While the ACC games are pretty tough, and UNC has a target on their chest, the ACC isn’t as tough as the teams seen after the Round of 32.

I can’t wait for today’s game. To watch the development of Zeller, and the team around him, will be fascinating over the next two or three games.

Unless there is a meltdown, the ACC teams that will make the tourney this year are: WFU, Duke, UNC, Clemson, and Miami. That is 42% of the conference. Anyone remember when it was a regularity to have 44% of the conference in the Sweet 16 (much less getting invites)??

The reason only 5 will make it is that there are only 96 wins to be had in ACC conference play. If the top three teams beat everyone else, then there are (16+14+12) about 42 wins taken by the top 3 teams. The fourth place team is bound to win at least 8 games, so that takes us to 50 wins to split among the other 8 teams. If the fifth place team (Miami) wins 8 games, then we only have 38 wins to split among 7 teams. In that situation it is extremely unlikely for any of the remaining teams to get even 7 wins, much less the 8 normally required by the NCAA selection committee. If Miami or Clemson somehow fall apart and only get 6 or 7 wins, then we are likely to have a cluster of teams in the 6-7 win range, assuming that NCSU and Georgia Tech win around 5 league games combined. In that situation the league will once again only get four invitations (33% of the league, an all-time low).

The bottom line is that when a few teams at the top win most of their games or the bottom of the league wins a handful of games, the middle of the league suffers. Whether or not that makes for a strong league is not the really point. It is incumbent for this small portion of the league to do well in the big dance (that means you Clemson, Duke, and Wake Forest, the teams that have recently no-showed in the tournament).

For the second time in a week the UNC Tar Heels entered a Sunday night game playing dreadful offense and found themselves on the losing end. Wake Forest, behind a 34-point Jeff Teague performance upended the #3 Heels making a statement to national pollsters.

Wake Forest played a good game, but seriously, the reason Carolina lost is because they were unrecognizable to fans who watched this team up to Christmas Day. Yet again, the Heels could not shoot the ball. The four starters not named Danny Green combined for a pathetic 28% shooting night. Here are a few points:

• Has Tyler Hansbrough been sick this week? He was obviously fatigued, bending over and grabbing his shorts just 10 minutes into the game.
• Deon Thompson is a 6′8" finesse styled power forward hoping to play professional basketball. If he doesn’t get meaner, he’ll have to learn another language. When is the last time you saw a player with that physique get his shot blocked so often? Ten Thompson’s shots didn’t go in. Three of those ten were because they were blocked.
• Where has the shooting of Bobby Frasor and Wayne Ellington gone? Ellington last season Ellington’s 3-point shooting improved 3% over the previous year to an even 40%. This year his 3-point shooting is just 34%. Frasor is shooting 29% from "3" this season. Until this situation changes, expect the Heels to have an early exit in March. This is the only weapon Carolina has to pull triple teams off of Tyler Hansbrough.
• Is Danny Green now the Heels most likely to succeed in the NBA? Hansbrough is tough and scores well at the college level, however he is short and doesn’t block shots. Lawson and Ellington have not shown many dimensions to their scoring ability. Danny Green, however, has shown that he is the team’s best defender and best shooter. His rebounding is good, he is the team’s only leaper, and he has a mean streak. IF he keeps playing smart basketball, there is a chance that he becomes the most successful player on this team.
• This team cannot jump. This may be by design, in fact. Roy Williams emphasizes a controlled game, and when a player is in the air, they have little control over their bodies. It seems that these players are not being conditioned to leap better than they did coming in. Rather it seems that lateral movement is a priority. While teaching quickness is very difficult and needs to be done, I also think that there is a distinct advantage in being able to jump under control. At this point, though, this team plays its game below the rim and it is taking its toll with the number of shots that are getting blocked. Mind you, these are not the dramatic, point it into the stands blocks. It seems that most of the blocks are being corralled by the opponent.
• Why is this team unrecognizable? The problem is between the players’ ears. Countless possessions the offense is not being run correctly. Passes to the post are too rare, and all too often, passes are too low causing post players to attract at least one defender.
• We also need to utilize screens correctly. I think that Ellington is the only player on the team who consistently almost rubs shoulders with his screener. Other players, especially Ty Lawson, are passing far too wide of their screening teammates (nullifying the screen), or passing by the wrong side of the screen!
• Shot selection was a big part of the problem tonight. One fine example is the shot Tyler took with 1:45 remaining. Down 4, Hansbrough, a guy who is 2-for-6 from "3" this year, launches one from behind the arc. A) That isn’t your shot. B) YOU are the one who needs to rebound low-percentage outside shots. C) WE DON’T NEED A THREE. One of my pet-peeves is players who aren’t aware of time and score. Are the coaches not teaching what the priorities are with 2 min left and a 2-possession game? In that situation a relatively easy "2" gives Wake the ball with incredible possession. With that much time, UNC will get the ball back, probably numerous times. arrghh!
• You may have heard me talking about how Roy needs to utilize a few possessions of 1-3-1 to disjoint the opponent’s offensive rhythm. Well, tonight he did and it worked! In fact it led to our only easy basket of the night. The problem is that when the other team calls a timeout to clearly discuss how to attack the 1-3-1, you use that timeout to tell the team to go back to man. UNC came out of the timeout playing the 1-3-1 and got immediately scored upon. Roy Williams’ conclusion is probably something along the lines of "See. It didn’t work." Uh. Yeah it did. Keep going to it, but recognize when a team is figuring it out, then disrupt them again.

Without a shadow of a doubt, the problems begin with Ty Lawson. Not only is he only a remote scoring threat, his defense isn’t good, he’s forcing passes, and when he does pass on a possession, he seems to get lost in the offense. What I see right now is a talented player who is exceedingly over-confident. This attitude is carrying over to the way he treats people on campus and if he doesn’t get focused and do more watching and listening than he does gabbing, he too will need to learn a foreign language to continue his career. The team lives and dies by this player and where this team ranks in Carolina lore begins with him.

The problems between players’ ears also can be tied to the absurd scheduling in December. When the Heels went up to Rutgers on the 20th, they had only played four games in the month of December. After beating Michigan State, the team didn’t play for 10 days. After the game on the 20th, there was an 8-day break. During such a light schedule against such easy appointments, it is easy for a team to completely lose its timing and precision. This team got so rusty in December that they are shell-shocked by fairly good opponents now.

Next up is UVA. There hasn’t been a Carolina team in 10 years that has won 2 in a row in Charlottesville.

Well, wouldn’t you know it. As soon as I get back into posting, the Heels go and make things interesting. Boston College’s win told us much more about this UNC team than we realized. While there are plenty of facets being discussed today, it all boiled down to one thing: shooting. UNC shot 38% from the field (12% lower than the season average), 32% from "3" (6% lower than avg), and 56% from the FT line (16% below avg).

From BC’s timeout with 1:41 remaining (Heels down by 6), UNC missed all five of its remaining field goal attempts and went 3-6 from the FT line.

We can talk all night about Lawson’s defense on Rice, Thompson’s disturbing lack of vertical jump, and turnovers but it all comes down to shooting.

Defensively the Heels didn’t look great, but the stats show that this wasn’t the place the game was lost. BC shot 46% from the field, 38% from "3", and 75% from the line. BC got outrebounded by the Heels, as they only got the ball 88 times to  UNC’s 102. BC did score 0.97 points per possession, and that is directly attributable to their low 11% loss of possession stat. So, the Heels were 12 percentage points off the mark on defense, but with their own 0.76 points per possession, they were 19 percentage points off their offensive mark.

Just a little basket here or there would have deeply changed the complexion of the game’s latter stages. This is people like me hate missing first half free throws!

While the coach cannot make shots, I sure wish that Roy Williams would implement some zone. When a team is breaking down your traps, setting picks, and creating open shots, there is a certain rhythm they feel. A few possessions of 1-3-1 zone defense can go a long way toward disrupting the opponent’s feel for the game. This is one of the concepts of Dean Smith that is being completely ignored unfortunately by Roy Williams.

I would like to see this team get angry. That Deon Thompson isn’t picking up loose balls around the paint throwing them down with authority shows that this team is just too confident. Green and Ellington aren’t following their own shots. Let’s see people not named Hansbrough hit the deck and scrap for every loose ball. That would be a change.

The 2009 Tar Heels, so far, have been astounding. In culminating a 13-0 record, the Heels have beaten every opponent on a moderately difficult schedule (Sagarin ranked #96) by at least 15 points. The Heels are shooting 51% from the field, 38% from the more distant 3-point land, and 73% from the charity stripe. They are averaging 1.03 points per possession while holding opponents to 0.75 points per possession. They are taking 28% of their shots from “3″ while opponents are launching 29% from “3″.

After losing their 3rd string point guard, their 3rd deep big-man, and their best recruit (to injury), this team has improved in numerous ways. They are turning the ball over on 13.8% of their possessions, 0.8% better than last year’s team at this point in the season. More importantly, there is a 0.4% improvement in turnovers forced on opponents.

The numbers show a few trends. It appears that this team’s real improvement is in guard play, though Wayne Ellington is shooting 35.6% from 3-point land, 4.4% worse than last season. Danny Green has certainly picked up that slack, shooting 48% from downtown.

What has truly been impressive is that the team featuring the returning National Player of the Year (and the school’s all-time most prolific scorer) has all five starters averaging in double-figures.

There has been talk of this team running the table, but that is entirely premature. The 1999 Duke team went 16-0, but that was while the ACC was sagging (only 3 of the league’s 9 teams got tourney bids). As of this writing, 4 of the Sagarin rating’s top 8 teams are from the ACC, the top-ranked Sagarin conference.

So with a team that has been so dominant, what does the coach do in practice. Certainly there are areas to improve, and here are the top five:

• Wayne Ellington’s 3-point shooting
• Larry Drew’s defense
• Ed Davis’ defense
• Deon Thompson’s rebounding
• Better recovery help defense in the lane

Today’s game is this team’s first league game of the season. Boston College is #60 in the Sagarin ratings. They return guard sensation Tyrese Rice, who leads the team in scoring (16.7pts, ACC #7, second in assists to Lawson). They take 31% of their shots from “3″. Power forward Joe Trapani is 15th in the ACC in scoring. Statistically BC is the epotome of the middle of the ACC conference. Having faced the 290th (out of 347) toughest schedule, I don’t expect much of a game, given that it is in the Smith Center and the first week of January.

Hopefully BC will be a better test than recent opponent have given the Heels. After a mid-week meeting with Bobby Crimmins’ College of Charleston team, next Sunday’s away game against the 6th ranked Demon Deacons looms large.

It’s been a while since I posted here. Since the end of last season’s tournament run I have been busy with two things, gogoraleigh.com and a Windows Media Center installation in my house. Both are a joy, but have precluded my comments here.

The 2008 tournament ended abruptly in the national semifinals at the hands of Roy Williams’ old team, Kansas. It was weeks before I could write about the game, then I went on vacation. The deeply irritating aspect of the game is how poorly the team was emotionally prepared. All week long the focus by the media had been on Roy facing his old school. That came as no surprise, however Roy’s response was exactly wrong. He should have said a stock line lauding Kansas’ achievement and that he is proud of the time he spent there. Instead he gushed, not just for minutes, but for days. Even on game day he was gushing about how wonderful Kansas University and Lawrence are.

It came as no surprise that his team was completely unprepared to fight for a national title. Kansas was so dominant in the first half, that the UNC bench was caught my cameras with the deer-in-the-headlights look. Kansas rolled up points with seemingly no resistance, and the stunned, emotionally drained coach sat and watched happen, waiting until the deficit grew to 26 points before calling a timeout. Twenty six points? Well, the Heels did an admirable job of closing the gap but fatigue coupled with a very odd player substitution in the second half did the Heels in. Kansas deserved everything they got. So did Roy Williams’ team.

That leads us to Stickergate. I fully expected, and approved of, Roy Williams’ support for Kansas in the final game. I, too, was pulling for Kansas. Much controversy evolved, however, when CBS showed Roy Williams wearing am absurdly large Kansas logo pinned to his sweater. Now, it is one thing to pull for Kansas in the game, but to pin an oversized logo to your sweater just shows that you are still doing backflips to make sure that the Kansas faithful still approve of you. Kansas has moved on by winning the national championship with Bill Self, something they never got from Roy Williams. Has Roy moved on? The only way to know is to play Kansas again. Frankly I am not confident enough in the coach’s emotional balance to risk a potentially magical season.

I have created an "EVE" sticker at Zazzle which you can order. The 3" stickers come 6 per sheet, $5 per sheer.

I REFUSE TO PROFIT FROM THIS. I could not figure out how to get Zazzle to print something without adding a royalty fee, which goes to my account. I almost just dropped the idea, but I thought that if people want to get the stickers, I want people to easily get them. ANY PROFITS WILL GO TO THE MEMORIAL FUND.

Hopefully people will print these out and pass them around at the game(s) in Charlotte this weekend. If any of you want the original graphic so you can take it to a local printer to hopefully print these cheaper, please put your info in the comments to this entry.

Let’s let the team know that Heaven’s newest angel is still with them!