There is a formula for an upset, and it is as old as the three-point line: make your shots from beyond the arc, slow the pace, and play physical, punishing defense. UNLV did two of the three, opting to keep the pace up, but their execution was perfect. Since last season, the flaws of this North Carolina team have been no secret: John Henson and Tyler Zeller get frustrated by strong physical defense, Kendall Marshall is a mediocre on-ball defender, and the UNC defensive system that relies heavily on rotations and recovery is susceptible to three-point shots from the weak-side, particularly after collapsing against a drive. If you are experiencing an odd sense of déjà vu, it is because this is almost exactly the blueprint that Kentucky exploited to beat the Tar Heels in the Elite Eight. It worked then, it worked last night, and there is a good chance that it will work in the future.

Marshall's On-Ball Defense Will Remain A Liability in North Carolina's Defensive Scheme

Specifically the near future. Against Wisconsin on Tuesday, North Carolina will be dealing with one of the nation’s stingiest interior defenses, coupled with elite three-point shooting, and a punishingly controlled tempo. Kentucky’s surplus of talent becomes more apparent each and every game and the Wildcats ability to play tough, muscular defense as well as athletic guard play seems designed to give the Tar Heels fits. North Carolina was going to go into both of these games regardless as the underdog, regardless of who won in Vegas or what the polls said. Both of these match-ups are tough, and weirdly, by losing on Saturday, North Carolina should be able to go into these two games with appropriately readjusted expectations.

This can be a very good thing. The 2005 team’s season-opening loss to Santa Clara had the eventual national champions on the defensive, playing catch-up all year against an Illinois team that nearly went undefeated in the regular season. The 2007 Elite Eight team lost to Gonzaga in November. Last year’s squad lost to Minnesota, Vanderbilt, Illinois, and Texas in a span of a month yet finished the season playing in the Elite Eight while all of these other teams were sitting at home. Roy Williams-coached squads, for a variety of reasons, often lose in the fall. Last night’s loss, or even a series of three straight losses by this time  last week might feel terrible for North Carolina, but it won’t be as meaningful as pundits might say (excepting a series of blowouts). Teams grow and change between November and March, and a loss or three won’t cripple the psyche of this young team. Losses don’t hurt forever especially in November games.

When college basketball fans wake up in the morning they will have a new #1. Ok, maybe that will not officially come until Monday when the AP and ESPN/USA Today polls are released, but for all intents and purposes Kentucky is your new #1 team in the country. Around 12:40 AM, while much of the East Coast was already asleep, UNLV took down top-ranked North Carolina, 90-80. While the loss will inevitably send Tar Heel message boards into a panic, it isn’t the end of the world, but it is instructive in some of the weaknesses that it revealed (or refreshed in our minds).

Moser And UNLV Exposed Some Of UNC's Weaknesses (Credit: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

• Kendall Marshall: Like every other college basketball fan we love some parts of his game. His court vision is exceptional and he makes a lot of great passes without making the “And 1 Mix Tape” pass. Having said that, he is not very athletic nor is he a good shooter. We don’t expect our point guard to jump out of the gym, but there are times (and there will be times) where Marshall’s lack of lateral quickness will cost the Tar Heels. Marshall does enough things well and he has enough help inside when he gets beat that this will not be an issue, but against a team with a quick point guard and good interior players that UNC’s big men cannot help off of without giving up easy points, this could be an issue. As for his shooting, we cringe every time Marshall takes an outside shot. He can make them (37.7% from three-point range last year on just 53 attempts), but if we were a defender we would happily concede that to fall back on occasion to block some of his entry passes.
• Free throw shooting: The Tar Heels shot 60.6% (20-33) from the free throw line tonight. We would be willing to let this go, but they were shooting 60.7% coming into this game, which puts them at 299th in the nation. This wouldn’t be such a big issue except that UNC’s strength is on the inside, which means they should get to the free throw line a lot. Tonight they were in the bonus with almost 10 minutes to go, but their inability to hit free throws and then their reluctance to go into the post (perhaps a fear of missed throws?) cost them a relatively easy opportunity to get back into the game. What is even worse is that they do not have a single player on the team who can be counted on to consistently hit free throws. After tonight’s game they only have two players shooting over 70% from the free throw line (P.J. Hairston at 83% on 12 attempts all year and Marshall at 75% on eight attempts all year). We don’t want to go “sample size” on you, but those are really small sample sizes. Hairston is a freshman so we don’t have a reliable prior free throw percentage for him, but Marshall shot 69% last season. As for the players on the team that actually get to the line? None of them even hit two-thirds of their attempts. You are probably thinking that 60.7% isn’t that bad and there is some data to suggest that we tend to overrate the importance of free throw shooting. Still 60.7% is really, really bad. How bad is that? Do you remember the most famous bad free throw shooting team of all-time? The 2007-08 Memphis Tigers? The ones that shot so poorly from the line that their coach went on-air to defend them before their season collapsed when they missed key free throws down the stretch? They shot slightly better at 61.4% from the free throw line as a team.

• Read the rest of this entry »

1. Tomahawk Nation: The ACC is suddenly looking very shaky outside of the Triangle after the Seminoles played one of the ugliest games in recent memory and were upset by the Harvard Crimson at the Battle 4 Atlantis. To be clear, Harvard is a very good, experienced team that many predict to be dance-crashers come March. But that’s no excuse for the offensive ineptitude that took place, especially in the first half. The Seminoles didn’t score for the first eleven minutes (at all). The half ended with a score of 14-14 (tied for the lowest scoring half of the shot clock era). The second half was only marginally better with the Seminoles only scoring two points in the first seven minutes. As per usual, Florida State‘s defense was terrific; but the offense was anemic. The silver lining is the Seminoles get a shot at the defending national champions in the third-place game.
2. Green Bay Press Gazette: For Tony Bennett, it’s like father, like son. Bennett’s coaching style is very similar to his father’s grind-it-out, defense-first days at Wisconsin (where his system has been slightly modified by current coach Bo Ryan). Virginia is starting a series against Bennett’s alma mater, Wisconsin-Green Bay this year. Bennett has several reasons for playing his former team, including wanting “to show his appreciation for those who have supported him and his family going back to the late 1980s, when he moved town from Stevens Point.” Many media members are on the Bennett bandwagon, picking his Cavaliers to finish fourth in the ACC.
3. Raleigh News & Observer: Kendall Marshall hasn’t just gotten the love from national analysts for his playmaking abilities, he’s gotten it from his teammates too. He’s got a ludicrous 51 assists (and only eight turnovers) in the Tar Heels’ last four games. Roy Williams mentioned Marshall’s defensive questions and outside shooting woes “as if he didn’t want the success going to Marshall’s head.” The bottom line is Marshall has been terrific through the first few games of the season. It will be quite the match-up at point guard against Wisconsin in the ACC/Big 10 Challenge, as Jordan Taylor is probably the best point guard in the country.
4. SBNation: SBNation breaks down Duke‘s NBA prospects starting with Austin Rivers and Mason Plumlee, who are both potential lottery picks. Rivers’ best-case comparison, according to Jonathan Tjarks, is Monta Ellis. I see the comparison (tallish, scoring combo guards), though I think Rivers may end up a better defender by the time he leaves Duke. Plumlee’s best case is Amir Johnson. Interestingly, Tjarks lists Seth Curry ahead of Ryan Kelly.
5. Bleacher Report: I never link Bleacher Report here, but this inanity needs to be pointed out. The article is why Roy Williams is better than Mike Krzyzewski. The logic behind the thesis tells it all:
   

   Raw Data: In the eight years since joining the Tar Heels as their head coach, Williams has won two championships, appeared in three Final Fours and won five ACC seasonal championships.

   Projection: Through eight years, Williams is on pace to win eight national championships, appear in 12 Final Fours and win 20 ACC seasonal championships by his 32nd year.

   Well then… by that logic, Bill Guthridge might be the best coach in North Carolina history (he had two Final Fours in three total years of coaching). Team-oriented blogs generally show significantly more impartiality. I also don’t agree that the original assumption that the best two coaches in college basketball are Williams and Krzyzewski (Jim Calhoun, Tom Izzo, Rick Pitino and Bill Self deserve to be in that conversation as well). Don’t get me wrong: Roy Williams is a great coach. He’s got a chance to win a third national title in the last seven years. But his resume is on a different tier than Coach K’s for the time being.

EXTRA: The Bernie Fine case at Syracuse just got more interesting. The US Secret Service has now joined the investigation of the Syracuse assistant coach. The Secret Service’s involvement probably means there’s a new side of the investigation, as it wouldn’t be involved in a federal child molestation case.

Let me know if you have any questions…

ACC Game On will periodically review recent games involving ACC teams and take a look forward to key upcoming matchups.

Identities are finally coming into focus. Duke and North Carolina each had breakthrough epiphany moments, while Clemson was upset for the second time in a row. Miami also managed to win against Florida Gulf Coast in a performance that I would classify as “okay,” though that’s about all I can say about a game where the ten-point winner shot 32.1% from the field. Back to more intriguing topics.

Duke looked really good against a Michigan team that had just pounded a talented Memphis team the day before. A clever defensive plan (basically smaller guys aggressively fronting) kept Tim Hardaway, Jr., from impacting the game until near the end of the second half. Meanwhile, Austin Rivers, despite putting up impressive scoring numbers in past contests, finally put on a thorough demonstration of the skill he brings to the table, scoring aggressively, efficiently, and with more than a little panache. This performance augurs well for Duke’s future, especially considering how well the team was playing before Rivers’ breakout. For efficiency fans, I’d like to direct you to Ryan Kelly, who scored 17 points on six shots, and Seth Curry who scored 17 points on seven shots. That’s some ridiculously efficient scoring.

Rivers Quieted Some of His Detractors Yesterday

Five time zones away, North Carolina, took a step toward becoming the juggernaut that people whispered about in the offseason. Reggie Bullock led all scorers with 23 points in a performance where he made six out of seven three-pointers and contributed four rebounds, two assists, and a steal in a measly eighteen minutes of play.  He didn’t foul or turn the ball over. It was a sterling performance off the bench and one that promises good things for a Tar Heel team that had struggled to reliably hit three-pointers. Of course, Bullock took a back seat to the other command performance of the game: Kendall Marshall‘s 15-assist night. In the first four games of this season, Marshall has had more 15-assist games than any other Tar Heel in history. On nights like these, when Marshall is in passing-Nirvana, the Carolina offense seems fluid and unstoppable: everyone is open. UNC played so well, that John Henson‘s double-double with six assists and four blocks is the third story of this game.

Read the rest of this entry »

Matt Patton is an ACC microsite writer for RTC.

Reader’s Take I

Top Storylines

• Coach K Gets 903: Mike Krzyzewski made basketball history by passing his mentor Bob Knight on the all-time wins list. The record is a testament to Krzyzewski’s consistent excellence over the last three decades. It was an incredible accomplishment and dictated the better part of a week’s coverage.
• Eligibility and Injuries Plague ACC: The ACC has five players out with eligibility issues, seven are out with significant injuries, and one is out after violating team rules. Alex Len (Maryland) may have his eligibility after he sits out ten games (he’ll be back in late December), but DeQuan Jones (Miami) is out indefinitely because of the NCAA’s ongoing investigation into allegations of the Nevin Shapiro scandal; Shane Larkin (Miami) is awaiting word on his eligibility after transferring from DePaul; Thomas de Thaey (NC State) is waiting for his amateur status to be reviewed; and Ian Miller (Florida State) will miss at least first semester due to eligibility issues. On the injury front, JT Thompson and Marquis Rankin (Virginia Tech) are out for the season while Pe’Shon Howard (Maryland), Antwan Space (Florida State), Julian Gamble and Reggie Johnson (Miami), and Leslie McDonald (North Carolina) are out indefinitely with various injuries. Wake Forest’s Ty Walker is suspended for violating the team’s honor code but is expected back against Seton Hall. Yikes.
• Virginia Hype Came Too Soon?: Kellen Carpenter hit the nail on the head in his preview of the Cavaliers. He pointed out lack of offensive balance and inability to make twos as the two biggest questions facing Tony Bennett’s squad. The team has had success from inside the arc in its wins, bu looking at the boxscore from their loss to TCU reveals the Cavaliers shot less than 40% on two-point attempts. Mike Scott was still solid, but the rest of the team struggled a lot. The other problem is Virginia’s crawling tempo makes it very difficult to come back from deficits.
• Mark Gottfied Can Recruit (and possibly coach, too): Mark Gottfried came into Raleigh with high expectations from the Wolfpack fanbase. So far, he has lived up to all of them. Gottfried has a top-five recruiting class sealed up thanks to signing TJ Warren, Rodney Purvis, and Tyler Lewis in the early period; he has another potential star possibly joining the ranks in Amile Jefferson. He also managed to get NC State its best non-conference win in quite a while with a huge comeback against Texas. One of the biggest problems with last year’s team was it could not come from behind. I generally chalked it up to effort or general pessimism that comes with frequent losses. Gottfried seems to have turned things around at least a little. Read the rest of this entry »

Kellen Carpenter is an ACC microsite staffer and an RTC columnist. Behind the Numbers will publish weekly throughout the season.

Preseason rankings are a funny thing and once real basketball begins, these guesses about the season grow increasingly meaningless. People forget who was ranked where in the preseason by January, if they haven’t already forgotten by December. This, for what it’s worth, is probably a good thing.  Preseason polls can turn out to be pretty embarrassing, highlighting how little journalists and coaches actually know about how the basketball season is going to turn out. Remember Kansas State and Michigan State last season? They weren’t exactly huge factors in the postseason despite being almost unanimously ranked in the top five at the beginning.

Ron Morris Was Certainly On To Something

Gary Parrish’s “Poll Attacks” column is devoted to critiquing what he feels aren’t well-considered ballots. It’s an interesting idea and is usually very fascinating, but since Parrish can’t see the future, the columns have a tendency to not age all that well. What seems like understandable ridicule in November can seem less well-founded when the championship game is being played in April.  Here is a particularly infamous  passage from last year’s pre-season column:

Same dude voted Connecticut 18th.

This would’ve made sense three years ago, but it makes no sense now given that the Huskies have a coach who can’t seem to stay healthy, and a roster that looks nothing like your typical UConn roster. That’s why Big East coaches picked UConn 10th in the league, and why somebody needs to shoot me Ron Morris’ email address. With little effort, I can get him added to the official Big East email list, at which point he’ll start receiving announcements, and then this sort of stuff can probably be avoided. I don’t mean to be pushy.

Read the rest of this entry »

The gentlemen over at Blogger So Dear (SBNation‘s Wake Forest blog) took note of the conference’s unblemished record yesterday morning: “The ACC is 22-0 this year so far…it must be asked…can we run the table?” Another four wins later and the last perfect conference (sorry Pittsburgh, your application is for 2014-15) is still standing.

Blogger So Dear is Definitely Worth the Follow for Wake Forest Sports

1. Sports Illustrated: I’m not sure how I missed this for yesterday’s Morning Five, but Seth Davis’ post on Mike Krzyzewski and Bob Knight’s relationship is a must-read. In some ways the men are as different as you could imagine, but take a look at some of Knight’s old Indiana games and you’ll see (and lipread) the same fire that’s characterized Coach K’s sideline persona. The article speaks for itself, and I can’t begin to do it justice so I’ll just leave the rest to Seth Davis.
2. TarHeelBlue.com: This is a cool series North Carolina‘s athletic department is doing where once a month it’s hosting a chat with a member of the basketball team. Whoever is up next is going to have pretty big shoes to fill (sorry for that), as Kendall Marshall led off the series with a chat covering everything from his love for kicks to his favorite place to eat on Franklin Street. Marshall has been getting well-deserved love for his social-networking on Twitter (he’s overtaken Missouri’s Kim English as the best follow in college basketball), so if you ever get tired of “#riseandgrind #nodaysoff goin to the gym” athlete tweets, check him out. I’d be very excited to hear Harrison Barnes answer fan questions, but the true must-read chat might come if Blue Steel (the walk-ons) are ever given a chance.
3. New York Daily News: Maryland will face off against Kentucky in the first college hoops battle at the new Barclays Center arena in Brooklyn next season. The new building will host the New Jersey Nets (who will probably be getting a new name), but John Calipari “approached the Nets months ago and asked to have his team play the first college game there.” This is interesting to me on a couple of levels: (1) Calipari coached the Nets a while ago and it would be kind to call his tenure anything but a failure; and (2) Nets’ co-owner Jay-Z is a big Kentucky fan. The game is scheduled for November 9, 2012.
4. PressBoxOnline.com: Maryland legend Ernie Graham is finally having his jersey retired 32 years after he left Maryland. Graham’s story is a sad one filled with drugs, but he’s using his story (much like former Boston College stand-out Chris Herren) to help keep others from falling into the same trap. Graham’s crowning achievement was scoring 44 against NC State in 1978. The record is even more amazing taking into account the lack of a three-point line and that he only played 25 minutes per game. Because of his troubled past the athletic department has been largely distant, but a combination of getting clean and Maryland hiring new athletic director Kevin Anderson will finally bring closure and recognition to a great college career.
5. Associated Press: NC State relapsed into its coasting tendencies from last year in a tight 60-58 win over Princeton last night. Princeton notoriously plays a brand of basketball based on slowing the game down, not committing turnovers, and moving the ball (trust me, NC State fans know). This kept the Wolfpack out of transition, which has been their bread and butter in their opening two games. However, the biggest news of the game was Mark Gottfried’s cold-blooded assassin, Scott Wood, suffering a bad ankle injury early. The good news is that X-rays came back negative. The bad news is that Wood could be out “for a while,” according to Gottfried.

Duke Blue Planet produced an awesome video in honor of Coach K’s record-setting victory Tuesday night (their tribute site also has some pretty outrageous stats, but this one courtesy of @TheDevilWolf is unbelievable: “Coach K has coached 169 players [148 at Duke]. Of those, 84 have played in a Final Four, and of those, 41 won national championships”).

Last night was a celebration of sorts for Mike Krzyzewski, which at times was more of a coronation than an actual sporting event. The crowning had a very realistic potential to be derailed by a Tom Izzo-led Michigan State team that might not have had the preseason expectations that recent Spartan teams have had to endure, but still posed a threat to a talented but flawed Duke team. As he had done 902 times before, Krzyzewski found a way to guide his team to victory. It certainly was not the biggest win of his career (the 1991 UNLV game, 1992 Kentucky game, or any of his four national championships certainly rank well above it no matter what anybody tells you this morning), and it wasn’t the prettiest game of his career (we imagine that his current players will have to endure an epic film session based on the team’s horrendous play in the last four minutes when they nearly blew a 14-point lead), but in typical Coach K fashion, his team found a way to get it done.

The Student Has Surpassed The Teacher (Credit: dukebasketballneverstops)

We have no idea how long Krzyzewski will coach before he decides to walk away from the sideline forever, but the odds are that he will finish his career with more than 1,000 wins as a Division I men’s basketball coach, which would put him comfortably ahead of his nearest threat. His current closest threats — Jim Boeheim and Jim Calhoun — both come from the Big East. As of this morning, Boeheim has 856 wins (now 47 behind Krzyzewski) and turns 67 tomorrow, while Jim Calhoun has 855 wins (48 behind Krzyzewski) and is already 69 and has dealt with multiple well-chronicled medical issues in recent years. We do not want to assume anything about the health or personal issues of any of these three coaches, but it seems unlikely that Boeheim or Calhoun would be coaching for two more seasons after Krzyzewski retires and it is unlikely that they will begin to win games at pace that significantly exceeds what Krzyzewski is already doing at Duke. Even if they win five more games per year than Krzyzewski it would take them another decade before they would pass him. Once you get past these two, the difference between Krzyzewski and his competition is jarring.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s no secret that Roy Williams likes to use large rotations. Most of last year he rotated full lineups with frequency, and it wasn’t new to last year. If you look at his national championship teams from 2004-05 and 2008-09, only one player averaged thirty minutes a game for each team (Raymond Felton and Wayne Ellington). Ty Lawson’s toe injury probably kept him from being another player at around 30 minutes a game. Last year Williams expanded his rotation from eight players to nine (I’m only counting Larry Drew II and Justin Watts as one player), with only Harrison Barnes averaging 30 minutes a game.

Roy Williams is Relying on his Starters more this Season

But in the game against UNC Asheville Sunday, every Tar Heel starter logged at least 30 minutes. In that game, James McAdoo, Reggie Bullock and PJ Hairston all played close to ten minutes, but in two games Williams hasn’t been nearly as open with his rotations as in years past. Whether Williams’ change in strategy was due to a pesky UNCA team that just wouldn’t go away, or wanting to test his starters’ conditioning with the quick turnaround from the Carrier Classic (where the North Carolina starters all also played 30 minutes), is unknown. But especially for a game against a low major team, North Carolina’s reliance on its starters is interesting thus far.

Read the rest of this entry »

Kimmel Arena opened up in style. The UNC Asheville Bulldogs hosted the North Carolina Tar Heels in a brand new building that was packed with loud and enthusiastic fans. Bruce Hornsby, whose son, Keith,  plays for Asheville, kicked things off with a jazzy piano rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner. The second he stopped, the Bulldogs’ fans cheered as consistently loud and as hard as any crowd in college sports can in an effort to inspire the upset against the nation’s #1 team. As well as the defending Big South champions played, however, and as fantastic as the crowd was on this Sunday afternoon, Eddie Biedenbach‘s team was just overmatched.

Still, like North Carolina‘s win over Michigan State Friday night on the USS Carl Vinson, the victory over the Bulldogs was fine, but not good enough. When Roy Williams finally sat the starters with less than two minutes remaining, there wasn’t a lot of smiling on his bench. This is where the Tar Heels are: They won 91-75 (though the margin felt even bigger than it was), and the Asheville student section chanted “overrated.” It seems a silly thing to do when your team is losing by double figures, but the frowns on the faces of the North Carolina players confirmed the truth of the chant: UNC was not playing up to its lofty expectations.

After Looking Disoriented At The Carrier Classic, Kendall Marshall Bounced Back With A Fifteen Assist Game Against UNC Asheville

It’s an odd thing, and maybe it has more to do with the unrealistic expectations that have been placed upon this team by the greater college basketball world. Yet, when the first half was drawing to a close, I couldn’t help but feel that UNC just looked bad. Asheville was getting out on the break while the lagging Tar Heels weren’t even running the court. Tyler Zeller kept turning the ball over. John Henson looked winded, signaling to come out midway through the first half. Harrison Barnes just looked off, passive in his play and seemingly uninterested. North Carolina led by nine at the half, but the fierce play and tenacity of the Bulldogs to that point seemed like it gave UNCA a good chance of winning out over a tired, unfocused, and out-of-sorts North Carolina team.

Read the rest of this entry »