Carolina's Defense vs. the Three: No Easy Answers (February 1997)
by Thad Williamson
The best thing to be said about Carolina's 3-5 first go-round through the ACC schedule is that the Heels get another chance. What happened to Carolina in January is quite easy to explain: They flat-out gave a game away at home, dodged disaster with two home wins, and then came close but failed to get that blown Maryland game back on successive Wednesdays in Tallahassee and Durham. In between Carolina whacked a high-riding Clemson team to provide the first real evidence these Heels can beat a top-flight team.
But where does it go from 3-5? The tough loss at Cameron was another missed opportunity to get back to sea level and stay within the comfort range for an NCAA bid. Now Carolina faces tremendous pressure in two home games in a 48 hour span against FSU and Virginia, the teams now battling the Heels for fifth in the conference and a certain appearance in the big dance. A loss in either of those games would be devastating, but it's not hard to imagine it happening. Then NCSU and Tech on the road, each of whom could beat Carolina. And then the last 4 games against the ACC's 4 top ten teams. In the pessimistic scenario, this team could easily continue to struggle in the second half, and win as few as 2 or 3 of the last 8, leaving the Heels in the 16-11 range and decidedly on the NCAA bubble.
The more optimistic scenario is the one Dean Smith has been trying to sell to his team ever since the Virginia loss when he announced that it was now a "new season" in which Carolina was "0-0". In other words, since there was nothing positive to be learned from the Wake rout and the Maryland disaster, Carolina needed to shut that out of the mind and think anew. Starting with the comeback against NCSU, Smith's sell seemed to work: Okulaja, Jamison, and Carter all echoed Smith's talk of a new season after the State and Tech wins. Carolina indeed continued to play better even in losing to FSU and Duke, in addition to the shellacking of stone-cold Clemson. The more optimistic narrative to follow then, is to say that this team has a tremendous upside, and that with just a few less mistakes Carolina will start notching some wins, even on the road. With a healthy Vince Carter being more aggressive, Shammond shooting more consistently, and Makhtar Ndiyae finally finding his role, it might even be possible to roar back to a 9-7 mark and go deep in the ACC tournament and the NCAAs. That's upside thinking.
Which narrative for this team will prove truer remains to be seen. It may lie in the heads of the players as much as anything. If Carolina takes the floor against FSU or Virginia at the Smith Center and thinks "oh no, it'd be terrible if we lost", there will be big trouble. Carolina needs to keep the confidence up, and play to <win>. I have no doubt that this group of players, all of whom want it very badly, do take the floor each game expecting to win. But this same group of players over the past 2 seasons has had so many losses where the other team just makes a run and Carolina can't respond, and there does seem to be a proneness to negative thinking--"here we go again"--evident at times on this club. UNC does have a sports psychologist on the faculty. Carolina may need one to get through February in good enough shape to have a chance to play meaningful basketball in March.
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To pick up on a theme of last month's issue, nothing can make a team think "oh, no, here we go again" then the sight of the opponent sticking a big 3. There are a lot of reasons why Carolina fell short against Duke in their Cameron tilt, but perhaps the most disheartening was seeing pure shooter Trajan Langdon torch the Heels for 7-12 on the trifecta. Disheartening, because of it's very predictability: First, because Langdon truly is a gifted shooter, as any scouting report would tell you. Second, because Carolina has been burnt so often on the 3 in losses over the past 10 years, and the last 2 in particular.
What is to be done?
If you take a look at Carolina's core defensive principles in the straight-up man-to-man, the emphasis is on giving help to the playing guarding the dribbler. Giving help takes two common forms: First, if the opponent drives to the hoop, the Tar Heel "one pass away"--i.e. the defender guarding the next logical pass recipient--is supposed to "help and get back". That is, help your teammate take away the drive, while not losing sight of your own man. As Dean Smith notes in <Basketball: Multiple Offense and Defense>, "Admittedly, it is a tough position" for the defender to do two things at once. It is also an opportunity, with a quick penetrating dribble and then kick back pass, for the offense to free the helping defender's man for a jump shot.
Second, as is well known, Carolina tries to force the driving offensive player baseline. When this happens, the defender in the lane is to come over and help stop the drive, forcing the opponent into a trap. At the same time, however, the weakside (side away from the ball) guard must rotate down to pick up the helping defender's man, or else the driving player can get an easy assist for a layup to the helper's man. What that does, in turn, is leave a guard open, for a couple of moments at least, in 3 point land, if the offense can get it to him.
This vulnerability can be exposed even more easily on a drive to the middle of the court rather than the baseline: An example of this in the Duke game was when Newton received the ball on the left side of the court, and made a strong move in the lane. Carolina's help defense cut him off, but because the weakside guard, Shammond Williams, had taken a couple of steps towards the lane, Langdon was left open, and Newton, having made it to the center of the court, was able to find him for a huge second half 3. To put it in the simplest possible terms, Carolina's standard defense against a baseline drive (or drive to the middle) is a kind of double-team--and when you do that, someone's open.
Third, while Carolina's man-to-man cause for overplaying the opponent "one pass away"--trying to deny the ball, forcing a backdoor cut--the defender "two passes away" is supposed to lay off his man, and sit in the lane. For instance, suppose Vince Carter is guarding Trajan Langdon in a straight-up defense. Wojciehowski has the ball on the left side of the court, Capel is at the top of the key, and Langdon is in the right corner. In this case, Carter is supposed to give Langdon some space and move to the foul lane to help defend an attack from the opposite side, not stay in his man's face. However, if Wojo succeeds in passing to Capel at the top of the key, and Capel quickly passes it to Langdon in the corner as Carter is rotating back into "one pass away" position, Langdon will have the opportunity at least to shoot with some one flying at him.
Fourth, the run and jump, trapping defense, when employed, is inherently risky. As Smith has written, "we have no set rules to determine who picks up the open man during the rotation. Sometimes confusion occurs, which can work to the advantage of the offense." That is, good offensive execution against the trap can free a 3 point shooter.
Fifth, a real good pick set by the offense always has the potential of freeing the outside shooter. Sixth, there is also the dilemma posed by teams that run clear outs for the 2 man game (most notably Wake Forest, with Duncan and any number of shooters.) So against Carolina's regular man-to-man defensive principles, there are, at least, six plausible ways a 3 point shot might become available. An outstanding defensive team ought to be able to make the first 3 ways at least, relatively unimportant. If Carolina is giving all out effort and has the requisite quickness defensively, it should take truly outstanding offensive execution to expose the fact that Carolina emphasizes giving help rather than staying in the face of the perimeter player without the ball. But it does happen. As to reason #4, getting the 3 against the trap, yes, anyone could do that--that's why it's a gamble. Reasons #5 and especially 6--pick-setting and the 2 man game--have probably more to do with the talent and execution of the offensive team than anything the defense can do to stop it.
Add to this the fact that Carolina plays a significant amount of zone defense, depending on game situation (foul trouble, etc.) . There are essentially 5 places on the court to take a 3 pointer from--the 2 corners, 45 degrees (foul line extended) on other side, and the top of the key. With a zone, you have at most 4 defenders trying to guard those 5 places. If you can take away the crosscourt pass and prevent any penetration that would loosen the zone, this can be a very effective defense, inside and out, as it was in the Clemson win. But it stands to reason that a team determined to take a lot of 3s will eventually be able to get them against a zone---you can't stop someone from firing from 22 feet--and either penetration by the offense or any slackness by the defense could create an open look at any time.
So what does all this mean? Carolina's defensive principles certainly aren't going to be altered anytime soon. Yes, they do put priority on other things, namely a player taking it one on down your throat, than defending the perimeter player who doesn't have the ball. That makes it more likely a perimeter player can get the ball in an open spot. But does this mean a Carolina system is doomed to being torched from 3? Not if you have superior defensive personnel. Look at Carolina's 1993 team, or Kansas this year, teams that could play the help-oriented and/or trapping man-to-man defenses and not get victimized from 3 very often. That Carolina team had 3 really top-notch defenders in Phelps, Rodl, and Lynch, and the rest weren't bad either. This year's Carolina team has only 1 player near that level defensively, Okulaja, though Shammond is getting there. If you want the most obvious reason why Carolina has been vulnerable to the 3s over the past couple of years, it's because the players aren't quite as good (not yet, at least.)
Having a great team defense, not an up-and-down one, also permits the luxury of adjusting the principles to fend off a hot shooter without having breakdowns elsewhere. When Dean Smith sicced Phelps on Nick Van Exel in the 93 East Region final, he could have some confidence that the rest of the team would be able to hold its end up even without Phelps providing help on the dribble penetration, etc. It's not clear you could do that with this current team, nor is it clear who could play the role of Phelps, should Smith wish to do so against, say, Langdon, in the Duke rematch.
It'll be interesting to see just what does happen. It is frustrating for Carolina's players, too, to go out and try to play the principles they have been taught as well as they can, and find they are getting burnt from outside. Smith has been a little sensitive to criticisms of his team's 3 point defense in the past, but his comments after the Duke loss revealed genuine frustration that Langdon could have gotten open so often--"We put an asterisk next to #21 and said don't let him get open", but he canned 7-12. There is no perfect way for Carolina to respond to the problem. But given that this is not a great defensive team and that there will be vulnerabilities to the 3, some sort of adjustment, or resort to the Phelps strategy would seem to be in order, despite the risks--not against every team, mind you, but against the Langdons.
Of course, such a decision would be made in the peace of Coach Smith's office. For the rest of us, probably the best thing to do is hope the other team misses.