UNC’s defense confounds its coach while it dazzles on paper
The numbers couldn’t be any more clear: North Carolina is the best defensive team in the ACC. Better than Clemson. Better than Virginia. Far better than anyone else. The 15th-best team in the country, in fact.
That’s how it looks on paper. This is how it looks to Roy Williams on the bench: Sometimes, he looks up and he worries one of his players is guarding one of his own players instead of the opposition.
“You tell me those kind of things and I think we’re one of worst defensive teams I’ve ever coached in my life,” Williams said. “So that part is funny. It’s peculiar, it’s not funny, I can assure you.”
Because North Carolina typically plays so fast, as the Tar Heels have for years, its defense can sometimes get lost in the shuffle. The Tar Heels are never going to perform very well in a stat like scoring defense. They’re going to give up a lot of points, because they score a lot of points.
That’s in contrast to Friday’s first-round NCAA tournament opponent, Wisconsin, which typically scores fewer points, allows fewer points, and gets credit for being a great defensive team, right down to Brad Davison jumping in front of anything that moves trying to draw a charge. (Yes, he’s still around, and still conning gullible officials.)
On a per-possession basis, though, UNC and Wisconsin are almost exactly equals on defense in Ken Pomeroy’s efficiency data. Wisconsin ranks 13th, allowing 89.9 points per 100 possessions, North Carolina 15th at 90.1 points per 100 possessions. Tempo is the big difference: North Carolina has played only two games slower than Wisconsin’s average pace this season. One was a one-point win over Notre Dame, the other a loss to Virginia.
This isn’t the first time North Carolina’s a sneaky good defensive team. Going back 13 years, to the 2009 national title team, seven of those teams ranked in the top 25 in adjusted defensive efficiency. Two of them were also the best offensive team in the country and both played for national titles, so no one really noticed their defense.
This team, for all its faults and inconsistency, is North Carolina’s second-best defensive team of the past decade. Only the 2017 national champions were better. That doesn’t match up with what Williams or anyone has seen — like giving up 83 points to Marquette at home — and there isn’t a readily apparent reason for it when you dig into the numbers.
The Tar Heels aren’t an elite field-goal defense team, they don’t force opponents to turn the ball over often enough, they’re adequate on the defensive boards (but absolutely dominant on their own end) and they’re good at keeping opponents off the free-throw line, but not spectacular.
In short, North Carolina doesn’t do any of the things it tries to do defensively very well. It just happens to do all of them in ways that work dramatically better when taken collectively. The Tar Heels’ size is a big reason for that; the Tar Heels block a fair percentage of shots, but they alter many, many more. That helps make up for any deficiencies on the perimeter.
“I think we’re really good on defense,” North Carolina forward Garrison Brooks said. “We’ve had some really good moments. It’s one of the better defensive teams I’ve been a part of. But we also have some bad moments. Those are the ones he thinks about.”
Brooks is right on both counts: This is the best defensive team in his four years at North Carolina, although 2019 was close, and Williams definitely thinks about the bad moments on defense. Often. Whatever the stats say about his team’s defense on paper, his eyes tell him something else.
“I watch the tape and see the pictures in my mind,” Williams said. “It is a little mystifying to me.”
NCAA tournament: North Carolina vs. Wisconsin
When: 7 p.m., Friday
Watch: CBS
This story was originally published March 18, 2021 at 7:00 AM.
