{"id":438,"date":"2010-11-29T11:03:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-29T18:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/capitalsports.us\/?p=438"},"modified":"2010-11-29T11:03:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-29T18:03:00","slug":"defense-still-lacking-with-this-unc-basketball-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/?p=438","title":{"rendered":"Defense still lacking with this UNC basketball team"},"content":{"rendered":"
North Carolina\u2019s basketball team will go as far as its defense takes it, and this season, that may not be far. The Tar Heels are sorely missing some players they had last year \u2013 Ed Davis, the Wear twins, Will Graves \u2013 and what is left does not look like an upper-tier ACC team.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span>Fans know this, too. You can\u2019t fool ACC basketball fans, and the light crowds in the Smith Center the last two games knew they weren\u2019t watching one of Carolina\u2019s best teams.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span>Harrison Barnes is very good, and may someday be great, but the preseason prediction of him making first-team All-America was a stretch. He may not make first-team All-ACC \u2013 you can expect Kyle Singler, Nolan Smith and Malcolm Delaney to take three spots, and the next two are likely Jordan Williams of Maryland and Chris Singleton of Florida State.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/span>Many thought the arrival of Barnes and the other freshmen would overcome the problems that led to last year\u2019s disappointing effort. It was easy to point to Carolina\u2019s problems last year. You could just name any facet of the game, point to that as an issue, and you were probably right. It was a strange year and one coach Roy Williams surely figured he would not repeat.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/a><\/span>This team is not that team, but some issues are continuing. The obvious ones are shooting and ball-handling, but perhaps what is more surprising is there seems to be a recurring lack of desire on defense. You could see that against UNC-Asheville Tuesday night and you could see it again Sunday. The fact that UNC slowed College of Charleston scorer Andrew Goudelock in the second half garnered headlines, but the way Carolina played without intensity on defense in the first half \u2013 and much of the second – was jarring. It wasn\u2019t until the Heels buckled down on defense with around seven minutes to go that the game changed.<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
Two factors may be at play here. One is Carolina lacks lock-down defenders. Against UNC-Asheville, the player who hustled the most on defense was Justin Watts, the junior from Durham Jordan. Of course, Carolina does have two shot-blockers in Tyler Zeller and John Henson, but there is no heir to the Marcus Ginyard-Jackie Manuel role. Reggie Bullock might have the talent and strength to do it, but injuries have slowed him down.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n
The other is more collective. Carolina doesn\u2019t seem to have the tenacity of a great defensive team. Reaching any real conclusions is unfair \u2013 it\u2019s a young team, and a young season. But right now, we do know this \u2013 Carolina is good, but not great. The Heels lack overwhelming offense, and the key to this season will be how well this team comes together on the defensive end.<\/o:p><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

North Carolina\u2019s basketball team will go as far as its defense takes it, and this season, that may not be far. The Tar Heels are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}