Court Vision: North Carolina bounces back from Iowa loss with convincing win
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- No. 12 North Carolina bounced back from a midweek loss to Iowa with a trouncing of East Carolina by a final of 108-64 on Sunday. It was a pretty thorough win, and one during which the Tar Heels dominant from wire to wire.
The Tar Heels have plenty more to work out, especially with a trip to No. 1 Kentucky looming, but head coach Roy Williams might have successfully gotten his team's attention.
1. It didn't take much for Roy Williams to get his team's attention
After the loss to Iowa on Wednesday night, Williams gave his team Thursday off with exams beginning on Friday and Saturday. Williams was out of town recruiting on Friday, and he said he told his team that it would maybe be good for them because he would maybe calm down. Assistant coach Steve Robinson said, "Nope, he's just going to be simmering." Maybe, just maybe, they thought, they'd escape Williams' wrath because of timing. They never go hard the day before a game.
The long-time assistant was right.
"I did simmer, for another 24 hours," Williams said. "Yesterday, we got after them in practice as hard as anybody on this team has ever had to practice the day before a game."
"We usually have a practice that's a little scaled back the day before a game, and that was not the case yesterday," junior point guard Marcus Paige said. "And that's a first-hand account. I think we needed that and we'll probably have more of those going forward because it teaches us to respond. I think it's beneficial for us to compete really hard in practice, because it'll translate to the game."
The Tar Heels (6-2) didn't box out well enough in the second half, and didn't -- as Williams put it -- pay enough attention to detail. So he wanted to make sure he emphasized those things.
"He would run us after every turnover, so that was part of the message," junior Brice Johnson said. "We really responded. Hopefully we don't have to go back to that, we don't have to revert to that just to get us to play. Hopefully we just play without having him to have to go to those measures just to get us to play like that."
The Tar Heels controlled the boards in both halves this time against East Carolina (4-5), shooting 60 percent for the game by getting the shots they wanted and dishing out 27 assists to just eight turnovers. All in all, a very clean and efficient performance, and that's what Williams wanted.
2. Brice Johnson's alter ego
The junior big man can be so effective when he gets going. Other times, it can take something as small as a few fouls or a bad shot to take him out of a game completely on the mental side of things.
For Johnson, his parents (and how his teammates) separate those two sides of him into two people: Jonathan (which is his real first name) and Brice.
Brice is the player North Carolina recruited. He's the player who had 19 points and a career-high 17 rebounds in just 23 minutes, even pulling down tough boards in traffic, picking up just two fouls on the afternoon and not reaching in for silly ones. Brice dunks rather than takes jump shots, gets good post position and, most importantly, plays great defense.
"Jonathan is the one who fouls a lot and doesn't do what Coach tells him to do," Johnson said. "Brice is the player Coach recruited. Jonathan is not. So I need to play like Brice and not Jonathan."
Johnson had picked up 19 fouls in 100 minutes of game action over a five-game stretch (the Tar Heels lost two of those games), shooting 13 of 36 from the field and turning it over 12 times.
He wasn't always "Jonathan" in each of those games. He won Defensive Player of the Game honors for the first time in his career against UCLA, in spite of shooting just 1 of 5 from the floor. But against Iowa at home, he finished with two points and four fouls in 12 minutes. Against ECU, he was pulled early due to his shot selection and responded by continuing to play through it, something that pleased his head coach.
"Brice was off the charts -- rebounding-wise, scoring wise, and he was better defensively but he can even be much better defensively. But his whole mind was into the game," Williams said. "The other night, he missed his first two shots and got a call that bothered him and he was out of it. Today, he missed his first three shots and kept playing, kept rebounding the basketball."
Sophomore big man Kennedy Meeks has been perhaps North Carolina's best and most consistent player all year long, and he had 12 points and 11 rebounds in just 20 minutes against the Pirates. But Williams needs more from both of his bigs, not just Meeks, and he knows that.
"I've said that since the start of the year, I've said a couple of the big guys, they've got to step up and when they step up and be really big-time players, we're really a good basketball team. That's putting a lot of pressure on guys, but heck, it's college basketball at the highest level. If you want to be good, your best players have got to step up and play," Williams said. "I got ticked off at him the last three days, and he was really good today.
"I'm getting to be old. I can't stay mad all the dadgum time. So he's got to be able to do that himself. But his rebounding today was really impressive because he was rebounding the ball in the crowd and didn't act like a little wimp. He played 23 minutes and only committed two fouls. So, yeah. It does gnaw at me. But I want it to gnaw at him. If it gnaws at him, the results will be a heck of a lot better."
What gnaws at Williams, and at some of Johnson's teammates, is that he shows flashes of being that dominant player, even for stretches of three or four games, before he goes back to being -- well, to being Jonathan.
Pagie, though, sees improvement in that aspect from his roommate.
"(Assistant coach Hubert) Davis talked about that after the game. You show what you can do in spurts, and that just makes you question why you don't want to bring that every night. Obviously he's getting better at it from year to year, but that's just the type of Brice we need every night," Paige said. "If you rebound and run, you're going to make things happen, and we need you to do those things. We don't necessarily need you to score a lot. When you do, it helps us. But when you defend, rebound and run, you'er taking care of everything we need in terms of winning and losing games.
"He's starting to get that and I think once he does and does that consistently, you see what he can do."
Meeks said that his teammates got wise to the whole Jonathan/Brice dynamic early and will not hesitate to needle him a bit and call him Jonathan if they see him letting up in practice.
Meeks has a trigger word that he uses, he says, to bring out Brice. But he wasn't talking.
"I can't disclose what I say to him," Meeks said. "I just say the word and he's there. I think from now on, it's not going to take a word, he's just going to come out and give the effort."
" ... I think the real Brice came out today, though. He was an animal today."
3. Marcus Paige's struggles shooting the ball continue, but he's trying to help his team in different ways
Paige shot 38.9 percent from three last season and had an effective field goal percentage of 53.9 percent, one of the better numbers in the country. And this was all in spite of being the focus of opposing defenses.
This season, his 3-point percentage is down to 34.4 percent and his eFG% is just 44 percent. It's early yet, but Paige is just 4 of 19 from the 3-point line in UNC's last three games and 11 of 39 in the last five, two of which were losses.
For the most part, he's getting pretty good looks at the basket.
They're just not going in.
"Defenses played me the same for most of last year that they're playing me this year really with the exception of (North Carolina Central) in the first game throwing in a box-and-one," Paige said. "There's something funky going on with my shot right now. I'm going to go back and look at some film. I might be kicking my leg or not holding my follow through or something. But I've gotten good looks, so it's not necessarily anything there. I just need to start knocking them down."
Paige got all the preseason hype for what he did last season, and he has been disappointed in the way that he's played. He knows this team isn't going to go very far if he can't at least contribute in other ways. That's what he focused on against East Carolina. Against Iowa, he didn't shoot well but he also logged just one rebound, no assists, three turnovers and two steals in 34 minutes. That's not really helping the team.
Against ECU, he scored eight points but added two rebounds, six assists and just on turnover in 23 minutes.
"Obviously I'm not killing the game right now, but I know what I need to do for this team. Tonight I was 6-1 assist-turnover ratio. That's the type of thing we need," Paige said. "We need me to be a steady presence on the court, be a leader and be a vocal leader, too.
"Because I was struggling, I got a little bit away from that and then tried to get myself going somehow. But at the same time, I realize what the team need me to do. I'm not really worrying about what other people say."
72: The Tar Heels hit just 1 of 7 3-pointers. But they only took two 3-pointers in the second half, and they refused to settle for shots after the first few minutes, using their height advantage to impose their will on a smaller ECU team. Also, 72 percent of the 2-pointers they attempted were in the paint, which is the best kind of shot for them.
44: North Carolina's bench hasn't been as consistent as they'd like it to be against good teams, but it's certainly not a bad sign to see it contribute 44 points and to see five different players score at least five points (and four get seven or more).
"If I was little, it would take a lot of heart for me to do that. There's a lot of respect there." -- Kennedy Meeks (6-foot-9, 270 pounds) on East Carolina guard B.J. Tyson (6-foot-3, 190 pounds) standing in and taking a charge against him
