North Carolina coach Williams gives credit to UNLV’s defense
It was college basketball’s version of “The Perfect Storm,” and North Carolina was the “Andrea Gail.”
The Tar Heels could do virtually nothing right inside Orleans Arena on Saturday, while UNLV overachieved and then some. The result was a stunning 90-80 loss to the Rebels in the championship of the Las Vegas Invitational and so long to Carolina’s No. 1 ranking.
“Needless to say, we’re extremely disappointed,” coach Roy Williams said after his team fell to 5-1. “We never could get our focus going offensively all night. We weren’t doing things the way we wanted to do them.”
But falling from the top of the polls was the least of Williams’ concerns. His team was outworked, couldn’t make free throws and failed to guard the Rebels on the perimeter or inside despite having a considerable height advantage.
“Their defense was really aggressive,” Williams said of the Rebels (7-0), who probably will enter the Top 25 on Monday. “We needed to be stronger with the basketball.”
Worst of all for Carolina, its stars failed to show up, particularly point guard Kendall Marshall and center Tyler Zeller. Despite eight assists, Marshall was unable to get his teammates consistently involved. He shot just 3 of 8 from the floor.
“Kendall didn’t push it like he usually does,” Williams said. “I don’t know if it was fatigue or what. But we also didn’t do a very good job of moving and getting open for him.”
Zeller, the Tar Heels’ 7-foot center, shot 1 of 6 from the floor while dealing with early foul trouble that limited him to 24 minutes.
Harrison Barnes and John Henson also struggled, as the frontcourt duo shot a combined 10 of 28 from the floor. Rather than take it right at the UNLV front line, the pair constantly settled for jumpers that more often than not didn’t drop.
“We were settling for jump shots instead of being aggressive,” Williams said. “We didn’t do a good job of matching their intensity.”
Credit the Rebels for contesting many of those jumpers and clogging the lane to prevent North Carolina from having an open path to the basket.
“I knew (UNLV) was pretty darned good,” Williams said. “They shot it well, they defended well and give (UNLV coach Dave Rice) credit. His team did a heck of a job.”
But there were no defenders at the free-throw line, where the Tar Heels shot 20 of 33 for 61 percent.
“We’ve got to get better in a lot of areas, and that’s one of them,” Williams said. “We didn’t rebound as well as we should have, either, and we didn’t handle things late in the game as well as we should have. But I’ll take responsibility for that. We haven’t worked very much on late-game situations.”
Until Saturday, there hadn’t been a need to. The Tar Heels had beaten their opponents by an average of 21 points. But as they desperately tried to claw back in the game while trailing 82-72 with 2:32 left, the Tar Heels were unable to get enough defensive stops and enough makes at the offensive end.
“We’ve got a heck of a lot to work on,” Williams said. “We’ve got to defend better. We have to rebound better. We have to execute better. We have to be more patient.
“It was a painful lesson, and we paid for the lesson by losing.”
Contact reporter Steve Carp at scarp@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2913. Follow him on Twitter: @stevecarprj.