Defensive Heel

I would like to address the one thing that will seemly always get blamed for a Tar Heel loss. The dreaded defense. In the eyes of most fans, the defense is awful. Who is to blame for this mess?

I guess the first person to point a finger at would be Coach Roy Williams. It is his fault that UNC is what I would consider an average defensive team. He obviously does not spend enough time on defense because he is always running the fast break. He never even works on the half court offense in practice. "Run and gun" he guffaws in his typical manner, wearing his warm up pants, collared shirt and sweater vest. No clipboard in sight.

It is also Roy's fault because of the players he recruits. Think of all the offensive players he has recruited to UNC. Tyler Hansbrough, Danny Green, Marvin Williams, Wayne Ellington, Ty Lawson. Think of his Kansas days with Paul Pierce, Kirk Hinrich, Raef Lafrentz. He recruits very few defensive players.

Let's take it a step farther and blame the players. They think that Roy is a joke because of what he wears at practice. They don't listen to him at all because they are all thinking about their millions in waiting. They think they can just show up and win.

If you can't tell, the sarcasm is pretty thick throughout this post. Roy has committed to defense. We all know the story of him taking the rims off and having a defensive practice. We have heard the stories of the beginning of this year where he did 12 minutes of offense and the rest of the time was spent on defense. I want to make it clear that I rarely question Roy. He brought the program back from 8-21. Please remember that. That season was tough to watch for all of us. It was Roy that taught a bunch of selfish players to buy into the team concept to win a National Championship. It is Roy who brought us Psycho-T, whom we all love. It was Roy who instituted Late Night and it is Roy who has put us into contention for a deep tourny run since he arrived on campus. Now you might be thinking that he could recruit defensive-minded players, but ask yourself this: Would you really want to watch a bunch of Marcus Ginyard's and Jackie Manuel's running around out there? I like these guys, but I don't watch the games for defense. I like the 100 point games. I like the blowouts. So in my opinion, I think Roy does fine recruiting. I think it is his goal to get one solid defensive player in a recruiting class who will stay for four years, and that happened with Manuel (yes, I know Roy did not recruit him) and that will happen with Ginyard (five, if you want to be technical).

Everyone seems to be throwing a huge fit about how opposing point guards have hit 3o on the Heels and Ty Lawson has come under a lot of criticism for it, especially after the 0-2 start in ACC play. We have seen how the game changes when Ty digs deep and plays defense and how it changes the flow of the game. I'm confident he will do that as crunch time gets closer. Remember how Raymond Felton took a lot of heat after Chris Duhon drove on him to score the winning layup at the Dean Dome? Remember it was also Felton who came up with the game-clinching steal against Illinois.

HAVE FAITH IN OUR HEELS!