North Carolina Tar Heels: Orange Saturday
The North Carolina Tar Heels will try to sweep the season series against the Syracuse Orange at the Final Four.
The good news for the North Carolina Tar Heels is that they are not playing Virginia. A third Carolina-Virginia game would likely have led to a slugfest that would have completely nullified the winner’s chances to take home the National Title by sheer exhaustion.
The bad news of course is they have to play the team that beat Virginia. That would be the Syracuse Orange. Syracuse represents the second straight game that the Tar Heels have had to face an ACC opponent coming off their rubber match with Notre Dame in the East Regional final.
Syracuse will represent another team facing the Tar Heels for the third time. In this game the other two games in the series will not mean very much if the Heels lose this one. The Tar Heels beat the Orange in Syracuse and then beat them again in Chapel Hill at the end of the season. The margin shrank from eleven to five between those two games.
The key to whether the Tar Heels make a National Championship appearance is how they handle the Syracuse 2-3 zone. The Syracuse version of the zone does not behave like most 2-3 zones. The zone ordinarily sacrifices long shots in order to clog the interior. The Syracuse zone reacts more to passing lanes that it does to simply clogging the middle.
If the ball goes high post on the Syracuse zone, the expectation would be that people would clamp in on the ball. Instead Syracuse is looking to jump on the pass out to the shooters from that position. The high post then has to make a good decision with options that might look better than they are.
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The way to break it is to have high low action in the post. In the first game against Syracuse, the Tar Heels did this with Brice Johnson finding Isaiah Hicks or Justin Jackson behind the zone for points. Smart passing is necessary to limit turnovers since the Orange defenders are lengthy and will jump passing lanes into the interior.
The other weapon would be the three point shot. That has not been the best friend of the Tar Heels, but they have gotten some hot streaks from Marcus Paige lately. Paige could turn the game on its head with a few three balls. That would frustrate a Syracuse unit that could do everything right and still have Paige come away with an open shot.
The Tar Heels also need to recognize that Syracuse is willing to experiment with press defense. Their big turnaround against Virginia was when they began pressing the ball and forcing the Cavaliers to react at something other than their normal plodding pace.
While that particular move would not work against the Tar Heels, it does not mean that Coach Jim Boeheim would not draw something else up if pressed.
On defense, the Tar Heels need to bring the intensity that they used in the ACC Tournament. Two players stand out as players of notice. While Trevor Cooney, Michael Gbinije, and Tyler Roberson are known threats, the players who could look to change the game are Malachi Richardson and Tyler Lyden.
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Lyden plays that four man who is happy enough on the perimeter. The Tar Heels have not adjusted to that during their tourney run. Instead they have told Johnson and Hicks to simply go get them out where they are. Johnson has a tendency to lose guys like that from time to time.
Richardson has not done much against the Heels in two games, so he must be due. He is a lengthy matchup for either Paige, Joel Berry, or Nate Britt. Switching them onto Gbinije is not an improvement height wise.
The Tar Heels have one more day for preparations and then they have make it count Saturday just before 9:00 PM on TBS.