Modern or Midas touch? Hubert Davis’ changes to UNC offense position Heels for title
North Carolina coach Hubert Davis discovered a pattern while he was an assistant coach putting together scouting reports. Long before he ever envisioned being a head coach, he dreaded when the Tar Heels faced teams that had perimeter shooting big men.
It presented a matchup conundrum that steadily kept Davis trying to come up with ways to stop them.
“That was the most difficult scout to prepare for, a team that had a big guy that had the ability to stretch the floor off of ball screens or in transition,” Davis said. “And so instead of me stressing going through the scout about how do we defend this guy, how do we play ball screens, how do we match up with them, do we put a small, do we put a big — it would be great if we had one of those guys.”
Davis pointed out Luke Maye in particular and his role on the 2017 national title team, playing a stretch-4 role and shooting 40 percent from 3-point range.
So Davis went out and got one of those guys in Brady Manek, the graduate transfer from Oklahoma. He tweaked the offense to use more ball screens, and use a four-out, one-in system that has also led Armando Bacot to have a breakout season.
“For me, from an offensive standpoint, it’s fun when you have spacing and balance and a combination of ball and player movement,” Davis said. “… I just felt like having that 4 that has the ability to play on the outside opens up our offense, makes us more versatile, and I don’t think there’s anybody better in the country at being able to do that than Brady.”
North Carolina probably would not be playing Kansas for the national championship on Monday without the modern upgrades Davis made to what had been the traditional two-big offense the Heels ran.
“Coach Williams has a great game plan with the two bigs system on the block, but with guards like Caleb (Love) and R.J. (Davis), you can see what they can do with all the space we have out there,” senior Leaky Black said. “It gives us a different look. And it doesn’t allow teams to just clog the paint up and just rely on us to make shots. it allows them (Love, Davis) to get downhill and make plays for each other and I felt like it was a good change.”
It certainly has proven to be throughout the season.
Those teams and styles that had given the Heels the most trouble under Roy Williams, were no longer a lot of trouble this season.
Virginia had won seven straight against the UNC entering this season. UVA coach Tony Bennett’s use of the pack-line defensive philosophy was difficult for UNC’s bigs to play against. It also clogged the lane for perimeter players trying to get to the basket.
Having a stretch-4 helped eliminate some of the problems the Heels previously faced. Manek scored 19 and 21 points, respectively, in both games, and Carolina beat the Cavaliers twice by an average margin of 19 points.
“Having Brady is like the greatest advantage of all time because at the college level, you see a lot of 4 man they’re just like slashers and guys that can drive the ball a little bit,” Bacot said. “Him just being one of the best shooters in the country with that size, and to be able to play inside to is a huge advantage and it opens up everything.”
Marquette coach Shaka Smart had been 3-0 against UNC, with each of those wins coming while he was at Texas. Carolina beat Smart and the Golden Eagles by the largest margin in NCAA tournament history for an 8-9 seed game, 95-63.
Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski in many ways embraced having a big man who could shoot from the perimeter in the ‘80s and early ‘90s with Danny Ferry and Christian Laettner before it became popular.
Throughout the years, the Blue Devils often burned the Heels with players like Shane Battier and Justise Winslow playing the 4 and creating matchup nightmares.
Davis turned the tables against the Blue Devils this season. With enough shooters on the court to prevent Duke from playing off anyone, not only did it work in Carolina’s win in Cameron Indoor Stadium for the regular season finale, it helped in Saturday’s win that catapulted the Heels to Monday’s title game.
“I’ve said it since I took over in the press conference, the foundation of Carolina basketball will always be here,” Davis said. “Because it’s been tried and tested and proven successful and I’ve experienced it. But I’m going to do this with my own personality, in my own shoes.”
For years, decades even, Carolina relied on running its freelance offense and secondary break. Davis switched it up and made the Heels tougher to defend as a result.
“We made a lot of tweaks offensively too because we were still kind of doing a lot of secondary stuff and we didn’t really have the personnel for that,” Bacot said. “Brady, he’s more of a spot-up shooter, wing, type of guy and we were kind of posting him up a lot. It just flowed better with us setting a lot of ball screens and allowing the guys to be able to create and score, shoot and also hit me on the roll too.”
Sophomore guard R.J. Davis said that getting used to the offensive changes were partly the reason why the Heels played so uneven earlier in the season. They had to learn and grow into the heavy use of ball screens.
“The second half of the season is where we actually started to do well with the pick and roll has been working all year for us,” R.J. Davis said. “And we’re actually executing well at the right time, not just for me, but for anyone. We’re exploiting the mismatches that we wanted.”
One of those mismatches provided the biggest shot from Saturday’s semifinal. Hubert Davis wanted to isolate guard Caleb Love on Duke’s 7-foot center Mark Williams, the ACC’s Defensive Player of the Year, so he ran a ball screen for Love. The Blue Devils switched the pick and Love created enough space to shoot and make the 3-pointer with 24.8 seconds left that essentially sealed the win for the Heels.
“On a ball screens, it puts the defense in a pinch all the time,” Bacot said. “Coach Davis did a good job from the beginning of the year to now just adjusting and running a lot of ball screens and things like that in order to just get us a lot of free, open shots.”
As the Heels face another team that was a nemesis to Williams, they need the open shots to be there for one more game. Kansas and coach Bill Self won all three of their meetings against Williams including in the 2008 Final Four.
This story was originally published April 3, 2022 at 8:09 PM with the headline "Modern or Midas touch? Hubert Davis’ changes to UNC offense position Heels for title."