Jan. 12, 2008

By Adam Lucas

After fifty-one practices, it's very difficult for a head coach to surprise his players. They know the routine and they know the drills.

That's why it took Ty Lawson aback when he arrived at the basketball office on Thursday afternoon and took his first look at the day's practice plan.

The top half of the page looked normal. But there, slightly below the middle of the page, were words--underlined three times--that made him pause.

4:44: TO THE PIT!!!

"I didn't know what it was," Lawson said. "But it had three underlines, so I knew it was bad."

Maybe not, Ty. Maybe it was good.

The Pit, for those who have been hanging out with Carolina's point guard, is the UNC practice gym. Ordinarily, it's a state-of-the-art facility with six goals and a full-sized court.

When it morphs into The Pit, however, Tar Heel managers make a preemptive visit to remove all rims. There is no shooting in The Pit. There are no basketballs. There is just defense.

"I had heard stories about it from the 2005 championship team," Deon Thompson said. "I heard it was a beast."

Roy Williams last used The Pit in 2005 and yes, it's a beast. It's close outs and help defense and communication. And, in one particular Williams innovation, it's the "Drill de UNC-A." That's a fancy name for defensive slides--long, hard, thigh-burning defensive slides. When the Tar Heels turn in a particularly unsatisfactory effort against an opponent, they're likely to see that opponent's name on the next day's practice plan. Over the course of Williams's career, it's had several incarnations, including the Drill de Pfeiffer and Drill de Miami.

No matter what it's called, the result is always the same--a renewed commitment to playing defense. The drill is almost always positioned later in practice, when tongues are wagging and eyes are on the clock. The Drill de UNC-A, which was repeated again on Friday's practice, has a way of making sure everyone is focused.

Williams was disappointed after his team allowed Asheville to shoot 53.2% from the field on Wednesday. And after two solid days of grinding practices--the thought for the day referenced "hard work" on both Thursday and Friday--his squad delivered one of their best 20 minute-efforts of the season, holding NC State to 6-of-34 in the first half, including a mind-boggling 3-of-21 inside the paint. It wasn't all Carolina; the Wolfpack missed some easy baskets. But more often their not, their point guards struggled to even initiate their offense.

Most glaring was a possession late in the first half, with the Tar Heels holding a 37-11 lead. Exactly at that moment, Lawson decided to channel Raymond Felton. State's Javier Gonzalez caught the ball 40 feet from the basket. He took three dribbles, tried to use a high screen, but discovered that Lawson had fought over the top of the screen. At that point, Gonzalez began to resemble a man trapped in a Prius with a hive of angry bumblebees.

First he backed up a little. Then he dribbled the ball off his foot. By the time he recovered it, Lawson had tightened up on him. Gonzalez tried to go left--Lawson was there. He tried to go right--no room there, either. He lost the handle on the ball again, picked it up near the sideline, and eventually had to leap in the air to bounce it off Lawson in an effort to ricochet the ball out of bounds.

But the ball merely trickled across half court, whereupon you could almost visibly see Gonzalez sigh as he had to go pick it up again. By the time he crossed half court again, there were 11 seconds remaining on the shot clock. Four seconds later, Lawson finally forced his well-deserved turnover when he swiped it away from Courtney Fells. In 28 seconds of clock time, the ball had never gone inside the three-point line.

It was ball-hawking, intimidating, suffocating defense. In other words, exactly what Williams expects from his point guard.

"I don't know if it's possible to play that kind of defense all the time," Lawson said. "It tired me out. But I know Coach Williams expects me to do that. If I get my conditioning right, it might be possible to do it for 25 minutes or so."

Twenty-five minutes per game of that kind of defense would equal a lot more happy afternoons in the Smith Center.

Carolina's lone scholarship senior, the wizened Quentin Thomas, sees signs that it might be possible. Thomas played one of his best games as a Tar Heel, handing out four assists against zero turnovers and also adding four points and three rebounds.

But it was nothing that he saw on the stat sheet that most encouraged Thomas about Saturday's 93-62 win. The Oakland native didn't practice on Thursday, Pit day, but he heard exactly the right kind of chatter in the locker room on Friday.

"When I heard the guys talking, they said they liked The Pit," he said. "I knew that would help us and I knew right then this team had really matured. Because my freshman year, when I saw The Pit, I was frightened to death. But these guys weren't scared."

"You know what?" Lawson said. "It was pretty fun. Really. I didn't know it could be that fun."

Fun? Oh, Ty. Play defense that way--every possession, every day, and every game--and you haven't even seen fun yet.

Adam Lucas most recently collaborated on a behind-the-scenes look at Carolina Basketball with Wes Miller. The Road To Blue Heaven is available now. Lucas's other books on Carolina basketball include The Best Game Ever, which chronicles the 1957 national championship season, Going Home Again, which focuses on Roy Williams's return to Carolina, and Led By Their Dreams, a collaboration with Steve Kirschner and Matt Bowers on the 2005 championship team.