Rebounding is a staple for the success of North Carolina
In case you missed it, the ending of the No. 1 North Carolina Tar Heels’ 77-76 win over the No. 3 Oregon Ducks in the national semifinals was weird. Really, really weird.
Over the course of the final 5.8 seconds of the contest, the Tar Heels missed four straight free throws, grabbed two offensive rebounds and sealed a trip to the national title game for the second year in a row. Here. Just watch it:
When asked about the sequence and whether or not he’d seen anything like it before, senior center Kennedy Meeks gave a casual response, “I’m sure I have through my career of basketball, of course.”
His head coach Roy Williams, on the other hand, playfully teased the response during Sunday’s media availability, “Kennedy said, yeah, I’ve played a lot of basketball. I looked down and thought, I’ve coached for 44 dadgum years, I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Four missed free throws were certainly unexpected, but those two offensive rebounds are reflective of an identity that has been engrained by Williams in North Carolina basketball since his arrival in 2003.
While most teams in college basketball are following the NBA trend of forgoing the offensive glass in favor of getting back to play transition defense, North Carolina has done the opposite. In 13 of the 14 seasons that Williams has been at the helm in Chapel Hill, the Tar Heels have ranked in the top 30 nationally in offensive rebound rate. The last three seasons, they’ve finished in the top five. Perhaps no fact reflects the change in philosophy as much as this one. In Matt Doherty’s final season, North Carolina ranked 245th in the statistic. In Williams’ first? 13th.
Plays like Theo Pinson’s tip out on Meeks’ missed free throw are expected. It’s something that the Tar Heels work on extensively. “I tell them if you line up on the rebound spot, when your teammate is shooting the free throw, you’re trying to rebound,” Williams said after the game. He followed up by telling the media, “We practice tipping out on the free throws unless you can get the hand on the ball.”
Meeks’ final offensive board? That’s what the 6-foot-10 senior does. His 148 offensive rebounds are the third most in college basketball this season and his 16.4 percent offensive rebounding rate is the eighth best mark nationally, according to KenPom. Meeks isn’t the only good offensive rebounder on the roster either.
North Carolina’s frontcourt is built around players who can crash the offensive boards. Meeks’ starting partner, senior Isaiah Hicks, has a top 500 offensive rebound rate at 8.4 percent. 6-foot-11 Tony Bradley has the highest offensive rebound percentage among all freshmen in Division I (min. 400 minutes). Even Luke Maye, the hero of the Tar Heels’ Elite Eight matchup with Kentucky, grabs 12.4 percent of his team’s misses when he’s on the floor.
Given all of the effort put into grabbing its own misses, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the 10.7 percent of possessions North Carolina uses on putbacks from offensive rebounds is the highest mark in the country, per Synergy Sports. What is surprising is the relative lack of success that the Tar Heels have scoring on those possessions. Again per Synergy Sports, they have averaged just 1.089 points per possession (53rd percentile) on putback chances this season.
There are still risks associated with crashing the glass as Williams likes to do. Namely, transition offense. North Carolina, though, has done a nice job of stemming the tide in those situations. When most teams are committed to grabbing an offensive board, they sacrifice getting back on defense, but because the Tar Heels’ frontcourt is able to grab those rebounds without the help of their guards, they can still send three players back to shut down transition opportunities. Just 21.2 percent (296th highest) of the total field goal attempts taken against North Carolina have come in transition this season, per Hoop-Math.
These two related areas — North Carolina’s offensive rebounding and its subsequent transition defense — could prove to be significant factors in Monday night’s title game against the Gonzaga Bulldogs. This will be one of the first times all season that the Tar Heels will face a frontcourt with more size. Gonzaga head coach Mark Few can role out two 7-footers in Przemek Karnowski and Zach Collins to help clean up the defensive boards. It’s part of the reason the Bulldogs have been one of the 50 best defensive rebounding teams in the country this season.
If they are able to grab those boards, watch out for them in transition. Gonzaga’s offensive possessions have lasted on average just 15.8 seconds (38th nationally) this season, per KenPom, while 26.6 percent of its field goal attempts have come in transition, per Hoop-Math. Point guard Nigel Williams-Goss, in particular, is lethal, scoring 1.141 points per possession on transition scoring opportunities, per Synergy Sports.
Next: Gonzaga's path to the Final Four
Don’t expect any of those risks to cause Williams to change his strategy on Monday. It’s worked for him for 14 seasons in Chapel Hill with the Tar Heels tallying five Final Fours and two national championships during that run. If North Carolina can deliver another big performance on the offensive boards against Gonzaga, it’ll have a chance to cut down the nets for the third time in Williams’ tenure.