The UNC basketball program is set to meet Marquette in the 8/9 matchup on Thursday in Forth Worth, Texas. The winner will likely get Baylor in the round of 32 in the East Region.
Going into this game, UNC is playing some of their best basketball of the season while Marquette has struggled down the stretch. The Tar Heels are led by the likes of Armando Bacot, R.J. Davis, Caleb Love and Brady Manek, all who need to have a good game for the Tar Heels to come out with a victory.
But one area Marquette might be able to expose the Tar Heels is in the pick and roll.
Andrei Greska of Paint Touches breaks down why Marquette can find success there:
This is the one area where Marquette will have a clear advantage over North Carolina. Per Synergy, UNC ranks 230th in the country at P&R+Pass defense, which measures defense against both pick and roll action that results in direct shots, plus the pass outs to spot ups and drives from pick and rolls. When Marquette was rolling, it was creating a plethora of open shots both at the rim and beyond the arc, mostly off Tyler Kolek’s wizardry at finding the open guy. MU scores 1.107 points per possession off of Kolek’s passes from pick and rolls. He had 280 of these possessions, 4th most in the country and most by any high major player. Big East teams began choosing to go under screens and deny help in the 2nd half of the season, daring Kolek to beat them with the shot rather than the pass, something that you can say worked well for them.
The Tar Heels are going to have to find a way to get good communication on the switches and not find themselves in a situation where Armando Bacot is out on the perimeter all game.
This could be the biggest difference in the game.
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