By Andrew Kurzeja
During a difficult stretch of games in Florida that saw Courtney Banghart’s North Carolina squad go 1–2 seemingly had no concrete answers on the offensive end of the floor between nagging injuries, a seemingly endless amount of Tar Heels in foul trouble, not to mention the indoor air temperature being less than ideal.
The energy in the room during her final postgame press conference after Carolina’s 65–64 loss to Florida Gulf Coast felt hollow at best, and faithless at worst. For a coach as typically upbeat and positive as Banghart, I found her final presser in Florida to be concerning, as it was a far cry from her usual demeanor, even after a loss.
Whether it was just purely the optics, a coach who was understandably frustrated and ready to be the first one to board the plane back to RDU, or something deeper, one thing that did remain consistent from Banghart was her overall satisfaction with her team’s defense throughout the tournament, and for good reason.
Vermont, Kansas State, and Florida Gulf Coast were held below their season average point totals coming into their matchups with the Tar Heels. UNC had held six of its first seven opponents below their season average up to that point, with Davidson’s 70 points scored in Carmichael Arena during a close Carolina victory being the only outlier.
All that being said, the offense has sputtered in recent weeks and the shooting, particularly behind the arc, has been nowhere near acceptable levels for a team that had national-title goals going into this season. Combine that with the fact that the No. 1 team in the country, South Carolina, was coming to Chapel Hill in just four days. Not only that, but the Gamecocks were averaging an absurd 100.4 points per contest heading into the matchup in front of a sold-out Carmichael.
It was painfully clear that North Carolina was not equipped to get into a firefight with a team that was shooting 51.4% from the floor and boasting five players averaging double figures in scoring, including 6–7 Kamilla Cardoso, who lead the team with 16.8 points per contest to go along with 11.0 rebounds.
If the Tar Heels were going to have any shot at pulling off an upset after what happened in Florida, Banghart and her staff were going to have to craft a game plan to slow down Cardoso and the rest of the Gamecocks to give their offense any hope of keeping pace.
So, what did they come up with?
To double or not to double?
When dealing with a dominant post player like Cardoso, you must first decide whether to double-team her when she eventually catches the basketball. And while there were times when the Heels were willing to double, for the most part, they were willing to take their chances defending her one-on-one.
They also elected to play single coverage against Kansas State star Ayoka Lee, who was held to her second-lowest point total of the season in the Wildcats’ 63–56 win over Carolina. That decision had a domino effect on the rest of the game, as it allowed UNC’s disruptive guards to stay attached to their matchup and help cause the 21 turnovers that Kansas State committed that afternoon.
“We really wanted to play one v one in the post and four v four on the perimeter,” Banghart said after the loss to Kansas State. “When you force 21 turnovers and get 13 steals, that’s a game you usually win.”
Perhaps the biggest reason North Carolina has been so comfortable defending these long, skilled post players is the emergence of Boston College transfer Maria Gakdeng. A 6–3 center from Lanham, Md., Gakdeng has arguably been Carolina’s most consistent player on both ends of the floor.
Offensively, she’s been hyper-efficient, shooting 75% from the floor when given post-up opportunities this season, good enough for an average of 1.375 points per possession. Those numbers put her in the 98th percentile of all women’s players in the nation, according to Synergy.
On the defensive side, she’s an athletic shot-blocker who plays above her listed height to alter and often block any shots taken inside. But even for as good as she’s been so far this season, defending a player like Cardoso without much help would be a unique challenge.
Carolina’s coaching staff wasn’t just going to throw Gakdeng out there against Cardoso and just say “good luck!,” though. They were going to help put her in the best position possible to keep South Carolina’s leading scorer at bay.
The plan
Ballscreens are a staple of modern basketball offense at nearly every level, and their usage has only increased over the past decade as our understanding of spacing has improved. Because of that, how defenses choose to defend these ball screens is extremely important in trying to stop quick ball handlers who make good decisions and post players who are usually setting these screens before rolling toward the rim with a head of steam.
With Cardoso, one area of her game where she’s deadly is when she rolls inside, posts up on either block, takes a dribble or two if needed, and finishes over smaller defenders.
But what if you don’t allow her to get to the block in the first place?
This is a ball-screen set that South Carolina ran on the game’s first possession with Cardoso as the screener and junior guard Bree Hall as the ball handler. The play is designed for Chloe Kitts to come to the top of the key and receive a pass before throwing it into Cardoso herself, who would attempt to seal off Gakdeng as close to the rim as possible.
As you can see, Cardoso can never establish a good enough position against Gakdeng to allow Kitts a direct angle to make this pass. The secret to this was how early Gakdeng engaged with Cardoso after the initial ball screen.
Rather than being up toward the screen to help contain Hall, Gakdeng drops back near the free-throw line in what is universally referred to as “drop” coverage, meaning her main objective is not allowing Cardoso or Hall to get behind her head towards the basket.
That concept in a vacuum is not entirely special. Teams run variations of drop coverage every night. What is unique about how Gakdeng does it is that once Cardoso starts her roll towards the rim, Gakdeng can blunt and absorb contact before the Gamecocks’ star can get deep post position. When Kitts tries to force the pass, it’s a turnover and a win for the Heels defense early on.
On the next possession, South Carolina tries the same concept out of a slightly different alignment. Once again, Gakdeng knows that Cardoso will be barreling toward the rim, so she positions herself to be a wall and meet the roll early so that even if Cardoso does catch it, it’s from seven to 10 feet from the rim as opposed to knocking on the door. This time, it’s Raven Johnson who makes an ill-advised pass and Carmichael Arena is starting to turn into a frenzy.
Defending the basketball
The other element of defending ball screens is the way UNC used them. You may be asking yourself, “Okay, but what about the ball handler?” With Gakdeng giving so much attention toward staying as attached to Cardoso as possible, surely this would open up opportunities for the Milaysia Fulwileys, Te-Hina Paopaos, and Raven Johnsond to score at the rim seemingly at will.
Well … not exactly.
After all, a ball screen in its simplest form is a way to free up the ball handler to score by building a temporary wall that the defender guarding the ball has to maneuver around to contain the person coming off of the screen.
We’ve all played this game with our childhood friends trying to tag us as we used a table, chair, or desk as an obstacle between them and ourselves. In some ways, using and defending ball screens is similar. Aside from more advanced coverages like switching, hedging or ICE, in general, you will chase over the top of the screen or meet the ball handler on the other side of the screen by going underneath.
Because Gakdeng was giving so much attention to Cardoso’s roll, it was clear that players such as Deja Kelly, Lexi Donarski, Kayla McPherson, Reniya Kelly and Paulina Paris were going to have to find a way to get through these screens without much help from Gakdeng.
Banghart decided to have the guards go underneath the screens so that they could keep their man in front of them and not have to rely on Gakdeng or any other defenders on the floor to help them contain the ball on the perimeter.
Notice that when Cardoso comes to screen for Hall, McPherson can slide underneath the screen to give herself a better angle to meet Hall on the other side and stall out any advantage. Even when Cardoso catches it in the paint, she’s out of her normal comfort zone by being pushed out so far from the rim. Gakdeng stays attached and does a beautiful job contesting vertically without fouling.
On this possession, McPherson has to contend with not just one, but two screens set out on top. Nevertheless, she slides underneath with relative ease. When they try to throw it to Cardoso over the top, a swarm of UNC help defenders, led by Alyssa Ustby and Lexi Donarski, converge on the ball in flight to break up the pass and force yet another early turnover.
At this point, Banghart’s game plan was proving to be a masterclass that had taken South Carolina’s star post player out of the game offensively and frustrated the Gamecocks’ guards seemingly to no end.
Trouble with the curve
For all the value Gakdeng brings on the defensive end for the Tar Heels, she still has to go to the bench at some point. Seniors Anya Poole and Alexandra Zelaya are the reserves at the five spot. They would have to contend with Cardoso to at least hold down the fort until Gakdeng returned to action.
“These guys stuck to the defensive game plan as much as I could have asked.” Banghart said of her team after the game. “We didn’t want to get caught on the high side, and we wanted to meet [Cardoso] early. We wanted to bring help from various spots so that she saw a variety of things.”
That “bringing help from various spots” largely occurred when Zelaya and Poole were on the court. Take this play, for example, with Poole matched up on Cardoso:
They still let Poole guard her one-on-one, but Ustby briefly inserts herself into the action to discourage this entry pass. Not only that, but Ustby quickly recovers back to her man to go vertical and contest this shot without fouling.
On this play, Zelaya is on Cardoso. Whether it’s by design or a spontaneous decision, Donarski is staring in at the post the entire way, waiting for Cardoso to take a dribble. The moment she does, she rotates down and doubles with high hands and even higher intensity. Ustby’s close out is a little half-hearted for my taste, but these possessions illustrate that, against a dominant player like Cardoso, you need to sprinkle in these curveballs now and again to keep her guessing on what’s coming next.
All of this game plan, including the early help, going under the ball screens, the random double teams, and the willingness to play one-on-one, held a South Carolina team that had a scoring average beyond the century mark to just 26 first-half points on 34.5% shooting to go along with eight Gamecock turnovers.
To add insult to injury, UNC was a +8 in the rebounding category against a Dawn Staley team that had been outrebounding their opponents by an average of 23 per game. A nearly 30-point underdog coming into the evening, North Carolina, by the strength of their defense, led for the entire first half and took a 29-26 halftime lead against the consensus top team in the nation.
The adjustments
As anyone who’s been around the game long enough will tell you, no game plan, no matter how meticulously crafted, is bulletproof. You’ll never be able to take everything away from an offense. The more holistic approach is identifying which actions or shots you are willing to live with and designing a plan to lure the offense into those situations.
In the case of South Carolina, the game plan of having the guards slide under each Cardoso ball screen doesn’t come without some risk. Players who can shoot off the dribble can hide behind the ball screen and get off open shots. North Carolina knew this, and it decided that if South Carolina was going to beat them, they would have to do it behind the arc, not inside. While the Gamecocks couldn’t make the Heels pay in the first half, Staley and her staff made some key adjustments in the second half to try and counter the way UNC was guarding them.
Here, when Deja Kelly goes under the screen, rather than trying to fight her way into the paint, Paopao steps behind Cardoso and lets it fly. This is no fault of Kelly’s, as this is how UNC is daring South Carolina to beat them.
This play has a similar result as Paulina Paris goes under the screen again, and Paopao steps behind the screen and drains a big 3 to put South Carolina up by five in the fourth quarter. The sharp-eyed among you may have noticed that Cardoso didn’t just set one ball screen, but two. That leads directly into the next adjustment South Carolina employed in the second half — rescreening.
Once the on-ball defender goes underneath the screen, a common tactic is to simply have the screener (Cardoso in this instance), flip her hips and screen again for the guard on the other side. When Paris goes under the second screen, it opens up even more space for Paopao to get this shot off.
On this one, Donarski goes under the initial screen but then chooses to go over when Cardoso returns to rescreen. You can see why UNC didn’t want to fight over these screens if they could help it. Gakdeng is now in a position where she has to try to stop the basketball while Donarski tries to get back in front of Paopao and keep Cardoso out of the paint as much as possible.
The other area that UNC was willing to concede ground was any jump shot taken out of the high post area. More often than not, sophomore forward Chloe Kitts was put in this situation. That lead to situations like this one where Ustby can drop back inside to play defensive back against any pass into Cardoso while ignoring Kitts at the high post.
It’s worth noting that this didn’t always generate a stop. Here, Ustby plays Kitts pretty conservatively and dares her to make the long two-pointer off the dribble. When she does, there’s nothing you can do but tip your cap. Kitts was just 3 of 10 from the floor Thursday but she made one of the biggest shots of the game.
“There were times Alyssa had to guard one and a half.” Banghart said. “We were asking [South Carolina] to make that high post jumper. They made it a bit more than they had been, but it’s a big game, and their guys stepped up.”
Where does UNC go from here?
South Carolina ultimately won the game 65–58, but Cardoso — who scored 15 in South Caroalina’s 77–61 win at Duke on Sunday — was held to just six points on five field goal attempts.
As a collective, the Tar Heels held the Gamecocks a whopping 35 points below their season average on 39.3% from the field. North Carolina still has its issues on the offensive end that need to be ironed out, but if there’s one area of the floor that they can continue to hang their hat on to keep them in games, it’s their stifling defense.
The reality is that UNC has lost three in a row after a 5–0 start. Banghart has said she wasn’t hired to almost beat top ranked teams. Even still, you have to feel a whole lot better about the outlook of this team. With a date against UConn and another star post player in Aaliyah Edwards on the horizon, expect Carolina to build yet another game plan tailored specifically to her style of play.
As to whether or not you feel that this team is currently on the right track, Banghart seemingly gave a definite answer to that on X (formerly Twitter) after the game.
Andrew Kurzeja is a video coordinator with seven years of basketball coaching experience at both the high school and collegiate level. He is also a contributor for Carmichael Radio, a podcast dedicated to the North Carolina women’s basketball team. You can find him on X at @AndrewKurzeja.
Photo courtesy of UNC Athletics
tarheeltribune.com 
