ESPN's Seth Greenberg Breaks Down Duke-Carolina
ESPN’s College Gameday will be in Chapel Hill Saturday morning, in advance of the Duke-Carolina game, and commentator and former Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg took time to break down the game, between a top-10 Duke team and a sub-.500 Carolina team.
“Everyone’s talking about, ‘Is this going to be a game? Is it not going to be a game?’” Greenberg said. “It’s going to be a game, because it’s Duke-Carolina. Crazy things happen, no matter what guys’ records are, no matter if a team is struggling. Let’s face it: Carolina, when they were semi-healthy, they got some good wins. So that’s kind of the standard Coach (Roy Williams) is trying to get them to. They’ve got to do certain things in this game to have a chance to win, but no one gave them a chance to win at Duke last year, prior to Zion (Williamson) blowing out his foot.”
Williamson suffered a knee injury after his shoe split 90 seconds into the game and UNC pulled an upset over Duke in the first rivalry game last season.
“This game stands on its own,” Greenberg said. “Most times, this game defines college basketball. It might not define college basketball this year, but it still has maybe the greatest history of any rivalry in our game.”
Greenberg then laid out the path to victory for North Carolina.
“Carolina, to win, they’ve got to do a couple things. They’ve got to find a way to get easy baskets. They’re only averaging 11 points a game in transition right now. All the years I coached against Coach Williams, the first thing we talked about was defending transition—get back, set your defense, keep it in front. They’ve got to be better in transition. The wings have got to run harder. The bigs have got to run harder. They’ve got to advance pass the ball. They’ve got to play ahead of the defense, because in the half court, they don’t have as many shot makers. That’s the truth. They don’t have as many guys that can score, that can put it on the ground and make a play, make a shot. Playing ahead of the defense is one thing. They’ve got to be good with the basketball. They’ve got to run good offense, cut harder, screen harder, be shot-ready not over-handle, trust each other more, which I think is really important. They can’t commit live ball turnovers, because Duke is really explosive in transition. We saw what happened at the end of the BC game. One little run—they turned them over, and all of a sudden, bam! The game’s over. The last thing is they’ve got to make Vernon Carey guard. The best way to guard Vernon Carey is to make him guard. Put him in ball screens. Put him in post-ups. Put him in short rolls. Play through that matchup. Let Garrison Brooks use his quickness against him. That’s the three things they have to do. They should probably have someone step up and make some shots. That would be the fourth.”
Then he laid out Duke’s path to victory.
“For Duke, they’ve got to understand—this group of players has got to understand what this game means. They’re playing for a number one seed. They’re playing for an ACC championship. This is an obstacle. This game basically has a personality of its own. This game will be different than any game they’ve played all season, including the Champions Classic.”
