Explaining The Tar Heels Motion Offense

The Tar Heels men’s basketball team today can’t really boast the strongest lineup of players on paper. However, they won this year’s championship. This is largely because of the motion offense that the UNC has chosen to employ in recent years.

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Essentially, the motion offense of the UNC is an attack that makes them unpredictable in terms of how they intend to claim a basket, with even spacing, anticipation, and a natural sense of where the defense is weakest.

The Tar Heels don’t have a luxury of big men, but they make full use of the speed of their smaller players. The point guard go essentially gives the point guard the green light to coast from end to end with a go-ahead basket. This utterly confuses the other team because along the way, the point guard has several options at his disposal, and then he decides to go for the basket himself.

The motion offense also effectively opens up at least two men on the court situated in the wings. This is called the wing attack. Basically, wingmen are no more than three passes away from anyone else who has the ball. With all that movement, a wingman inevitably gets free to take the three from either side of the court.

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The pitch ahead is the sneakiest offense that the UNC uses. This is effective because an offensive player who attacks the basket in motion off a break draws so much attention to him. Because of this, a split second is only what it takes before he passes off to a trailing teammate on the last minute.

This is precisely how they won the championship.

I’m John Bradberry from Charlotte, NC.  I'm currently taking up sports administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For more news on the Tar Heels, follow me on Facebook.