ACC Lacrosse Tournament Preview: Duke-North Carolina

Every Division I tournament. Every team. College Crosse has it all on lockdown. Please send cookies and naptime. Today we're slashing to bits the ACC Tournament.

Only Sly Stone can properly address this game:

THE COMPUTING MACHINE SAYS

Log5: Duke (36.20%); North Carolina (63.80%) (I think the computer is drunk.)

DOSSIERS

THOUGHTS AND STUFF

Two pieces of incredibly important information about each team from my brain to your eyes via your Internet computing machine:

• Duke's offense is rocket ship that streaks to the outer reaches of the universe, but that's not necessarily what interests me about the Devils this evening. Instead, I'm interested in this relationship -- only two teams see opponents lose functional offensive opportunities more than Duke; only five teams maximize their attack box postures by limiting turnovers better than North Carolina. The Tar Heels have done an amazing job limiting turnovers this season (in the overall and also in the specific sense that opponents aren't causing turnovers against Carolina); Duke is seeing opponents -- partially due to caused giveaways, partially due to unforced turnovers -- lose the ball at a rate that ranks among the national elite. If the Devils hope to insulate Kyle Turri from overexposure to the Tar Heels' Death Squad of Death, Duke may need to get out on Carolina's hands or otherwise create and accept circumstances in which the Heels uncharacteristically turn over the bean. Duke has strong defensive pieces but in totem the Devils aren't exactly a crushing force of defensive might; if they're able to turn Carolina over, Duke may not need to outscore the Tar Heels in a fireworks show at a nitroglycerin plant; rather, the Devils could actually build a little bit of a cushion and not trust Turri to stand on his head against one of the three or four best offenses in the nation.
• North Carolina isn't playing with the possession margin it had a season ago but it hasn't held the Tar Heels back this year. A big reason for that has been the development of Carolina's defense and that unit will receive a staunch test today at Kenan Stadium. How that unit performs against Jordan Wolf Contracting and Associates, Inc., is one of the stories of the day, but I think there's a bigger talking point: Assuming Brendan Fowler has himself a day at the dot (which isn't a given as he'll be taking draws against R.G. Keenan) and forces Carolina plays at a possession deficit on the day, how will the Tar Heels maximize their offensive opportunities to either keep pace with Duke (which will have the chance to score with volume) or force the Devils to play from behind? Carolina is one of the most efficient offensive teams in the country and that value is driven primarily by the team's shooting acumen and less so by the rate at which the team shares the ball to create tallies (this doesn't mean that the Heels are purely a one-on-one offense (that'd be a lie), but rather that the relationships in the offensive end don't necessarily yield a lot of assisted tallies). The Tar Heels are in good shape relative to the defense and keeper that they'll face tonight -- this is a wheelhouse situation -- but the question remains: Will Carolina have enough possessions to beat Duke and how efficiently will the Tar Heels utilize those possessions?