UNC's Associate head coach for the their defense isn't having much fun this season.
Here's associate head coach for defense Vic Koenning addressing the media today: http://t.co/KHycx9v4KK pic.twitter.com/VXhG4BIhXH
— InsideCarolina (@InsideCarolina) September 24, 2014
Inside Carolina has a good eight minutes of UNC's associate head coach for defense Vic Koenning unpacking what went wrong Saturday in Greenville and what's being done to fix it.
To no one's surprise, Koenning spends a good portion of the media availability talking about tackling and the secondary issue of players not running to the ball. It's one thing for a defender to miss a tackle providing a teammate or two is there to clean up the miss. If tackles get missed and no one comes to the ball, things get ugly in a hurry.
In addition to the tackling, Koenning said additional emphasis was being placed on players staying in their "gaps" which serves to prevent big runs. When the infamous 44-yard run on 3rd and 28 occurred, it happened because the gap integrity was lost and the secondary wasn't watching for the run since they were in coverage. Throw in some missed tackles and what you get is one of the worst plays in recent memory for a UNC defense.
Of course much of this is already known. The meat of the eight minutes comes around the 3:48 mark in the video when Koenning says the last time he spent this much time in practice working on "little details" was at Wyoming in the late 90s. There are certain aspects of defensive play Koenning says players should just know how to do but this group hasn't grasped them. The reason for this isn't clear but whatever the case, the coaching staff is devoting time to emphasizing basic elements Koenning believes should be second nature. That makes the following exchange on the subject downright terrifying.
Reporter: "Not to sound morbid, but can it be fixed?"
Koenning: "I think it's something you can work on and try to get better. All we're trying to do is do the best we can and try to get these guys a little bit better....Just try to improve. If we try to look so far in front, we are going to trip over what's right in front of us. But we've got so far to go."
Yikes.
