By By BRIAN HAINES
Sports Writer
GREENVILLE — The intensity was up but the defense was still below par as the East Carolina basketball team concluded its eighth practice of the season and second scrimmage on Saturday.
The Pirates finished the 2008-09 season with a 13-17 record, and coach Mack McCarthy is determined to up the win total this year by putting a premium on defense.
“We were better today, the intensity was better. There were some things offensively from a concept standpoint that we are starting to understand better,” McCarthy said. “They still are yet to figure out that defense is where they hang their hat. We have got to guard people better, guard the ball better and help each other better. We have got to run the ball better and limit our fouls and second shots.”
East Carolina finished last in Conference USA in scoring defense as it let up 73 points per game. Last year the Pirates ran a vanilla defense that was mostly man-to-man coverage. This season, McCarthy said he would love to do more pressing and trapping, but the team has to show it can do the basics before he expands the game plan.
“We decided this year that we will play as much of the court as we can defend,” McCarthy said. “Right now we are not defending from the three-point arc in very well. Until we do that, we don’t’ kneed to worry about the rest of the court. We will have a press at the times that we have to press, and we will press some dead balls, but we are not a press team yet because we can’t do what we need to do from the arc in..”
McCarthy said he plans to use man defense as the base again this season, but with a more active zone.
“The base defense will be man-to-man, but we will actually be more aggressive in zone,” McCarthy said. “The zone will have a little more trapping and pressure trying to speed somebody up, where usually it is the other way around. … (The trapping) will be random, we don’t want to become too predicable, but there will be some automatic spots and some automatic things an offense will do that will trigger it.”
During the scrimmage McCarthy said there were several players that put forth a good effort.
“A lot of people were impressive. (Freshman guard) Wakefield (Ellison) made shots, Jontae Sherrod made some plays and Brock (Young) continues to be a level above,” McCarthy said. “Jamar (Abrams) and Brock continue to be the most consistent performers so far.”
After the scrimmage the Pirates’ coaching staff pulled a reverse and had the media playfully run through some drills so it could get a players experience on practice. The participants huffed and puffed their way through roughly 30 minutes of drills, then went home to dust off their ice packs.