UNC football simplifying on defense

Before practice Wednesday afternoon, North Carolina defensive coordinator Vic Koenning thought back to the worst times in his coaching career.

After Saturday’s 70-41 loss to East Carolina, Koenning realized that a loss hadn’t felt this bad since his time with Wyoming, when he was the head coach from 2000-02.

This season with the Tar Heels, Koenning has found himself working more on fundamental issues than he has since he was with the Cowboys.

“It’s been a long time, since I probably was at Wyoming that I had to work, try to coach all these little bitty details,” Koenning said. “Typically, you’ve got guys that just do these things and it’s not something that you have to try to fix everything.”

So this week, in preparation for its biggest game of the season against Clemson, the team is going back to its usual defensive scheme — one that’s been in place for three years now with Coach Larry Fedora in charge.

“We’re more in a base scheme,” Fedora said. “It’ll be a lot more simplified. We’ll be doing things that we’ve been doing since day one of installs from three years ago actually.”

For the defensive players, that’s a comforting thought.

“Oh, it gives us a lot of confidence,” said senior bandit Norkeithus Otis. “It’s something that we know a little bit better than what we played last week (against ECU).

“(Clemson is) a good offensive team. They do a lot of eye candy to try and get you distracted — have a motion going this way, then run the ball another way. So you gotta stay alert on your keys, do your keys and just play ball.”

Koenning said the team has worked on several areas this week: getting more players to the ball carrier, taking better routes and sticking with gap assignments. More than anything though, tackling has remained the primary focus.

“Tackling, tackling and getting to the ball,” he said. “We were missing tackles at a 30, 40 percent clip. There wasn’t any play where we didn’t have somebody there technically, we just weren’t able to tackle people in space.

“(The) two biggest things we felt like we gotta get better at is what we call gap integrity — who’s got what gap, stay in that gap, that’s your job — and then missing tackles.”

Koenning has been working on all of these things with his defense this week to prepare for the Tigers, but there comes a point where, as a coach, Koenning can’t do anything.

“Sometimes guys overthink and they stop,” he said. “It’s fear. Fear of failure, fear of getting hit, fear of hitting. We got some guys that, that’s part of the reason why they struggle with tackling. And you know, coaches can’t fix that.”

Still, Koenning isn’t offering up excuses.

“We have to achieve regardless of the circumstances,” he said. “We’re trying to do right by these kids, and by the fans, and by everybody else and I tell you: Nobody cares about these guys more than we do, nobody wants them to do well more than we do, nobody’s working harder or has more of a desire to get them to succeed more than we do.”

sports@dailytarheel.com