On Saturday, the University of North Carolina defeated Georgia Tech in a tightly contested, fierce conference game in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

Every ACC game is a vicious fight, in this instance made moreso because Georgia Tech beat the Heels for the last two years, injecting blood into the water.

The final score was 88-65 which qualifies as a “thrashing,” but the score doesn’t really describe how the Tarheels won. They won with their defense.

 1. The top scorer for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets was scoring at a 20.5 clip through 15 games — about half of the season.

 2. Every team wants to hold the opponent’s top scorer well below their average. That requires the work of a “stopper.”

North Carolina has a “stopper,” a guy who is always assigned to defend the top scorer of the other team.

 3. Georgia Tech’s top scorer — the guy above who is scoring at 20.5/game — scored 2 points. He shot 1 of 5 from the field meaning he didn’t get many shots.

 4. UNC’s stopper held GT’s top scorer to 2 points, thereby theoretically shaving 18.5 points from the box score.

Add those 18.5 points back into the box score and you have a much closer contest.

This is how defense wins games.

Drilling down, the Heels actually used two players — Caleb Love and Leaky Black — to guard the Georgia Tech top scorer which is even better.

How do you translate this truth into your business strategy? Go.