Tall Order
I wasn't really crushed by yesterday's loss. Wake's seemingly endless array of athletic big men is probably the worst matchup in the ACC for us, and that height ended up being too much to deal with yesterday.
Virginia was ahead for much of yesterday's game, but the feeling that we were in control never really set in. Ish Smith continues to be a revelation, though he's probably going to suffer the same fate as Ed Cota - another fast, unselfish ACC point guard with great vision who was a bad shooter and never panned out after his college career was over. Bub did as good a job as we could have hoped for checking Smith, but Ish still got into the lane way too often to either make a layup, set up a teammate, or miss a shot that doubled as an assist thanks to the Deacon's dominance on the glass. I sat in the third row for much of yesterday's game, and watching Smith move was pretty awesome.
When this team is playing well, Sylven and Mike Scott are both scoring the ball well, and the defense's reaction to them sets up offense for everyone else. When this team is not playing well, one or both of those guys struggles to find offense, the defense stays home, and everyone else struggles. Yesterday, we all too often looked like a one man show out there. Scott was on early, scoring 10 of the team's first 18, but then finished the game by missing his last 10 shots. They weren't bad looks - he was just very well defended by Al-Farouq Aminu. This put the onus on Sylven to produce, and - especially in the second half - it seemed like the guys were just standing around waiting for him to bail them out.
Will Sherrill probably doesn't deserve any further abuse for his end game brain fart yesterday. While it did look like something a fourth grader would do in their first clutch moment, he did hit some important shots earlier in the game and scrapped as best he could on the glass and on D. The only real problem with Will is that it becomes glaringly obvious that he's a plow horse in a thoroughbred league whenever he does anything other than take threes on the offensive side of the ball.
The effort put forth in this one was generally better than the blowout in Winston, but generally better doesn't get you to 6-2 when you've got road games in College Park and Blacksburg coming up in the next week.
Carolina Blue? More Like Carolina Blows. Hey-oooo!
Looking at the ACC standings right now, someone with no knowledge of how things actually work might think that we could be the favorite when things tip off with UNC in the Dean Dome tomorrow night. They’d be wrong.
This team is in an uncomfortable place right now. They didn’t play well at all at Wake, and then there’s no way to tell what kind of impact that the Tech loss had on this team until we see them tomorrow night. That loss – when it was seemingly one made jumper or defensive stop in the last three minutes away from being in our back pocket – is the kind of loss that sticks with teams and could sandbag an entire season. This is an early test for Tony Bennett: if the team comes out looking like Jon Favreau from Swingers after the answering machine fiasco, UNC could run us out of this game by halftime.
Granted, UNC is a little under par this year and yes, the ‘Hoos still have plucky overachiever status until further notice from this blog. Unfortunately, basketball games are not played on paper, they’re played in gyms – gyms like the Dean Dome, which is probably below the bathroom floor from Saw on Tony Bennett’s wish list of places to visit on the heels of that Tech loss. Ready for this? UVa is 2-21 all time in the Dean Dome, 5-63 all time in Chapel Hill, and have lost the last six contests against the boys in blue – including a 99-54 loss in 2006 by an undermanned, talent-starved team under the guidance of a first year coach. Sound familiar? Yikes.
Our typical problem matching up with the ‘Heels is twofold: athleticism and depth. The typical Roy Williams bunch comes at you in a hurry with waves of blue chip athletes, which can be overwhelming for slower and less talented teams when they’re making plays and not taking dumb shots, throwing the ball away, and having McDonalds All American Game flashbacks. As Roy has earned his stripes more as a recruiter than as a strategic mastermind, his teams – when on the young end of reloading from graduation/early entry/etc – are often prone to these mistakes before they get older, wise up, and enter the title picture.
I think our best chance in this game is to do what everyone thought we were going to do under Tony Bennett anyway before the season started: slow this thing wayyyyy down. Milk each possession, keep the game close and make the young ‘Heels think extra hard about the weight of each mistake they make. UVa has already been playing at a pretty deliberate pace this year (last in the ACC and 305th out of 347 nationally in possessions used per 40 minutes), but I think we ought to take it a step further tomorrow night. If it works – which is to say, if we see Dr Jekyll Virginia play opportunistic, intelligent offense and stingy, irritating defense (see: Georgia Tech, UAB, most of NCSU) and not Mr. Hyde Virginia and the accompanying careless looking turnovers, missed jumpers early in the clock and a long reel of open jumpers and slow transition defense (see: most of Virginia Tech, Wake Forest, South Florida) – we should be OK. I’m not holding my breath.
Offensively, I think this game will come down to Sylven more than Mike Scott. UNC will be able to single cover MS down low with either Davis or Thompson (probably Davis), but will probably have to send a double on to Sylven when he makes a move. Even though he didn’t show it much on Thursday with six turnovers and some really questionable decisions in traffic, he’s vastly improved this season in passing out of double teams, and if he can draw doubles and hit Sammy, Mu and JJ for open looks, we should be able to score points.
Breaking it down strictly to match ups, Ed Davis and Deon Thompson will give us the biggest problems. The two Tar Heel bigs are combining for 30 points, 16 boards, 4 blocks and fifteen wistful sighs by me when I think of how Davis should be playing in orange and blue per game, and will be a tremendous headache for Jerome and Mike Scott on the blocks. The rest of the team is less consistent, consisting of blue chippers cutting their teeth (all five freshmen on the roster get regular run and could start for us right now: wing guards Leslie MacDonald and Dexter Strickland, the 6′10” Wear twins, and 6′10” John Henson have all had their moments), guys who would be better suited as supporting cast types who have been pressed into bigger roles (Will Graves, Marcus Ginyard) and the enigmatic Larry Drew II, who seems to be OK but has received a worse reception from my UNC fan friends than Barack Obama has from congressional Republicans.
We only went eight deep against Tech, and I’d imagine that Calvin Baker and Assane Sene will find their way back into the rotation to fight Carolina’s depth advantage. Sene especially will probably get a look, considering the amount of height presented by the ‘Heels and his tremendous athletic advantage over Will Sherrill – currently our main backup big man.
I’m not expecting to win this game, but a strong effort could springboard us into two winnable home games next week against NC State and Wake. I’d be delighted with 5-3 at the halfway point, and I think it’s a genuine possibility.
Oof
I'm not sure where last night sits alongside Public Enemy #1 Deron Washington beating us at the buzzer a few years ago, but let's not even begin to open that discussion: they were both awful. When I got home, my fiancee said that she could tell I was sad from the way I opened the door. I thought about just posting the first result of a Google Image Search for vomit on this blog and calling it a night. It was that kind of game - the loss even ruined the joy I got from Jeff Allen getting kicked out of the game.
This team has a pretty big problem that doesn't get talked about much: a glaring lack of a third player who can create his own offense. Sylven and Scott are both reasonably dependable and have confidence enough to be the alpha dog, but there isn't really anyone else on the roster with the ability to create something for themselves in a pinch. This lack of a third scorer leaves us prone to droughts if one or both of the Sylven/Scott duo is having an off night, being defended well, in foul trouble, or even just getting a breather. We ran into two killer droughts last night.
The first one came after Syl sat with four minutes and change to go in the first half after picking up his second foul. Tech responded by pouring it on and ended up on a 16-5 run to take a 28-27 lead into halftime. The second went from when we were up 62-52 and really stretched through the end of the game - our only baskets during that stretch were two desperation Sammy threes and a meaningless JJ three with ten seconds left. Three baskets, 8:44, ballgame.
I remember looking up at the scoreboard with three minutes left up ten, and thinking that we'd be in good shape if we could keep the margin at ten until the two minute mark. Almost on cue, things fell apart, and the lead was instead just one at the 1:30 mark. I could tell bad things were going to happen, and so could everyone else there - the place was loud, but for the latter part of the game it was more a pleading peal than anything exultant.
Mike Scott needed more looks last night. He wasn't in foul trouble, and wasn't being defended particularly well by Tech's bigs - he should have had 30 points last night and we should have won. He put up 14 in the first half, and could have easily reproduced that effort in the second half if his teammates hadn't forgotten about him - instead, he took just four shots and scored just seven more points.
We really struggled last night once Tech went to the press, and some of the blame for that can actually be placed on Bennett. He should have known that Tech would press down ten and starting to run out of time, but yet still didn't have either of his main two ball handlers (and more importantly, inbounders) out on the court. By the time Sammy came back in, Tech had already chipped into both the lead and our confidence.
I hope I'm wrong, but last night's game felt like a turning point for our season. We've lost two straight, there's been some unrest amongst the masses with the whole Baker nonsense, and we're going into a game Sunday night where we could easily get run out of the gym by UNC on physical talent alone. We're at an uncomfortable turning point right now with three games to go until the ACC halfway point. Winning two of these games (with NCSU and Wake visit the JPJ in the coming week) seems at least possible and would go a long way toward making everyone involved a lot happier.
Friday Morning Odds & Ends
I'm not sure I'm ready to blog after last night's basketball game, but here we are.
1.) Bill Lazor is going to be Mike London's offensive coordinator.
It's hard to really have an opinion on this when I just heard the guy's name for the first time yesterday evening while driving to the JPJ. His resume seems to be decent, and he brings some impressive endorsements to the table. I like that he's young, and I like that he's not Rip Scherer, but call me back a few weeks into September.
2.) ACC coaches picked the baseball team to win the overall conference championship.
I love our baseball team. Well managed, well coached and fun to root for. Bring on the end of February. FSU (three votes) and UNC (1) completed the voting.
Tech Tonight
What happened to the good old days when we'd follow a loss to Tech in football by promising revenge during basketball season, only to have the Tech fan laugh at us because they don't actually care about basketball? Now, it's worse - we've still lost the last six football games, only now we've only won two of the last six basketball games, and are left only with spring sports to defend ourselves with.
The Hokies are decent - 15-3 (2-2) coming in, though it can be said that they've lost their only games against decent teams: their three losses came to Temple, FSU and UNC. Their other major conference games have been wins over BC and Miami (two ACC bottom feeders), and a Georgia, Penn State and Iowa triumvirate with a combined record of 25-34. Their record might be a product of a soft nonconference schedule.
I'm scared of Malcolm Delaney. My first thought is that Bub & Sammy are too short to guard him, and Calvin is too slow, meaning that we're probably going to see a lot of Mustapha on him tonight. Delaney's got range and the balls to use it, and is capable of just killing teams from outside.
Dorenzo Hudson makes me nervous, too, if only because the light has clicked on for him over the last 11 games: 16.5 ppg, including a 41 pointer against Seton Hall. He was only putting up 6.8 in his first seven appearances.
I'm still not scared of Jeff Allen. He's always been the type who will pout and start loafing if things don't go his way, and I think Mike Scott and Jerome are capable of checking him.
Tech isn't really good at anything we're bad at: they're a low assist team that doesn't shoot the three very well or very often, and they aren't a particularly good rebounding team. What they are is a solid defensive outfit (.390 opponent FG%, 0.88 points per possession), which means that we're going to have to be smart with our shots tonight - much smarter than we were against Wake, where it seemed like Sylven and Mike got frustrated and started taking contested looks early in the shot clock.
It might just be the now mistaken but still very much present cockiness from years of being better than Tech in basketball, but I feel good about tonight's game.
Calvin Baker is Hot and He’s Cold
Calvin Baker didn't make the trip to Wake on Saturday and apparently didn't practice all week either after apparently deciding that the best way to deal with getting his minutes cut was to throw enough of a fit that it warranted that kind of response. That's the kind of leadership I want from my senior captain.
Anyway, it appears that all is forgiven. I'm not sure it matters - despite his gaudy assist-to-turnover ratio, Calvin hasn't been effective this season. We're just finally at a point where we've got plenty of guys who are better than he is. Calvin's role used to be to hit some spot up jumpers and play solid hustle defense on opposing guards, but now we've got guys who can shoot better than he can (Mu, Jones), defend better (Jontel, Mu) and handle the ball better (Jontel, Mu) - and they're all either bigger, more athletic or both.
It took guts for Calvin to try to make it at an ACC school after finding some reasonable success in his freshman year in the CAA, but the fact that he's played as much as he has speaks more for our dearth of talent in those years than of anything he has brought to the table. I like that he seems to be back in good standing - he's hit some clutch shots for us over the last two seasons and may well again - but I've got no problem with him continuing to be slowly eased out of the picture.
Foul Outing
I don't think Saturday's game accurately represents where our teams are right now. I think Wake is a better team than we are, but not to the extent that it appeared on Saturday. TB has been stressing all season that our talent level makes our margin of error particularly thin, and this game proved his point - when Sylven and Scott were both sitting with two fouls for the last eight minutes of the first half, we went without a basket while Wake outscored us 16-1 to take a 34-15 lead into the break that served to finish us off entirely. We're in trouble when one of those two is limited and doomed without either. because we don't have a third option that can create offense. Sammy, Mu & Jeff are all better off as secondary options and they went a combined 8-26, mostly on long, contested jump shots with the clock running down.
When I previewed this game, I said we needed to get Sylven going, stop Ish Smith and the Wake transition attack, and rebound the basketball. We didn't really do any of those things. Sylven was effective when he was out there, but he missed the last 12:30 of the first half with two fouls, and that's when the game was lost. Ish Smith beat us several times for easy buckets and passes to teammates, and went for 21/7/6 in the win. Chas MacFarland - a wooden seven footer who entered the game scoring 6.8 per game on just 40% from the floor - torched us for sixteen, and the Deacs outrebounded us 42-26.
It would have been great to take advantage of a night where Al-Farouq Aminu forgot how good he is and scored only 10 with five turnovers, but shooting 20.7% from the floor in the first half, recording twice as many turnovers as assists and hitting only half of your free throws does not get you a road win in conference play.
I don't think Wake are world beaters. If we can keep Sylven and Scott on the floor (which we should be able to do at home, given the tendencies of ACC refs) and keep Ish Smith from getting to the rim at will to score or (almost more importantly) set up his bigs, we should be able to beat this team (or at least hang with them) in the rematch.
