I figured we could discuss anything here not covered in the other two.

Okay, Jacob, Chelsea and I are on press row, and Kevin is shooting.

Late arriving everthing today. ZERO traffic coming in. I wonder how many people still think it starts at 1.

Discussion
It's hard to gain any understanding of your team when a team like Syracuse shows up in body only and goes through the motions. Despite looking like a JV team, Syracuse still played better than NC State on Wednesday. I don't recall a stretch of 4 opponents playing this badly since I started watching basketball 50 years ago.

For what it's worth, for the game UNC scored 0.99 pts/poss to Syracuse's 0.74. UNC scored 1.13 pts/poss in the first half, but extended garbage time in the second half distorts these stats significantly.

If I had to pick one stat that portrayed the game, it was UNC's 48% rebounding of its missed shots. In the last 1006 games, we've only seen 6 opponents give less effort rebounding our missed shots.

The other interesting stat is pace. This game featured 194 possessions. We haven't seen a non-overtime game with that many possessions since the home Duke game in 2020, which had a whopping 212 possessions.

Stat stat lines don't show it, but have seen some recent improvements by Cadeau on both ends of the floor. Keep it up!

...and we're gettin' there.

- We got exactly what many of us anticipated: Keatts trying to ugly-up the game and keep us out of transition. They were often successful with that, especially in the 1st half (when the zebra crew enabled it) as they fouled our rebounders and grabbed our outlet guys. They were also able to iso and use clock.

- we aided and abetted their efforts with uncharacteristic poor shooting, and for a while fell into their briar patch by forcing shots or not pitching ahead consistently. RJ in particular got frustrated and lost patience and we weren't strong enough with the rock.

- Here comes the good news: We kept everything in hand by continuing our commitment to defense,... and other than a few blown off-ball coverages, continued it throughout.

- Speaking of D, I'm gonna give a special shout-out to young Mr. Cadeau, who not only avoided foul trouble, absolutely STONED what looked to be layup drives no less than FOUR times in the first half to help keep everything in line.

- also, a nice job of our guys compensating for losing Mando for long stretches (that flagrant call was theatrical BS from a guy who had been throwing cheapies around). JWash hung in there despite being banged around and Ingram decided to take up the rebounding slack.

- We also adjusted to the Burns iso with a variety of doubles when he started way too far out, and then flat wore him out on the other end --- more on that below

- RJ got past his early forces and being fouled often with ZERO trips to the line, still managing 16 on a night with only two double-figure scorers.

- amazingly, we got to the line all of TWO times in the first half, and when they called a travel on Mando when he got tripped on our first Secondary, welp... here we go again. HOWEVER, perhaps there was another half-time lecture, and y'all saw what happened when we actually got some calls on the constant contact.

- The bad news was we had an awful FT shooting night. That's usually deadly in tough road games, so that speaks well to the number we did on the wuffies in the 2nd half.

- Back to RJ, I have noticed in recent weeks more than one ACC team (including us) have been using Tony's "flair cuts" off screen action at the foul line-extended that makes UVA's Guards such a pain. We did that a couple of times early in the 2nd half to get RJ going and boy, did that set up the coup-de-gras. Once we baited them into chasing RJ off that early action, we started slipping EC up to take the hand-off and put fat-boy into a 20ft ball-screen, then EC and Mando took them to school on P&Rs. IIRC, we ran that action on 4 straight possessions and they didn't defend it once --- game over for all intents and purposes.

- Moment: Cadeau made a hotly contested drive and somehow got up an impossible lob to the rim, but JWash didn't go to the rack for what would have been a dunk --- that comes from still learning to play with a savant PG, and that comes with consistent minutes with him on the floor. 33 minutes tonight and over 20 of those with RJ precurses what we can be,

- Finally, on that note, on a "physical" night when we didn't get to 70, we nonetheless managed a sneaky 33 transition points,. That, along with the sweet X-and-O adjustment mentioned above, was all she wrote, folks.

Anyway, always good to keep things in order and State in their place --- especially AT their place. If we keep playing with this sort of defensive intensity and guys get used to playing together, and eso=pecially with our shiny new PG, well... we might just get there yet...

Donate if you can…

UNC moving up after weekend visit:

Unless I’m mistaken, this week 7 of the top 10 teams all lost & lost to an unranked team. The only 3 to NOT suffer a loss were #4 UConn, #7 UNC, & #10 Illinois. My memory isn’t as good as it once was but I don’t remember a week like this ever?

We have a presser with Geoff Collins and Ted Monachino tomorrow. What do you realistically want to hear them say?

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Contest #1
(one more game for the win)

Contest #1 Prizes
1st Place - 1-Year Subscription to Premium, plus miscellaneous prize
2nd Place - 6-Month Subscription to Premium, plus miscellaneous prize
3rd Place - 3-Month Subscription to Premium
4th Place-- 3-Month Subscription to Premium

Tasty Exchange


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Contest #1
(one more game for the win)

Contest #1 Prizes
1st Place - 1-Year Subscription to Premium, plus miscellaneous prize
2nd Place - 6-Month Subscription to Premium, plus miscellaneous prize
3rd Place - 3-Month Subscription to Premium
4th Place-- 3-Month Subscription to Premium

Where do you think they SHOULD be ranked and where do you think they WILL be ranked?

...and ALWAYS be watching.

Y'all saw the epitome of my opening statement in the 1st half, when Cadeau dropped (what should've been) a highlight dime to JWash off a tight roll, but alas, the big fella had turned his back and arrgh!... oh, well... the good news was, well, pretty much everything else

- this was a potential "trap" game, and the best antidote for those is EFFORT and INTENSITY. It took a couple of minutes (and some reminders from the bench), but once it kicked in, well, Cuse got nothing easy on offense.

- a lot of solid 21.5 (that has become the norm in ACC play) mixed with 24, and threw a possession of 44 that produced a TO and before long Cuse was a frustrated team

- REALLY nice bench contibutions from early on: Withers impacted immediately (especially on the boards) and finished with 10 and 6, Seth was a dog on D, and our man JWash more than held the fort when Mando picked up a second foul. Couple of caveats here moving forward: Seth --- stop with so much of the air-hanging and throw it down, son... and Withers --- don't drive thru traffic from 15 ft.

- RJ with another RJ game and threw in some sneaky interceptions and Cormac was solid across the board on an off shooting night.

- Gotta say, I felt Autry's pain --- they couldn't guard us in Man so they went to the ol' Cuse Zone, and welp... we all know how that goes vs Dean's magic Zone Offense... especially when an elite PG is triggering. Hell, with some crisper interior passing it would've been even uglier for 'em

- Board work, baby! Outrebounded them by 23 and got 19 offensive!... with Ingram jumping in again to join Mando with double-doubles.

- make no mistake, we essentially won this one in the first half, specifically beginning at the 11:35 mark. EC had been subbed out at 14:36 just as we were hitting an early rhythm (please stop that), and we proceeded to bog down with only 4 points in the ensuing 3 minutes. But then EC re-enters at 11:35 igniting a 17-pt eruption in the next 4-and-a-half minutes, culminating with a 26-13 thrashing over the 7:48 until he subbed back out at 3:47 in the half with a 22-pt lead --- game essentially over.

- Finally, here's the point I'm making (pun fully intended): This was a sweet TEAM effort and Eliot didn't put up big numbers, BUT (as my coach buds and I always talk about) he makes everything EASIER for everyone, which is what a great PG does --- the floor is spaced, the ball moves and the passing becomes contagious, and Lordy, the TRANSITION game comes alive. Before Cuse tried to slow tempo, we had 27 transition pts in the first half alone (!), ALL of them with EC at the helm.

Anyway, again, this was set up to be a classic trap game and snapped that bad boy back onto the guys in orange, and we did that by playing defense and (a good bit of) Carolina basketball... and guys, we're still just scraping at the ceiling in that regard. Biscuits...