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Late night with Roy 2019

Just saw on inside Carolina that Late Night with Roy will be on Friday 27 September with doors opening at four with a girls volleyball game played prior to the basketball activities. This is s big weekend as UNC hosts Clemson at Kenan in football the next day. So 38 days after today and we will get our first REAL look at the roundball team...

Will Roy Highlight Keeling and Pierce?

I know it will depend on how they (and others) actually play and practice and fit in. But a fair argument can be made that Roy should highlight them, if possible.

It seems that grad transfers are becoming a more popular thing among the better players at small schools. If they have the coursework and feel they can improve their prospects of playing for pay by showcasing for a better-known school or coach, then the question is: which school or coach?

I imagine Cam's success here helped Roy land Keeling and Pierce. But opposing coaches can always downplay that by pointing out that Cam was here 2 years. Most grad transfers don't have 2 years of eligibility.

So . . . it makes sense that if Keeling and Pierce do well here, that helps with recruiting future grad transfers. Whereas if they don't that will be used against Roy in future competition for grad transfers.

Again, it depends on whether they are good enough and fit in well enough. But if they do, it might make sense to give them extra PT or start them or do other things to make the case that UNC is a good destination for skilled grad transfers to grow and succeed.

Well "Inspector Clouseau" says Dook is CLEAN

This is great !!! Avenati rips K, the doookies claim the whole payoff to Zion never happened but the plot is thick. I especially like the part where Avenati claims K has been paying players to play at Dook for years. Man I HOPE this Avenati does have the goods on that fraud in Derm. That would be the BEST to finally nail that phony ahole and his entire program Stay tuned !!

https://www.espn.com/mens-college-b...3/duke-probe-finds-no-evidence-nike-paid-zion

Previewing next season's schedule

Yeah, I'm excited and it's only May. Can't wait. All games are from here: https://www.tarheeltimes.com/schedulebasketball-2019.aspx. We play 31 regular season games per year, and this year we'll play 20 ACC games. Here it goes...

We play 20 ACC games starting this year, in a move to create more competitive schedules and create inventory for the ACC Network. And on that note, to launch the network we are starting the season with a conference game! Yep, our first game of the season is versus Notre Dame in Chapel Hill on November 6th to kick off the network. Given our team's inexperience I'm glad it's a home game, as ND should be pretty good this year.

After that we kickoff the 11 game non-conference schedule. The order of the games is not entirely set, but 9 of the 11 teams are already finalized. We've got:

Home games vs: Wofford, Elon, Yale, Ohio State

Road games @: Gonzaga, UNC-Wilmington

Neutral site CBS Sports Classic in Las Vegas vs: UCLA

Three games in the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas against a combination of: Gonzaga, Michigan, Oregon, Alabama, Seton Hall, Iowa State, and Southern Miss

Unscheduled: 1 remaining game (likely a home game against a mid-major)

We've got our usual barnstorming tour around the Carolinas, with return games with Wofford and Elon coming to Chapel Hill. We scheduled 2-for-1s with these schools, so we play 1 game at their place and they give us 2 seasons of games in Chapel Hill. We're also playing at UNC-W to give CB McGrath a game. The Gonzaga home-and-home concludes with us playing in Spokane, and we'll get to see Mick Cronin's UCLA squad in Vegas.

In an odd scheduling quirk, we could play Gonzaga twice in the non-con if we meet again in the Battle 4 Atlantis. I expect us to be the #1 and #2 seeds in that bracket, meaning a possible finals matchup with two wins each. I think we'll be the #1 seed in that tourney? If so, that means unfortunately we'd start with Southern Miss rather than a more interesting team. Assuming we take care of business there we likely play one of Michigan or Oregon, before getting to the final game.

Because of the potential Michigan matchup in the B4A and our game this past year, I don't expect the ACC - B1G challenge game to be against Michigan. We only get paired with the big market B1G teams for TV reasons, so our challenge game is going to be against Ohio State in Chapel Hill this year.

Overall, the tough non-con games will be @ Gonzaga, the final two B4A games, and maybe the Ohio State game. UCLA's team is in flux and our home slate should be pretty easy.

The ACC schedule breaks down like this:

Home and Away: dook, NC State, Notre Dame, Pitt, UVA, Wake Forest
Home only: BC, GT, Miami, Clemson
Away only: FSU, Syracuse, Louisville, Virginia Tech

Here is the rotating three year schedule we'll be on with the new 20 game ACC format: https://theacc.com/news/2019/2/14/acc-announces-future-mens-basketball-20-game-opponents.aspx

As you can see, this is really the year we get the easy home slate. Our only tough home games should be dook and UVA (and maybe ND since it's the first game of the season). We do get pounded with two games against UVA and away games vs FSU, Cuse, and Louisville though. Will be tough to come up with road victories, but should prepare us for difficult atmospheres. In subsequent years those groupings will rotate, and I like that we at least got UVA broken away from Louisville and FSU. Virginia Tech will possibly be an easy out this year, losing most of their top players and Buzz.

In-depth Coby White NBA scouting breakdown

The guys from the Dunc'd On podcast (which btw, is by far the best NBA source of info out there; extremely detailed discussions of most games, every trade, contract, etc) are doing scouting reviews of the top prospects. Their latest is on Coby White, and they spent 40 solid minutes breaking down his game and how it will translate to the NBA. You can listen to it here:

http://nateduncannba.com/podcast-ep...oby-white-scouting-report-phx-offseason-news/

Coby's section starts at 33:05 and ends at 1:13:00. These guys are both pretty connected to NBA front offices, so you can get a sense of what the league thinks about him. At the end of the segment they both say they'd take him over RJ Barrett.

Three reasons Blue Devils sweep Tar Heels next season

It's June folks and time to start building on our hate for Duke. This article states 3 reasons why Duke will sweep the Heels next season. The Heels get Duke at home first next season. No way the Heels lose this game. Sorry Mikey, could not let this article get by without bringing it to the attention of the troops. The article states that Wendell "Jed Clampett" Moore as one of the reasons the Heels will lose both games. Can't make this stuff up folks.


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Jeremiah Francis Cleared to Run?

Someone on TOS said JF was cleared to run starting next month. No link was provided.

Does anyone here have info on this?

It would be great to finally get some news on JF's progress.

Like most, I haven't been penciling him into any lineups because I didn't know if he would be ready to play soon (or at all). If he's just now being allowed to run, I still won't pencil him into any lineups, but it's good news.

For those who don't recall, JF was ranked #51 before his injury. I wouldn't have been surprised if he had climbed even higher in the rankings. Now the question is when and how fast he can return to that level of play.

Just how good can Cole be? Scouting and EYBL stats

We all want Cole to be even better than Coby was last year, but that's an incredibly high bar for any player, let alone a freshman. So just how good can he be?

In this post I'm going to try to compare Cole to Coby White and the best freshman offensive point guard in recent memory, Trae Young. I am going to use EYBL stats as a primary barometer, because all three guys played in this league against similar competition, albeit on a fairly small sample size (21 games for Cole and Coby, 24 for Trae). If you follow the NBA draft Twitter scene there's some research showing EYBL stats correlate even to NBA performance, so I think there's some value to this exercise despite the high amounts of variance in the numbers.

I also watched Oak Hill's two games in the Geico Nationals, so will don my amateur scouting hat at times. Feel free to disagree and take all this with a grain of salt. It's just for fun because I'm excited to see him in Carolina Blue. Let's begin.

SHOOTING:

Cole: 26.8 PPG, 48.5% 2-pt, 38.0% 3-pt, 89.2% FT
Coby: 20.1 PPG, 64.4% 2-pt, 31.3% 3-pt, 70.6% FT
Trae: 23.2 PPG, 59.1% 2-pt, 35.9% 3-pt, 87.0% FT

Cole was the top scorer in the entire EYBL this year whereas Coby was 7th. You can see how dominant he was, and Trae and Cole both look like better shooters than Coby. I will say Coby shot better at USA basketball and I believe in regular high school ball too, whereas Cole was a bit lower from three (36.6%) at Oak Hill.

In the two games I saw Cole has similar step backs and other moves to create space for himself like both of these guys did. From the free throw percentage it's clear he has great shooting touch, and I expect him to be a good shooter right away. Neither Coby nor Trae shot great percentages from three in college, but that was because they were such great scorers that their team expected them to take lots of tough, contested jumpers. I expect the same will be true of Cole. With lower usage I think all three can shoot 40%+. Cole does have a bit different release compared to the quick release of the other two guys; will be interesting to see how that translates.

The one thing that is concerning is the low 2-point percentage compared to the other two. Trae played on the best team (with both Jontay and Michael Porter on it), but Coby had to lead everything on his own like Cole. Cole doesn't look as fast to Coby to me and he's clearly not as tall, so I think he needs to learn more creative finishing moves to score. He also took more shots than either of them, so some of it may be taking tough, contested twos when his team needs a shot. Will be fascinating to see how his passing evolves at UNC with much more talented teammates than he's ever played with.

PASSING:

Cole: 3.8 A/G, 3.6 TO/G
Coby: 3.0 A/G, 2.5 TO/G
Trae: 7.1 A/G, 3.6 TO/G

The stats tell us something here, but I think there's more to it. Scouts like Cole's passing quite a bit, and I think he'll look better than Coby here. The two games I saw he made a number of fantastic passes: a bunch of fast break bombs (we'll love his passing in transition), a full court bounce pass, shovel passes, baseline skip passes, etc. I don't think he's an elite passer right now and Trae was clearly better at this point, but Trae also had more talented teammates. We should see some positive gains compared to last year in terms of Cole's creation ability.

On the turnover point, I do think he'll have ups and downs like Coby and Trae both had. In the games I saw he had a few difficulties once full court pressed, and I think it's hard for any freshman to control the mistakes when they're the focal point of the offense.

REBOUNDING:

Cole: 7.8 RB/G
Coby: 3.8 RB/G
Trae: 3.5 RB/G

Simply put, Cole is a much better rebounder than either Coby or Trae. For one, I think he has quite a bit more leaping ability. He's an above the rim player despite only being 6'3" in shoes, capable of athletic dunks and blocks. It also speaks to his intuitive understanding of positioning, functional athleticism, and competitiveness. I think adding Cole and Bacot's rebounding will help get us back to the dominant rebounding teams that we saw in the title game years.

DEFENSE

Cole: 1.5 ST/G, 0.3 B/G
Coby: 1.2 ST/G, 0.2 B/G
Trae: 2.3 ST/G, 0.1 B/G

None of these guys are lock-down defenders really, but Cole shines in help defense and I think we'll see an upgrade there. He's smart with rotations and had a number of good close outs, contests inside, and help steals. I think this will help us some with open three point shooters and Cole will get more fast break steals than Coby did. Trae also had a knack for this obviously, even maybe gambling a bit too much. None of them had many blocks, but 6 for Cole in 21 games vs 2 for Trae in 24 games does mean something. Cole is more of a leaper and can actually help a bit in interior defense. He also took a couple charges.

I did notice Cole get beat off the dribble, particularly by junior point guard Mike Saunders of Wasatch (who I was surprised was not ranked in the 247 top 200). He wasn't always in a low stance and sliding quickly, similar to what I saw of Nas Little sometimes. Hopefully Roy can work on that. I don't expect any of them to ever be lock down 1-on-1 defenders, but Coby does have the nice height advantage that I think disrupted some guards when trying to shoot.

OVERALL

Tons to be excited about, as I think Cole is right up there with Coby and Trae with the potential to be the best overall player. He should be a great shooter from day one, he's a very good passer, provides the best overall defensive and rebounding passage, and has top-notch intangibles and understanding of the game. What he'll probably try to improve is finishing at the rim with creative shots or simply forgoing his own shot and passing it out sometimes, developing even better pick and roll passes, and working on his 1-on-1 defensive technique.

Who Gets the Minutes? What are the Unanswered Questions?

While we might still add another player to the roster - Tucker or Pierce are still possible, I assume - there's a good chance we're done. Or done enough to start picturing the team.

There are plenty of unanswered questions.

We have 2 guards (Francis and Harris) coming off significant injuries. Will they be ready to go? Will they need a season to "catch up"?

Will our rising junior bigs have improved enough to deserve significant minutes?

Who will back up at point?

Will BRob or Keeling start at SG?

Who will back up at SF?

Will Roy dumb down his system or even - gasp - play more zone to make it easier on all the new kids?

Here's a first stab at minutes. What are your guesses at this point in time?

Code:
Player   PG SG SF PF C  Total  Notes
Cole     30 -- -- -- --  30    Coby played 28.5, Marcus 29.2 as frosh
Andrew   10 05 -- -- --  15    averaged 3.7 last year
Keeling  -- 26 -- -- --  26    played 32.2 for Charleston Southern
BRob     -- 09 17 -- --  26    averaged 11.9 but more down the stretch
Leaky    -- -- 23 04 --  27    averaged 10.3
Garrison -- -- -- 30 --  30    averaged 23.0
Walker   -- -- -- 06 --  06    averaged 1.6
Armando  -- -- -- -- 23  23    
Sterling -- -- -- -- 12  12    averaged 8.3
Huff     -- -- -- -- 05  05    averaged 2.6
Totals   40 40 40 40 40 200
.

If You Had the First Round Draft Pick....

I think it's pretty obvious that if you need a guy like Zion, you draft him.

But what if you absolutely don't need Zion. Say you are desperate for a PG.

Do you draft a PG? Or do you draft Zion and trade for a PG?

I'm thinking some team will give you a top-notch PG AND a 1st round draft pick for Zion.

Is that realistic?

Or maybe you trade the top pick for a couple of lower (but still high) picks. Or for 1st round picks for a couple of years.

Would other teams make that deal?

How would you handle your top pick?

Christian Keeling Grad Transfer

UNC Basketball reaches out to another graduate transfer
Fri Apr 5, 2019
Last week, the Tar Heels contacted two graduate transfers. UNC reached out to Rayjon Tucker and Daniel Utomi as they seek to replace production they will lose next season. You can now add another transfer to that list. According to ESPN’s Jeff Borzello, the Tar Heels talked with transfer Christian Keeling out of Charleston Southern on Friday. (Keeping It Heel)
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