I think this game just goes to show you that we are not where we need to be just yet and need to keep working and improving, we faced a hungry and aggressive team and didn’t respond well to it, there's still a long way to go and hopefully we can use this as a little motivation to get us to play like the team we are capable of being.
The most frustrating part to me is the effort, after watching this team in the beginning of the year I thought that was something that we really excelled at and would be a pivotal area and driving force in allowing us to win games. This team needs to have that identity of being scrappy and diving on the floor for loose balls, winning the 50-50 balls at the rim, etc. I’m a big believer in everything starting from strong defensive intensity and focus (which I think really needs to be a big area of focus after this one) and tonight we just didn’t give it our all on D, and that carried over to the battle on the boards. VT came in last in rebounding in the ACC and we were first, yet they just out rebounded us, that just can’t happen.
If we are going to go small we need to be able to move a lot more effectively. We talked about it in the GT thread today, it once again seemed like we were just moving to move and not doing it with a purpose. I thought Bilas made another good point I saying that we settled for a lot of jump shots and weren’t making a strong enough effort to get to the rim and I think this was exactly why we only shot 5 free throws (all of which we made), we really need to make a better effort in getting into the lane and force teams to have to come down and double more allowing us to be able to find the open man instead of a contested jumper.
I thought Luke and Joel played well in the beginning of the 1st half as they combined to score our first 17 points and we had chance to build a good lead early, but they didn't get that support from Theo, Cam and Kenny to do that. I think tonight showed how valuable that Theo’s play is for us, he was a big factor in our last four wins and tonight he didn’t get into the lane as effectively and only took 2 shots for us. Something that impressed me in the ND game was him being aggressive and getting into the lane when we needed points from him, I really would’ve liked to see him take charge and do that for us tonight, hopefully he'll realize this after this one and be assertive each game moving forward.
I’m also hoping that Kenny’s shooting struggles are just a little slump and a confidence thing and with the rest this week he will be able to work on some things and be able to get back that touch he had in the beginning of the year because we need him to knock them down, especially those open looks which he did have tonight. Him picking up that 4th foul that early in the 2nd half and at that moment where we just cut it to two did hurt as he was out for our 12 minutes after that. He is so valuable to us defensively and we need him out there to be at our best on that end of the floor, I think Roy will definitely talk with him about that.
Felton provided a very good spark from that 16 to 12 minute mark, I wish Roy would’ve left him in with Joel after that under 12 timeout.
I was happy to see B-Rob come off the bench early, I thought it showed that Roy’s trust in him has increased as he continues to give good effort on both ends of the floor. Also, it just goes to show how he needs to be ready to play in situations like the one tonight where Kenny got into foul trouble early.
I feel that we can old build up from here and you know what having State coming in Saturday may be the best possible team that we can play as we will be pumped to beat State as we always are and have a little more of a chip on our shoulders to come back from this and make a statement. I honestly do believe that this team won’t be defined by a game like this and will make improvements, this may just be the wakeup call that we need after not playing our best in the last few games.
We need to put this behind us and now focus on beating State,
The Team I Hate is nc state!!!
