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Quick stuff (Wofford game)...

gary-7

gary-7

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...and I can sum this one up in two letters: P.U.

This game had a feel to it like "here, we'll spot you some points", because we sure as heck kept doing that, especially at the start of both halves. So, what about Wofford? Yeah, they're a "dangerous" team. We knew that. They threw up some wild shots that went in, but I expected that. They made most all their FTs. I expected that. My point is, NONE of that should have been enough. It's not even like they shot some crazy percentage. I mean, they finished under 44% on FGs and under 32% on 3s.

So what went wrong?
- We went wrong. That was maybe the ugliest offensive performance I can remember that I can say was pretty much self-inflicted. In tennis they use the term "unforced errors", and we did plenty of that. In the first half Theo and Luke looked like someone slipped roofies into their Gatorade cups. The footwork on offense was lazy, and you could see that on Luke's shots and Theo passing the ball to, well... I'm not sure whom.

- We also didn't finish. We blew multiple open looks, both inside and out. And yeah, Wofford was predictably trying to rough us up in the paint, but we got plenty of FT opportunities. Thing is though, we weren't finishing thru contact. Several fouls that could have been And-1s with a stronger finish ended up as just 2 FTs, some of which we left on the floor. The one thing we did right in the second half after getting down early was attacking and drawing fouls, but again, you hafta finish when you get the chance.

- Our deficits in posting strong, as well as in defending the post, both bit us hard tonight. We made Jackson, a decent inside player, look like Wilt Chamberlain.

- Obviously, we were excited to see Cam get his first action, but honestly he didn't look like he was quite ready in that he didn't have his legs under him. Cam put in good effort on defense, although he did miss a rotation in 32 that enabled an open 3. Not having played also showed up when he ran to the wrong spot on an OB play that caused a TO. The good news is he was aggressive, and was 7/8 on FTs. That pretty outside stroke will definitely get better results than 1/5 shooting down the road. All that being said, this was the sort of game we should have been able to work Cam back in, rust and all.

- As for numbers, honestly, there's not much to add to the ugliness you can see in the box score (like the nasty 3-pt pct or the TOs). I'll just throw in one from my stat sheet that stuck out like a sore thumb. Granted, playing against a 4-guard lineup you expect them to get back on defense, thus I didn't expect many Fast Break points (6). However, we should have been able to work them over in the Secondary. Not so much. We only scored on 11 opportunities (for 21 pts), while coming up dead empty on 14. That dog won't hunt.

Anyway, there's not much else to say other than this was just a bad, bad loss. I expected we'd have a couple this season, but I sure as hell didn't expect it to be this game :(. And yeah, the dookies and other fan-bases get to point and laugh. These things happen. Good teams pick themselves up, learn from the myriad mistakes and keep working to get better. Hopefully that starts in New Orleans...:mad:
 
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Pretty simple to me. Berry and Theo and Luke were pretty bad. If those three play poorly we will be pretty average to below average.

I thought we would have a bad loss as well but after getting to this point kind of figured it may not happen. It did though.
 
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Something just seemed "off" most of the night. I will say the same thing I said after the Michigan State loss, in that I will be shocked if they don't play really really well against Ohio State this weekend.
 
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Seems like every season, we will be playing pretty darn good and all the sudden we will hit a game that just STINKS vs a team we should easily beat. I have been wondering where that game was going to come, thought it may have been vs Tenn because we do seem to stall out a bit after exams and thru Christmas so after beating Tenn I figured maybe it will be OSU, over looked Wafford but didn't think we would beat them by 30 either.

I am actually OK with this one, it is 1 game in a long season of games, a game that Roy can use to show how much effort is needed EVERY night. You can't take any D-1 team for granted, those lesser teams we are their national title dream, beating us is their season, they are going to give us their best shot, ya snooze ya lose, we snoozed. Fans were talking about being able to repeat, multiple threads about our getting in to the top 5 and we were more interested in time stamps on posts than it being way to early to assume we will be a top 5 team in the end.

This team does not have a huge margin for error, our frosh big men have to play well and our experienced guys have to hit their jump shots and one or the other is not going to always happen and at times both will be failing. ^This team does not have that dominating player that single handed takes over a game and is unstoppable, we have to win by having great execution and playing strong together, playing smart and when we don't the results can be what we got last night. This is a teaching moment for Roy, maybe for our fans as well. WE are not as bad as the results last night may make it seem but we are not as good as many thought we were before last night, not yet, maybe we can be but just not yet, we were not the best team in the country last season this time either but we sure ended up as just that.
 
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I would say that we have too many people in the rotation at present. Its like Roy was trying to get people playing time because he knows the real season kicks off on the 30th. I hope at that point he gets us down to about 8-9 players getting meaningful minutes. It reminded me last night of a rec league where if you pay the money your kid is guaranteed playing time. No excuses though. And the small ball tryout was a disaster. Luke down low, Cam playing the 4 wasnt great. Luke was killed on the low block by a guy that will be playing church league next year with Meeks. It was nice to see Cam play though. His looks longer that Justin Jackson. When he gets his legs under him he is gonna be good.
 
Kenny played well. That's all the good I can come up with.

Worst I've seen Theo in a long time. FIVE turnovers! Only 2 rebounds. And sloppy handle all game long.

I hardly noticed Brooks all game, but he had a quietly decent offensive game (4-5 on FGs and no TOs). Disappointing rebounding effort, though (3).

Cam looked good - under the circumstances. I mean when you consider he's coming off injury and is playing for the first time with new teammates and a new system. And against an opponent who wasn't nearly as easy as expected.

Felton had yet another awful game. I thought this would be a good game to give him lots of PT to let him build on some of the improvements we have seen, but he looked reckless and lost and not totally involved. If he has better things to do, maybe he should go do them and give someone else his minutes. When does Roy start yelling?

This would have been a great game for guys like BRob and Andrew to make a statement. But they stunk it up, too. Especially Andrew. I like the kid but this might have been his worst game of the season. BRob had great energy - as he always does. One of these days that energy needs to turn into good plays.
 
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Top worry: What does this show our future opponents?

While the MSU loss was a worse beating, not a lot of teams are as good as MSU or can do what they did to disrupt our game. But Wofford is a creampuff. Yes, a creampuff. Even after jumping 29 spots on Pomeroy, they still aren't in the top 150 (my arbitrary cutoff for creampuffs).

Point being, a lot of teams may be able to do what Wofford did.

Now of course that doesn't mean they will beat us. We'll learn and adjust, too. And I doubt we'll have too many games when that many players will stink it up at the same time.

But some of those weaknesses are legit weaknesses. And they have been exposed.
 
What Would Jesus Do? said:
Kenny played well. That's all the good I can come up with.

Worst I've seen Theo in a long time. FIVE turnovers! Only 2 rebounds. And sloppy handle all game long.

I hardly noticed Brooks all game, but he had a quietly decent offensive game (4-5 on FGs and no TOs). Disappointing rebounding effort, though (3).

Cam looked good - under the circumstances. I mean when you consider he's coming off injury and is playing for the first time with new teammates and a new system. And against an opponent who wasn't nearly as easy as expected.

Felton had yet another awful game. I thought this would be a good game to give him lots of PT to let him build on some of the improvements we have seen, but he looked reckless and lost and not totally involved. If he has better things to do, maybe he should go do them and give someone else his minutes. When does Roy start yelling?

This would have been a great game for guys like BRob and Andrew to make a statement. But they stunk it up, too. Especially Andrew. I like the kid but this might have been his worst game of the season. BRob had great energy - as he always does. One of these days that energy needs to turn into good plays.
Click to expand...

I know there are posters here who love Andrew platek and are having memories of bobby Frasor, and have defended him even when he's hitting sides of backboards with shots.. but he isn't ready for prime time. I'm sure in time he will be a solid contributor and these minutes will pay off but he's hurting the team right now. In acc play I expect to see much less of him.
 
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What Would Jesus Do? said:
Top worry: What does this show our future opponents?

While the MSU loss was a worse beating, not a lot of teams are as good as MSU or can do what they did to disrupt our game. But Wofford is a creampuff. Yes, a creampuff. Even after jumping 29 spots on Pomeroy, they still aren't in the top 150 (my arbitrary cutoff for creampuffs).

Point being, a lot of teams may be able to do what Wofford did.

Now of course that doesn't mean they will beat us. We'll learn and adjust, too. And I doubt we'll have too many games when that many players will stink it up at the same time.

But some of those weaknesses are legit weaknesses. And they have been exposed.
Click to expand...

They kind of did what UT did a little, which was put a lot of pressure on us. Our experienced guys should be able to handle that but they didn't, which is discouraging. Like you said, Kenny was the only one who was solid. Simply put they were better though. It wasn't like a weird game. They were just better. That should be concerning at this point.
 
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I thought Wofford deserved every bit of their win. They were cthe better team last nite.

Really, l thought the gamevwas over at the 8:00 mark. We had no intensity and we were just pitiful l thought!

The hilite of the game was when Jalek, on the far sideline received a pass and just dropped it ob.

Tyey'll do a lot of soul searchinng today ..... their only hope is to resolve toget vastly better! The've got a lot of woork to do ....
 
Well, being out rebounded by that team is a big time indicator that we struggle blocking out, Luke with 14 boards says he was working, surprising that Manley only got 8mins and Huff what, 1 or 2 mins? IN a game where we were struggling to rebound and defend their bigs? 14 TOs does not sound really awful but when Theo gets 5, Joel 3, and Jalek managed to get 3 TOs in 5mins of PT, that is pretty ugly.

Roy said his intent was to get Cam 8-10mins and ended up giving him 17 is eye opening. Really odd combinations out there, hopefully we will not see much of some of those combinations again.
 
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DSouthr said:
Seems like every season, we will be playing pretty darn good and all the sudden we will hit a game that just STINKS vs a team we should easily beat. I have been wondering where that game was going to come, thought it may have been vs Tenn because we do seem to stall out a bit after exams and thru Christmas so after beating Tenn I figured maybe it will be OSU, over looked Wafford but didn't think we would beat them by 30 either.

I am actually OK with this one, it is 1 game in a long season of games, a game that Roy can use to show how much effort is needed EVERY night. You can't take any D-1 team for granted, those lesser teams we are their national title dream, beating us is their season, they are going to give us their best shot, ya snooze ya lose, we snoozed. Fans were talking about being able to repeat, multiple threads about our getting in to the top 5 and we were more interested in time stamps on posts than it being way to early to assume we will be a top 5 team in the end.

This team does not have a huge margin for error, our frosh big men have to play well and our experienced guys have to hit their jump shots and one or the other is not going to always happen and at times both will be failing. ^This team does not have that dominating player that single handed takes over a game and is unstoppable, we have to win by having great execution and playing strong together, playing smart and when we don't the results can be what we got last night. This is a teaching moment for Roy, maybe for our fans as well. WE are not as bad as the results last night may make it seem but we are not as good as many thought we were before last night, not yet, maybe we can be but just not yet, we were not the best team in the country last season this time either but we sure ended up as just that.
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Dave, the only thing I can dissent on here is that it's hard to be OK with it, but I do get your point. Everything else I'll concur on.

And with that I'll add one thing to my OP --- other than JB attacking, we were not nearly as aggressive going to the rack as we will need to be. I mean, we got outscored in the friggin paint by a team playing 3 or 4 Guards all night. When you go into the paint you need to be strong with the ball. We were serving up blocked shots like a volleyball setter, and as I said, when we got fouled we weren't finishing thru contact.

As some have pointed out, it looked ike we thought we could sleep walk thru this one. We went up to Knoxville knowing we were gonna get punched, and we brought it home --- but in this one we brought a water-pistol to a gun-fight. Our Wings and Posts needed to be dunking on these guys. Instead of trying to always be a driver-and-disher, Theo in particular needs to bow up and get to the rim more often, and posterize some guys if need be.

All that said, in the scheme of things i'm not going to wring hands or jump the shark and conclude we suddenly stink. Although, yeah, we have issues that need to be addressed going forward, the truth is, in their own respective ways, there's not a single team in college ball this season that has a big "margin for error". This board got polluted last night by pathetic dookies trying to be clever (like the one you so witheringly called out), but it wasn't long ago their invinvcible juggernaut got handled by Boston College, a team that was even missing one of their two viable Bigs that day.

I suppose the dookies can revel in their "classy" coach full-court pressing an already overmatched team last night that was missing three of its top players just to run up a gaudy score, but when any decent team comes to play, you damn well better bring your best. dook certainly didn't at BC and we certainly didn't last night. You said it well --- you cannot take any D-1 team for granted. Last night's game will be, deservedly, maybe the highlight of that program's existence and those players' careers. So congratulations to em.

As for us, what matters is the end game, and thus, getting better before March.
 
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I haven't reviewed the recording (and probably won't) but it looked like we had no effective interior passing to much of anyone. The offense started on the perimeter and stayed there. We ran dooks offense all night and that aint UNC bball !
 
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DSouthr said:
Well, being out rebounded by that team is a big time indicator that we struggle blocking out, Luke with 14 boards says he was working, surprising that Manley only got 8mins and Huff what, 1 or 2 mins? IN a game where we were struggling to rebound and defend their bigs? 14 TOs does not sound really awful but when Theo gets 5, Joel 3, and Jalek managed to get 3 TOs in 5mins of PT, that is pretty ugly.

Roy said his intent was to get Cam 8-10mins and ended up giving him 17 is eye opening. Really odd combinations out there, hopefully we will not see much of some of those combinations again.
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There were some really odd ones. The combo that stuck out to me came down the stretch of the first half. They actually had 2 Bigs on the floor and for whatever reason we go ultra-Small, with BRob the de facto 4 at one point (?). We proceeded to squander the lead we'd finally gotten.

I also think Roy was not particularly judicious in his use of Cam. I realize the reason he was first off the bench was that Roy was frustrated with Theo's early hiccups, but from what I saw Cam wasn't quite ready for 17 minutes yet. @TarHeelNation11 raised a legit question about chemistry yesterday, and it can certainly be tricky revamping your rotation. In the long run I continue to be optimistic that once he gets his legs and Roy figures out a feel for it, Cam will be a big addition. But I also think it's fair to say that in the short term at least, ther were some hiccups in that aspect.
 
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gary-7 said:
Dave, the only thing I can dissent on here is that it's hard to be OK with it, but I do get your point. Everything else I'll concur on.

And with that I'll add one thing to my OP --- other than JB attacking, we were not nearly as aggressive going to the rack as we will need to be. I mean, we got outscored in the friggin paint by a team playing 3 or 4 Guards all night. When you go into the paint you need to be strong with the ball. We were serving up blocked shots like a volleyball setter, and as I said, when we got fouled we weren't finishing thru contact.

As some have pointed out, it looked ike we thought we could sleep walk thru this one. We went up to Knoxville knowing we were gonna get punched, and we brought it home --- but in this one we brought a water-pistol to a gun-fight. Our Wings and Posts needed to be dunking on these guys. Instead of trying to always be a driver-and-disher, Theo in particular needs to bow up and get to the rim more often, and posterize some guys if need be.

All that said, in the scheme of things i'm not going to wring hands or jump the shark and conclude we suddenly stink. Although, yeah, we have issues that need to be addressed going forward, the truth is, in their own respective ways, there's not a single team in college ball this season that has a big "margin for error". This board got polluted last night by pathetic dookies trying to be clever (like the one you so witheringly called out), but it wasn't long ago their invinvcible juggernaut got handled by Boston College, a team that was even missing one of their two viable Bigs that day.

I suppose the dookies can revel in their "classy" coach full-court pressing an already overmatched team last night that was missing three of its top players just to run up a gaudy score, but when any decent team comes to play, you damn well better bring your best. dook certainly didn't at BC and we certainly didn't last night. You said it well --- you cannot take any D-1 team for granted. Last night's game will be, deservedly, maybe the highlight of that program's existence and those players' careers. So congratulations to em.

As for us, what matters is the end game, and thus, getting better before March.
Click to expand...

Excellent take. I concur.
 
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heelmanwilm said:
The biggest concern to me is a definite prob with defending down low. Thats a talent problem that wont be fixed during the season. Other stuff can and prob will work itself out with coach’s direction. But we are just not good down low defensively right now and thats gonna cost us.
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Yep. THE biggest concern right now, IMO. Roy and Big Sean need to put these pups through a crash Bag Man Camp before classes start back. And not just skill work, but grinding one-on-one and two-on-two in physical post drills.

And the problem is on both ends. Our Bigs do not flash and show effectively on offense. Last nght in particular I could see frustration from JB, Kenny, Theo, Andrew, et al, who were in fact looking to get the rock inside, but our big guys weren't "pinning" defenders adequately nor were they showing an open hand. They also have a habit --- Brooks especially --- of getting caught too far under the basket.
 
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gary-7 said:
Yep. THE biggest concern right now, IMO. Roy and Big Sean need to put these pups through a crash Bag Man Camp before classes start back. And not just skill work, but grinding one-on-one and two-on-two in physical post drills.

And the problem is on both ends. Our Bigs do not flash and show effectively on offense. Last nght in particular I could see frustration from JB, Kenny, Theo, Andrew, et al, who were in fact looking to get the rock inside, but our big guys weren't "pinning" defenders adequately nor were they showing an open hand. They also have a habit --- Brooks especially --- of getting caught too far under the basket.
Click to expand...

Or hell, we have like 15 fouls to give at the 5. Maul em when they get it. Make em regret coming in the lane. It works on us!
 
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gary-7 said:
Yep. THE biggest concern right now, IMO. Roy and Big Sean need to put these pups through a crash Bag Man Camp before classes start back. And not just skill work, but grinding one-on-one and two-on-two in physical post drills.

And the problem is on both ends. Our Bigs do not flash and show effectively on offense. Last nght in particular I could see frustration from JB, Kenny, Theo, Andrew, et al, who were in fact looking to get the rock inside, but our big guys weren't "pinning" defenders adequately nor were they showing an open hand. They also have a habit --- Brooks especially --- of getting caught too far under the basket.
Click to expand...
Thought I read that May could not work with players during practices. Don't know how that works during non-practice hours.
 
I swear the guys looked like they were hungover from a Christmas party or something, or maybe still drunk.

Now I know that isn't the case, but they did remind me of people with bad hangovers trying to function normally and failing.

I hate the loss, but I still love our players and coaches!
 
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ajklum said:
I would say that we have too many people in the rotation at present. Its like Roy was trying to get people playing time because he knows the real season kicks off on the 30th. I hope at that point he gets us down to about 8-9 players getting meaningful minutes. It reminded me last night of a rec league where if you pay the money your kid is guaranteed playing time. No excuses though. And the small ball tryout was a disaster. Luke down low, Cam playing the 4 wasnt great. Luke was killed on the low block by a guy that will be playing church league next year with Meeks. It was nice to see Cam play though. His looks longer that Justin Jackson. When he gets his legs under him he is gonna be good.
Click to expand...

You're not even a church league quality poster. Buh bye.......
 
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nctransplant said:
Thought I read that May could not work with players during practices. Don't know how that works during non-practice hours.
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Yeah, there are some limitations. Weird since he gets to sit on the bench in his new job... but the NCAA is what it is. Funny thing is a volunteer coach can do more. So maybe Sheed would make his expertise available.
 
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Post-ups gotta' happen. This team must work very, very hard. Otherwise, things will not be what they still can become. Merry Christmas to all...
 
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soap - new and improved said:
I swear the guys looked like they were hungover from a Christmas party or something, or maybe still drunk.

Now I know that isn't the case, but they did remind me of people with bad hangovers trying to function normally and failing.

I hate the loss, but I still love our players and coaches!
Click to expand...
Not gonna lie, when I watched the horrible turnovers by Theo and Jalek, I thought to myself... "these guys are playing like they came off an all night bender"
 
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