Very quick stuff (Clemson game)...

[Ozheelfan]

99% Hubert, because if he truly thought we was going to be where we need to be with Jwash as the 5 then there is no defending that, and it 99% on him.

Then you say well we got what we got and this team if we'll coached should be a team that ranges between 18 to 23 in the polls solid in the top 3 of the ACC and looking to be around a 4 or 5 seed in the dance, and a team that could win 1 game in the NCAA tournament and things go our way we could win 2. But our team could always be in games and never getting blown out by 20 to Clemson and I don't care if the game is played in Brad Brownell's driveway.

I agree and disagree..... the players are who they are, but what is worse is they've not been coached to their strengths.

The failure to get the most out of players is, in my opinion, worse coaching than the failure to land a quality big man in the portal.

Those two failures combined have resulted in this, what is shaping up to be the worst season since Doh was on the sidelines.

As I said on the Hubert thread, the nepotism hiring of a family member with barely enough work experience to do the job experiment is done... time to move on.

 

[notashelbyfan]

Totally dominated up front. 2nd modern Euro big, who will shoot the three, but can use touch on a smaller man in the post that absolutely had their way with our "bigs" if you can call them bigs. I personally love to watch big Euro's play the modern game, their eyes light up seeing our front line for sure.

I thought RJ was a straight dawg fighting the good fight yesterday. He has been REALLY good and efficient while being shadowed non stop in 5 of the last 6.

Can't say 1 other guy played well, but Ian is struggling SO badly. Just an awful game for him, he is the see saw talented freshman to a tee.

I just thought about something, we was never setting the world on fire this season but didn't we start to trend down hill faster and faster when Seth came back from the injury?

 

[Quest4Seven]

Lets see some of your predictions. Or you the kind that talks shit about what others put in but never have anything meaningful to add. Id much rather listen to @gary-7 and some of his inside the program knowledge than some dickfer that knows little to nothing.

Its not about the predictions. Its that when anyone disagrees with him he throws a fit and questions their knowledge when no one has had worse takes than him over the years. I appreciate him taking the time for these post game write ups though, even though the story of every game comes down to what any serious person said would be an issue back in April

 

[NathanFielder]

I'm curious to see what you and others think is appropriate amount of blame for Hubert? 60%, 80%?

Maybe around 75%. The buck stops with him. He makes decisions with the roster. He clearly missed thinking Washington is a starter and flopped with Tyson. Also, if you believe that teams take on the personality of the head coach, that's a pretty damning sentiment.

But it's also been a year where RJ has missed a lot of quality shots he probably made last season. Cadeau also had that wide open missed layup against Michigan State(?) that could've been win.

 

[TarHeelMark]

99% Hubert, because if he truly thought we was going to be where we need to be with Jwash as the 5 then there is no defending that, and it 99% on him.

Maybe around 75%. The buck stops with him. He makes decisions with the roster. He clearly missed thinking Washington is a starter and flopped with Tyson. Also, if you believe that teams take on the personality of the head coach, that's a pretty damning sentiment.

I'm probably somewhere between... maybe 80%. It's his roster, his schemes, his game-time decisions, adjustments, etc. The players need to be held accountable for their lack of effort, poor decisions, etc. but Hubert's poor roster construction and lineups that he puts on the floor certainly doesn't help their cause.

The comment of them taking on Hubert's personality is something I hadn't thought about but it makes me want to bump up to 85% on Hubert.

 

[GoNtheDistance]

Quick stuff…..fire Hubert.

 

[notashelbyfan]

As i said in another post we have been in an uncontrollable down hill dive since sometime after Trimble came back from injury, around that point Jackson's production fell off and the team has gotten worse and worse.

If there is chemistry issue this would be the 2nd time in 4 seasons chemistry issue have caused trouble, because I think in the year after the National Championship run it is pretty well known that there was something between RJ and Love

 

[chickenhunter]

You are behaving like a very little person at the moment.... nit-picking and going back through old posts is pretty lame. If you don't agree with Gary, fine, but why act like an asshole?

I dont think he's acting.

 

[JovialMuse]

I know it's easy to blame it all on in-game coaching right now and Hubert definitely deserves his fair share of the blame, but this notion that this team is full of capable players is a fallacy and has been a fallacy since the preseason when people said this team could be 10-11 deep.

This is the list of dudes who can really play at this level right now at least on a semi-consistent basis:
Cadeau, RJ, Jackson, Powell, Seth

That's it. Lubin, Washington, Withers probably aren't rotational players on good teams. Tyson and Claude are mid-major level players. James Brown is a 1 year away from being 1 year away project.

I'm not alleviating any of the blame on Hubert. This is his roster so he has to own it. But this team has very few players that are actually quality players. It's a 5-deep team. I'll say it's 6-deep because someone needs to start at the 5.

I hear you and while I believe we have a lot of flaws on the roster, roster construction is the staff's responsibility ultimately. But that list of players you mentioned are pretty darn good and would be starters or heavy rotation players on other top 25 teams. Yes, we're missing a bruiser inside but I've seen teams scheme their way around roster deficiencies. Baylor in 2021 blew out the field without anyone taller than 6'8" I'm fairly certain. UNC has also put some great teams on the court that were only 6ish players deep, albeit with a reliable big man. No, this team isn't as good as was predicted in the preseason, but I refuse to believe it's 14-11 and .500 in a terrible ACC bad either. The system is a big part of the problem IMO

 

[DSouthr]

RJ got picked by his own man on that play and even then idk if he catches that pass. It was out front. But you are right they have ran that a lot. But I do think it’s bs to call RJ out for savior mode. If he would have been guilty then the box score would have reflected it. During that stretch, you are referring to their starters were in. They subbed in three bench players one which hasn’t even played when we finally got to make a short run. You looked for an out for two of EC turnovers, but you didn’t notice RJ getting ran out of bounds for his. I understand it. We will never agree on what you see in RJ‘s play.

Bama, we have run that circle cut with RJ all season and RJ has fought thru to get to the spot most every other time, it is an anticipation pass from Cadeau, most often a look away pass. RJ simply did not fight thru.

What I see, feel free to disagree, when RJ goes in to that mode, call it want you want, it kills any on court chemistry we may have. This Clemson game we started off solid, good chemistry, the ball was moving around, RJ was getting some good looks and dropping them but after Jackson seemed to melt down RJ starting going way to much 1 on 1 and out the window team chemistry went. It becomes a Caleb Love flashback, didn't like Caleb doing it, don't like RJ or Jack doing it now.

 

[DSouthr]

You do realize RJ averages right at 4 assists per game right? And as Gary used to do, has several blown assists by literally every big man two ft from the rim, as does EC btw.

Well I would hope that a guy that draws constant doubles and at time triple teams efforts from the other team would be able to find open teammates. When RJ is LOOKING for those assists great, that is what I want him doing, that is not my concern, my concern is when he stops looking for his mates and goes 1 on 1.

Maybe it is just me but I simply do not like watching RJ lead us back to a half court offense, stand up front and pound the ball in to the court for 10-15 seconds and go one on one against multiple defenders that are waiting on him. This team is not built in a way that allows 1 guy to take over our offense, it is built in a way that MUST center on moving the ball effectively and spreading out the scoring so that the defense has to respect 5 guys as scorers, not stop one and our whole attack is done.

In a strange twist, very popular meme going on right now is FIRE HUBERT, yet what I am saying in reference to RJ is that I want Hubert to rein him back in and I don't see him doing that. For RJ's UNC career, any time he is in as our PG the tempo slows to a half court game, I want our pace up no matter who the PGis, Hubert has not told RJ to keep the pace up or if he has RJ does not listen, I have a problem with that. But why is it that those involved with the fire Hubert meme get upset when I dare to question RJ and Hubert tolerance of his slower pace?

I do not like the way this team is constructed, I don't because it takes away any margin of for error we may have. I would hope there is no one here that wants to argue that they like the way our team is constructed for this season. But we all knew how this team was constructed before practice #1 was held, at some point you have to move on to the fact that we have to do the best we can with who we got. This team had talent enough to win even with the limitations put on us by being so small and not filling that void thru the portal but it's ability to absorb mistakes was greatly reduced. What a small team simply can not do is find itself in a half court slow tempo game AND have poor jump shooting and yet that is how we are playing. Even with that, a team can still win but the ball movement and player movement has to be really strong and our's is not and it gets even worse when we have a guard that is taking on himself to "save the day", that doesn't dig us out of a hole, it digs the hole deeper. RJ is talented, he could help us in my view more by being 1 of 5 more than trying to be 1 on 5.

 

[DSouthr]

I was mainly upset with how UNC refused to guard that game. They never felt UNC the entire game. It was one of the softest defensive performances you can imagine. I know it's not really UNC's culture to be defensive minded. But yesterday was alarming how easy it was for Clemson. Clemson's obviously a good offensive team and they execute well, but UNC also never appeared to try to give some resistance all game.

That isn't true, we actually started that game defending pretty darn well, JWiith started with Lubin, we had some size to start the game with and JWit defended pretty darn stout. I didn't like Lubin's slow close outs on Larkin, you just don't give Euro big men wide open looks from straight on and dare them to shoot, they are well taught to hit that straight away trey. But other than that we defended solid up to the point that Jackson went brain dead, they burned us foir what was it, 3 or 4 trips down court where they scored and we didn't, hole was dug. You could almost see the wind come out of our sails for the rest of the half. We got shot clock violations on Clemson as well as last second desperation shots due to the shot clock being close where they got very fortunate bounces in from treys or bailout fouls very late shot clock.

 

[DSouthr]

I'm curious to see what you and others think is appropriate amount of blame for Hubert? 60%, 80%?

Well the buck stops with the head coach, at the end of the day there can be no other answer. This season, up to this very day, this has been Hubert's show so for me it is easy to point to the who is responsible for this. I identified who is responsible for this several games ago. Since, I have moved on to what is now to me the more important question of not who but why? If there are concrete reasons why then the why needs to be fixed before the who can be fixed.

 

[adwood81]

I remember eons ago in pre-season the hype was this team was going to play fast! Seems like a dream now. It is obvious they can't match up size wise with dook and the Clemson so you need to play to your advantage: speed and quickness. Full court pressure, traps to make them uncomfortable. No way that Dean would have allowed this to occur! The only thing that is uncomfortable now are UNC fans watching these games

 

[Stevew233]

I used to go to a handful of games a year and would actually schedule things around when UNC was playing so I could watch the games. Now, if there is nothing else going on I might watch some of the game. I do not even bother to record anymore. I have accepted that the Carolina basketball I grew up loving is gone, and it ain't coming back.

Others are running their programs like a Fortune 500 corporation while UNC is still trying to be a family-run business.

And from the fans that have been disguised as empty seats in the Dean Dome lately there's lots of us that no longer work our game day routines around when this team "pretends" to play. Sorry Hubert you are a nice guy but not what Carolina deserves as a basketball coach.

 

[NathanFielder]

I remember eons ago in pre-season the hype was this team was going to play fast! Seems like a dream now. It is obvious they can't match up size wise with dook and the Clemson so you need to play to your advantage: speed and quickness. Full court pressure, traps to make them uncomfortable. No way that Dean would have allowed this to occur! The only thing that is uncomfortable now are UNC fans watching these games

It's hard to run with their personnel group. They're really small and limited with their bigs. So that means Seth and RJ need to get involved rebounding and whoever the undersized 4 is will obviously have to be involved too. So they need to send up to 4 players on the defensive glass while Cadeau will be the outlet player. For previous UNC teams, they probably only needed to send 2 or 3 to the glass and they could actually run with the others. This team needs to collectively rebound and whenever that happens, you're not going to play as fast as possible.

It's also hard to press when you have 0 rim protection. Also, this team has 5 legitimate high caliber players. So this team has 0 depth. When it starts 4 guards, it has 0 guard depth off the bench. So if you want to play a chaotic, pressure, up tempo game... This team doesn't have the depth for that IMO.

Additionally, Clemson and Duke were shooting a high percentage in their games against UNC. Hard to play really fast if you aren't forcing misses.

Finally, they played really fast during the first half of this season. They went 8-6 during that stretch and only one game had less than 70 possessions. They've played slower since and they're 6-5. There's no indication that a particular style favors this team. They're just not a good basketball team.

 

[alabamaheel]

Bama, we have run that circle cut with RJ all season and RJ has fought thru to get to the spot most every other time, it is an anticipation pass from Cadeau, most often a look away pass. RJ simply did not fight thru.

What I see, feel free to disagree, when RJ goes in to that mode, call it want you want, it kills any on court chemistry we may have. This Clemson game we started off solid, good chemistry, the ball was moving around, RJ was getting some good looks and dropping them but after Jackson seemed to melt down RJ starting going way to much 1 on 1 and out the window team chemistry went. It becomes a Caleb Love flashback, didn't like Caleb doing it, don't like RJ or Jack doing it now.

Well I didn’t see it any more than usual. And most always if a player tries to play hero ball it shows in the shot count. Not this time.

 

[alabamaheel]

Well I would hope that a guy that draws constant doubles and at time triple teams efforts from the other team would be able to find open teammates. When RJ is LOOKING for those assists great, that is what I want him doing, that is not my concern, my concern is when he stops looking for his mates and goes 1 on 1.

Maybe it is just me but I simply do not like watching RJ lead us back to a half court offense, stand up front and pound the ball in to the court for 10-15 seconds and go one on one against multiple defenders that are waiting on him. This team is not built in a way that allows 1 guy to take over our offense, it is built in a way that MUST center on moving the ball effectively and spreading out the scoring so that the defense has to respect 5 guys as scorers, not stop one and our whole attack is done.

In a strange twist, very popular meme going on right now is FIRE HUBERT, yet what I am saying in reference to RJ is that I want Hubert to rein him back in and I don't see him doing that. For RJ's UNC career, any time he is in as our PG the tempo slows to a half court game, I want our pace up no matter who the PGis, Hubert has not told RJ to keep the pace up or if he has RJ does not listen, I have a problem with that. But why is it that those involved with the fire Hubert meme get upset when I dare to question RJ and Hubert tolerance of his slower pace?

I do not like the way this team is constructed, I don't because it takes away any margin of for error we may have. I would hope there is no one here that wants to argue that they like the way our team is constructed for this season. But we all knew how this team was constructed before practice #1 was held, at some point you have to move on to the fact that we have to do the best we can with who we got. This team had talent enough to win even with the limitations put on us by being so small and not filling that void thru the portal but its ability to absorb mistakes was greatly reduced. What a small team simply can not do is find itself in a half court slow tempo game AND have poor jump shooting and yet that is how we are playing. Even with that, a team can still win but the ball movement and player movement has to be really strong and our's is not and it gets even worse when we have a guard that is taking on himself to "save the day", that doesn't dig us out of a hole, it digs the hole deeper. RJ is talented, he could help us in my view more by being 1 of 5 more than trying to be 1 on 5.

You are literally blaming RJ for a coaching flaw. If coach wanted and demanded us to run then we would run. I also think you assume we have what it takes to run and we don’t. And with all do respect you have no idea what our team is built for because the coaches don’t even know lol. That was meant to be funny but true sorry. Look, I don’t like dribbling up top and like the ball moving but that’s not what they are pushing from the bench. If they were then they would sit him, Ian, and anyone else who slows it down. As a team that sucks and is very limited we need less possessions, not more. I just don’t see how anyone could watch that game, and say anything bad about RJ , besides a couple turnovers. It’s what individuals look for I guess. That’s why we’re all different. I love discussing basketball but I know one thing. I wished it was under better circumstances lol

 

[DSouthr]

You are literally blaming RJ for a coaching flaw. If coach wanted and demanded us to run then we would run. I also think you assume we have what it takes to run and we don’t. And with all do respect you have no idea what our team is built for because the coaches don’t even know lol. That was meant to be funny but true sorry. Look, I don’t like dribbling up top and like the ball moving but that’s not what they are pushing from the bench. If they were then they would sit him, Ian, and anyone else who slows it down. As a team that sucks and is very limited we need less possessions, not more. I just don’t see how anyone could watch that game, and say anything bad about RJ , besides a couple turnovers. It’s what individuals look for I guess. That’s why we’re all different. I love discussing basketball but I know one thing. I wished it was under better circumstances lol

I am not blaming RJ, I am pointing out what I see RJ doing. It is up to the coach to change that. IN pre-season, the mantra was run run run, all we hard was we had what was it, 3 seconds or so to advance the ball past half court? I find it hard to believe that with Hubert in every presser, and it coming from all the player interviews, I tend to believe that the coach's message was actually run run run. And yet, where is the run run run? I said it all last season, said it before this season and it is still true, RJ at the point = UNC in a half court game, been the case since he came to UNC and has not changed. Trust me, I would like to understand why there seems to be a disconnect between what is said by both the coach and the players to what we see on the court.

Now you ask is this team built to run, think you said does it have what it takes to run. Of course it does, the will to run seems lacking. Any team can run, small teams, especially those that are limited physically pretty much have to run to be successful, last thing a small and not physical team should get engaged in is a half court game constantly. It means you do have to use a deep bench because running gets guys winded, you want to get to the bigger teams legs. The smaller team, especially if they are jump shooting challenged like we are has to hold the speed/quickness advantage, so you run the other team that has the bigger guys to take out their speed and quickness, you don't really have much choice if winning is important to you.

When I see Jack, for example, drive in to the teeth of the defense and throw up some crazy heave that is pure air ball, who do I blame? I point out I don't like what Jack just did, it is up to the coach to pull him or not. Hubert seems to have a blind spot, only way I know to say it, with certain players. No matter what they do they are going to get huge minutes, near 40mins a game way to often. That is one reason we don't run as much as we should. Remember Caleb Love, how do we look at Calleb Love and get upset when he went in to hero mode and yet he got high 30s minutes every game and not be upset when we see RJ fall in to the same mode to often.

When I see RJ taking open jump shots, I don't care how many he takes, I am perfectly happy with it, I want them to fall but more important is getting and taking open shots, that applies to every guy on our roster, now or for the future. A team that takes mostly good shots will win above their talent level but a team that has to constantly take hard shots may win a individual game but their season will not turn out well. To get consistent good shot ops, players have to move, not go to a spot and camp out, at least in the college game. What we should be playing constantly is the UNC free lance offense, which may sound like street ball but it isn't, it is a motion offense that uses a lot of screens, in coordination with the ball handler.

You understand what our current offense is yeah? What Hubert is trying to do is spread everyone out and create driving lanes for our guards. He is typically, sending his 4 to one deep corner and his wing to the other and has them stay there. Problem is the defense is not being drawn out there to those deep corners far enough to not get back and harass the driver. We are getting open deep corner jumpers but those are typically from Drake and Seth, JWit when he is in (Jack starting a lot of those deep corner jumpers,he has of late been missing them), not dependable distance jump shooters. That we are not built for.

It has honestly gotten almost comical to watch, it is almost ground hog day, RJ gets a back screen from our 5 and circles out for the BHO into zoom, our 5 steps out to "supposedly" set a actual gosh darn screen and ends up with a ghost screen, meaning making zero contact, and immediately peels back, as we drive right in to 3 defenders. Think maybe the other teams have caught on to that by now? LOL