SWC75
Bored Historian
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- Aug 26, 2011
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- Gbinije’s great game disguised the fact that we didn’t really play that much better than we did against Louisville or Pittsburgh. His teammates were 4 for 19 from three point range. We had 17 turnovers. We won the boards in the first half, 21-19 but lost them 15-19 in the second. We had a 51-34 second half lead and let it melt to 61-56 before G-man hit a couple of monster threes to get it back out 10. If we are looking for a memorable end of season run we will need more than a career game by Michael to get us what we want. He’s going to need a lot more help than he got today.
- I was hoping with all the controversy over Tyler Roberson and Trevor Cooney that they’d decide to really show the coach and the fans something and have big games. It just didn’t happen. Tyler followed up a 0 points, 4 rebound performance against Pittsburgh with a 4 point 3 rebound performance against NC State, plus a number of defensive lapses JB sited in his press conference. I hope his feelings weren’t hurt.
- Trevor sure played hard. He didn’t get credited with a steal but disrupted several passes. He was running all over the court, trying to make plays. He had an amazing in-bounds save that resulted in an assists for another player and a basket for a third. He had a great inbounds pass to Malachi Richardson that Mal let bounce off his hands for a turnover and fast break basket for the Wolfpack, a crying shame. But Trevor’s positon isn’t “play hard guard”. It’s ‘shooting’ guard. He’s got to score to justify the playing time he gets. In the last two games he’s played 66 minutes and he’s shot the ball 17 times. So far, so good. Two of those shots have gone in. He’s 1 for 13 from the line in those two games. He’s scored 8 points in those 66 minutes, which translates to 5 per 40 minutes. I have him for -10 “net points” in the two games. He had two air balls today. His first shot was that rarity: an air ball that wasn’t short. It had the distance but was so far to the right I thought Scott Norwood had kicked it. You can debate Trevor Cooney all you want. What can’t be debated is that we’re going to need a lot more than that from him to accomplish anything the rest of the season.
- The freshmen had productive games but each had a downside to go with them. After a 9 point first half, Richardson got just four points in the second half and had that awful gaffe on Cooney’s terrific in-bounds pass. Tyler Lydon missed four completely wide-open three pointers in a row in the second half. Frank Howard was playing well until he threw a half-pass. What is a half-pass? It’s a turnover, that’s what it is. He had a great seat to watch the rest of the game.
- DaJuan Coleman also had a good game overall but, as JB said in his press conference, he had a couple of rebounds that were coming right to him but he couldn’t get them because he couldn’t get off the ground. Is there a light at the end of this tunnel?
- I was thinking early in the second half that “One thing about the ACC refs: for the most part they stay out of it and let the players decide the game.” They then called 24 second half fouls (after calling 11 in the first half.). They put the team that was behind into the double bonus with about 10 minutes to go in the game. And the Wolfpack took advantage: they made 16 second half fouls shots, (compared to 2 in the first half), scoring with no time going off the clock. It was the perfect thing for a team trying to make a comeback. There were many inconsistent calls and to some “make=up calls to make it look as if things were called evenly. It was as if we had a different refereeing crew for the second half than the first half.
- I’ve always said that a college basketball team is a jigsaw puzzle without all the prices. The coach has to figure out how to put together the pieces he has in such a way that what is missing is disguised or minimized and what he does have is maximized. Still, the mind wanders into fantasies about what one team might have been like if it has what another team had. What Michael Gbinije is now is exactly what we needed two years ago when the offense sputtered and died at the end of the season- and Michael was on that team! I even think he had the same skills we’ve seen now, (perhaps not as refined). But he seemed to defer to his teammates and didn’t contribute much. And what would this year’s team have been with last year’s Rakeem Christmas inside? What would the team two years ago have been with this year’s Michael Gbinije and last year’s Rakeem Christmas?
Maybe I should think about something else.
- I was hoping with all the controversy over Tyler Roberson and Trevor Cooney that they’d decide to really show the coach and the fans something and have big games. It just didn’t happen. Tyler followed up a 0 points, 4 rebound performance against Pittsburgh with a 4 point 3 rebound performance against NC State, plus a number of defensive lapses JB sited in his press conference. I hope his feelings weren’t hurt.
- Trevor sure played hard. He didn’t get credited with a steal but disrupted several passes. He was running all over the court, trying to make plays. He had an amazing in-bounds save that resulted in an assists for another player and a basket for a third. He had a great inbounds pass to Malachi Richardson that Mal let bounce off his hands for a turnover and fast break basket for the Wolfpack, a crying shame. But Trevor’s positon isn’t “play hard guard”. It’s ‘shooting’ guard. He’s got to score to justify the playing time he gets. In the last two games he’s played 66 minutes and he’s shot the ball 17 times. So far, so good. Two of those shots have gone in. He’s 1 for 13 from the line in those two games. He’s scored 8 points in those 66 minutes, which translates to 5 per 40 minutes. I have him for -10 “net points” in the two games. He had two air balls today. His first shot was that rarity: an air ball that wasn’t short. It had the distance but was so far to the right I thought Scott Norwood had kicked it. You can debate Trevor Cooney all you want. What can’t be debated is that we’re going to need a lot more than that from him to accomplish anything the rest of the season.
- The freshmen had productive games but each had a downside to go with them. After a 9 point first half, Richardson got just four points in the second half and had that awful gaffe on Cooney’s terrific in-bounds pass. Tyler Lydon missed four completely wide-open three pointers in a row in the second half. Frank Howard was playing well until he threw a half-pass. What is a half-pass? It’s a turnover, that’s what it is. He had a great seat to watch the rest of the game.
- DaJuan Coleman also had a good game overall but, as JB said in his press conference, he had a couple of rebounds that were coming right to him but he couldn’t get them because he couldn’t get off the ground. Is there a light at the end of this tunnel?
- I was thinking early in the second half that “One thing about the ACC refs: for the most part they stay out of it and let the players decide the game.” They then called 24 second half fouls (after calling 11 in the first half.). They put the team that was behind into the double bonus with about 10 minutes to go in the game. And the Wolfpack took advantage: they made 16 second half fouls shots, (compared to 2 in the first half), scoring with no time going off the clock. It was the perfect thing for a team trying to make a comeback. There were many inconsistent calls and to some “make=up calls to make it look as if things were called evenly. It was as if we had a different refereeing crew for the second half than the first half.
- I’ve always said that a college basketball team is a jigsaw puzzle without all the prices. The coach has to figure out how to put together the pieces he has in such a way that what is missing is disguised or minimized and what he does have is maximized. Still, the mind wanders into fantasies about what one team might have been like if it has what another team had. What Michael Gbinije is now is exactly what we needed two years ago when the offense sputtered and died at the end of the season- and Michael was on that team! I even think he had the same skills we’ve seen now, (perhaps not as refined). But he seemed to defer to his teammates and didn’t contribute much. And what would this year’s team have been with last year’s Rakeem Christmas inside? What would the team two years ago have been with this year’s Michael Gbinije and last year’s Rakeem Christmas?
Maybe I should think about something else.
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