It's weird to look up and see us coming up pretty quickly on February and the middle of the ACC schedule. Feel like it's a decent time for a breakdown as we wrapped up the easier portion of the ACC sked, are in the midst of sort of the mid-grade portion of it and we're headed toward a murderer's row series of games starting in the middle of next month.
Figured I'd break the mid-season review down into some general observations/trends and some thoughts about what we need to see going forward and then a second part with grades (in part II, admittedly arbitrary and subjective but sort of a fun exercise nevertheless.) So, without further ado:
Observations
Our biggest weakness is that we don't fit together perfectly offensively
My general opinion is that great basketball teams are usually a product of one of two scenarios: 1) at least one elite offensive talent and maybe more driving the action (some of those UConn teams with Rip or Gordon or Allen; Duke with Zion this year, etc.) or 2) a team where the whole exceeds the sum of the parts, maybe by a lot (Cuse in 09-10; those nova teams that had really good players but no one dominating at the next level, or some teams that execute well but play slower like Howland/Dickson Pitt teams and UVA under Bennett, etc.)
We don't really have either scenario. As much as I love Tyus as a player and, from all appearances, as a kid, he's a very good offensive player. He's not elite the way Melo or Johnny Flynn or some others were. And his surrounding cast all have some intriguing skills but don't seem to play particularly well off one another (at least not consistently). You think of 09-10 and you had Wes Johnson, who was roughly in the same neighborhood as Tyus -- but he was surrounded by guys who shared the ball really well (Rautins, Scoop, Triche, even RJ passed the ball well from the high post) or were a load to handle in the post (Arinze and RJ to a lesser extent) or were able to take advantage of our faster pace to make play after play on the fast break or secondary break (KJ).
That's not us.
So what we have instead is a team that can look pretty good on offense -- and we basically have looked pretty decent on this side for the past 10 games -- but occasionally is prone to a clunker -- we've had some brutal games shooting the ball and we have stretches even within some of our better games where we have looked terrible. I really thought we looked OK in the first half against G'town, but we made almost literally nothing. Didn't feel like we looked that bad against UB (really could have had a much bigger lead at half, IMO) or ODU but missed some easy opportunities inside and then hit bad droughts at big moments in the final 5-7 minutes, which sunk us.
Anyway, think we've improved here and hope to see it continue this month.
70 is a big number for us
It seems like if we can get to 70 points, we're pretty tough to beat. This may seem a bit obvious in the sense that we are generally a pretty good defensive team but last year we were just 3-4 when we got to 70+ points in ACC play. Even getting there was a chore as one was the double OT FSU game and another was the blowout at BC where we got to 70 in garbage time.
This year, we are about 5 ppg better on offense and that's worth noting particularly b/c our scoring is actually almost as good in conference as it was out of conference (like within .4 of a point). That's pretty rare since you build in a ton of cupcakes most years out of conference.
But that makes a big difference b/c we haven't had to white knuckle these games quite as much. We don't necessarily dominate teams and we haven't played the big boys outside of Duke and VT, but we've also won pretty easily several times already -- beat up on Miami, were up 20 in the second half vs. Pitt, comfortable wins against Clemson and ND (I realize clemson was a game where we barely cracked 60) and then I felt like we were in a good spot last night and we outscored BC by 15 on their floor after the first 4 mins of that game.
If we can keep moving the ball well enough and scoring well enough to get to 70+ in most conference games, we should be a lock for 10-11 ACC wins.
Is this a replay of last season?
Odd to think we were 15-6 through 21 games last season and that's where we are this year as well. We had a worse record in conference last season at 4-4 but we had played at FSU And UVA and had played four road games, so the schedule was tougher. It's interesting but I think this team is better. For one thing, we already have three road ACC wins. That's pretty nice -- we had three road ACC wins all of last season. We also are scoring 5 ppg more in conference play and have much more depth ... which brings me to the next point.
JB has used the roster in interesting ways
JB gets a ton of grief on here for his use of the roster and his rotation. I'm sure many are still upset about it and about Carey being relegated to bench duty (though I don't think it's crazy that he could still end up playing a role here this season), but JB has done a nice job of mixing and matching to find what looks like the best lineup each game.
We've seen Battle playing the point at times, we've seen Frank play big minutes and frank end up on the bench for long stretches. We've seen Chuckwu benched for games at a time and also be among the most valuable players in our biggest win of the season. We've seen Brissett spend a bunch of time on the bench in a couple conference wins. We Carey get some good run early and now buddy emerge as a pretty important weapon.
It will be interesting to watch how the rotation or playing time shakes out the next month.
Figured I'd break the mid-season review down into some general observations/trends and some thoughts about what we need to see going forward and then a second part with grades (in part II, admittedly arbitrary and subjective but sort of a fun exercise nevertheless.) So, without further ado:
Observations
Our biggest weakness is that we don't fit together perfectly offensively
My general opinion is that great basketball teams are usually a product of one of two scenarios: 1) at least one elite offensive talent and maybe more driving the action (some of those UConn teams with Rip or Gordon or Allen; Duke with Zion this year, etc.) or 2) a team where the whole exceeds the sum of the parts, maybe by a lot (Cuse in 09-10; those nova teams that had really good players but no one dominating at the next level, or some teams that execute well but play slower like Howland/Dickson Pitt teams and UVA under Bennett, etc.)
We don't really have either scenario. As much as I love Tyus as a player and, from all appearances, as a kid, he's a very good offensive player. He's not elite the way Melo or Johnny Flynn or some others were. And his surrounding cast all have some intriguing skills but don't seem to play particularly well off one another (at least not consistently). You think of 09-10 and you had Wes Johnson, who was roughly in the same neighborhood as Tyus -- but he was surrounded by guys who shared the ball really well (Rautins, Scoop, Triche, even RJ passed the ball well from the high post) or were a load to handle in the post (Arinze and RJ to a lesser extent) or were able to take advantage of our faster pace to make play after play on the fast break or secondary break (KJ).
That's not us.
So what we have instead is a team that can look pretty good on offense -- and we basically have looked pretty decent on this side for the past 10 games -- but occasionally is prone to a clunker -- we've had some brutal games shooting the ball and we have stretches even within some of our better games where we have looked terrible. I really thought we looked OK in the first half against G'town, but we made almost literally nothing. Didn't feel like we looked that bad against UB (really could have had a much bigger lead at half, IMO) or ODU but missed some easy opportunities inside and then hit bad droughts at big moments in the final 5-7 minutes, which sunk us.
Anyway, think we've improved here and hope to see it continue this month.
70 is a big number for us
It seems like if we can get to 70 points, we're pretty tough to beat. This may seem a bit obvious in the sense that we are generally a pretty good defensive team but last year we were just 3-4 when we got to 70+ points in ACC play. Even getting there was a chore as one was the double OT FSU game and another was the blowout at BC where we got to 70 in garbage time.
This year, we are about 5 ppg better on offense and that's worth noting particularly b/c our scoring is actually almost as good in conference as it was out of conference (like within .4 of a point). That's pretty rare since you build in a ton of cupcakes most years out of conference.
But that makes a big difference b/c we haven't had to white knuckle these games quite as much. We don't necessarily dominate teams and we haven't played the big boys outside of Duke and VT, but we've also won pretty easily several times already -- beat up on Miami, were up 20 in the second half vs. Pitt, comfortable wins against Clemson and ND (I realize clemson was a game where we barely cracked 60) and then I felt like we were in a good spot last night and we outscored BC by 15 on their floor after the first 4 mins of that game.
If we can keep moving the ball well enough and scoring well enough to get to 70+ in most conference games, we should be a lock for 10-11 ACC wins.
Is this a replay of last season?
Odd to think we were 15-6 through 21 games last season and that's where we are this year as well. We had a worse record in conference last season at 4-4 but we had played at FSU And UVA and had played four road games, so the schedule was tougher. It's interesting but I think this team is better. For one thing, we already have three road ACC wins. That's pretty nice -- we had three road ACC wins all of last season. We also are scoring 5 ppg more in conference play and have much more depth ... which brings me to the next point.
JB has used the roster in interesting ways
JB gets a ton of grief on here for his use of the roster and his rotation. I'm sure many are still upset about it and about Carey being relegated to bench duty (though I don't think it's crazy that he could still end up playing a role here this season), but JB has done a nice job of mixing and matching to find what looks like the best lineup each game.
We've seen Battle playing the point at times, we've seen Frank play big minutes and frank end up on the bench for long stretches. We've seen Chuckwu benched for games at a time and also be among the most valuable players in our biggest win of the season. We've seen Brissett spend a bunch of time on the bench in a couple conference wins. We Carey get some good run early and now buddy emerge as a pretty important weapon.
It will be interesting to watch how the rotation or playing time shakes out the next month.
)
That injury really seems to have hindered him tremendously in that regard.
