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Message: [QUOTE="Niastri, post: 5659227, member: 722"] Our defensive intensity has evaporated. It really shows itself in one key area. Hedging off picks. We were hedging like madmen the beginning of the season. Guys would come off a screen on the left side and still have a hedging big man on them 20 feet later. Yesterday, it felt like the most perfunctory of hedges, maybe an arm wave, then a clear line to the basket. This game was over with 13 minutes to go. The clincher was an 8 point Luka Bogavac run in about 100 seconds of game time to push the lead to 26. Each individual could choose their own time to throw in the towel, but that was mine. Carolina actually pushed the lead to 32 at about the ten minute mark of the second half. They nearly had us doubled up... What happened next would have really pissed me off if I was a Carolina fan. That huge NET reinforcing margin was allowed to shrink to a 10 point margin of victory. The only thing that matters these days is beating bad opponents by big margins, and UNC failed to do that. Anyone who bet Carolina on the over at 10.5 should sue. There wasn't much good about this game. One thing you could point to is that the second team put on the press and we beat their second team and walkons by 22 points in 10 minutes of game time. Snarkiness aside, Carolina is excellent at avoiding turnovers, only giving up 9.5 per game (19th in the country in avoiding TO). Our press forced them into 6 in that last 10 minutes. We had them rattled and forced them to put guys back in the game who had run up the score in the first place. I hate that we don't use the press, even when everything else isn't working, until the game is functionally over. If we had started pressing early, maybe the worst possible end result happens and we wind up down 30? Some of our guys just can't score in the half court, but they can if they get unobstructed line to the basket. We should press more often, get teams rattled, and get our guys who are very comfortable in transition offense some chances to score in transition. Our depth is a significant strength, we don't use it in productive ways. Caleb Wilson is really good. Freeman played him even if you look at the box score, but that would be ignoring that Caleb's team won the first 30 minutes by 32 points. I am ready for a new coaching staff. Red's big idea against Notre Dame was to bench the best player and call it a "matchup" issue. That one might become a joke for years. As in "x player is really a discipline problem, currently under indictment for drug trafficking, but we are benching him because we don't like the matchups" type cynical humor. Red had a great off-season, where Red seemed to have filled in all his biggest program weaknesses. But during the season, he has demonstrated he can't adapt in games, create game plans or develop players enough to run a winning ACC program. [/QUOTE]

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