SWC75
Bored Historian
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2011
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- Another bad start: 6-15. Another narrow loss in the type of game we need to win to make the NCAA tournament. 68-72. It all counts, not just the plays at the end.
- Benny Williams and Chris Bell, this season’s two whipping boys, actually played with a lot of energy and aggression in this game. I have no problem with Bell and Benny made a fabulous pass to Joe on the fast break and a terrific drive to the basket to score late in the first half, but there wasn’t enough of that. He had 4 points and 2 rebounds in 20 minutes. Oh, and someone needs to point out the shot clock to him.
- Maliq Brown, after scoring like pacman in recent games, was ordinary in this one with 2 points in 20 minutes.
- Judah Mintz and Joe Girard are a terrific backcourt but they are more like Brett Favre than Tom Brady. They make spectacularly good and spectacularly bad plays. It makes for entertaining basketball but you hope the good plays win and come at the tight time. They scored 35 points but had 10 turnovers between them compared to only 7 assists. Judah had three steals but also fouled out. They also sealed the deal for the Heels when Joe saved the ball right to Nance for the winning basket when all he had to do is hold it and we get to play defense with a 1 point lead and then Judah turned into Larry Csonka on the last play. I remember thinking during the time out that we’d hold the ball until the 10 second mark and then run a play. Nope. Too conventional, I guess.
- Do we have a drill for saving the ball inbounds to a teammate. It seemed like every time we tried it, it went right to a North Carolina player.
- I don’t think a baseline pass to Mounir Hima for a jumper is in our offense.
- Armando Bacot won his confrontation with Jesse Edwards, scoring 18 points with 8 rebounds vs. 8 and 7 for Jesse, although Jesse had 5 blocks to none. Of course he had help from the refs but Bacot was also physically stronger and knew how to use it. There was an exchange in the first half where Jesse tried to push Bacot back to get a shot off and bounced off of him, then tried to stop his shot at the other end with the same result. I felt in the first half that we weren’t putting Jesse in a position to succeed by getting him out in space with the pick and roll where he could use his speed. But they tried that in the second half and Bacot stayed close enough to him to deflect any passes.
- UNC did a great job of playing the passing lanes and SU players with the ball often had no where to pass it and committed turnovers when they tried. Or did our guys do a poor job of presenting them with an outlet for the passes? Perhaps a little of both?
- Oh yes, the refs. There was a point in the first half where I checked the ESPN box score and we’d been whistled for one foul and Carolina for 5 of them. I recall thinking that Tar Heels fans won’t like that. The rest of the game was 6 fouls for them, 16 for us. We attempted 39 two point shots and got fouled 11 times. They attempted 42 and got fouled 17 times. They attempted 23 free throws to our 3 and out-scored us by 14 at the line despite missing 9 times, three times the number of shots we attempted. We out-rebounded the Heels, had more points in the paint, out-shot them from three and from two and had more fast break points. But they won because they attempted 20 more free throws. There was at least one time Bacot drew a foul on Jesse that was clearly nothing and an intentional foul on a Judah drive that wasn’t called.
- I am sick and tired of our game meaning nothing unless we beat a tier 1 or tier 2 opponent. This is a ridiculous way of assessing the quality of teams. Miami and North Carolina will both be in the NCAA tournament and we slugged it out for forty minutes with both of them and lost by 4. It might as well have been 40. There should be something along the lines of my “Against Ranked Teams” posts, (which I’ve now got to update since my computer has been replaced). Use a mathematical formula to rank all 363 teams. Give the top team the 363 and the bottom team the 1. Divide by 10. That’s how many points you get for playing them. Then add or subtract the point differential in the game. Here’s how SU’s record would look, using the Sagarin rankings:
College basketball team ratings 2022-23 - Jeff Sagarin Ratings
Lehigh 13 + 18 = 31 points
Colgate 22 – 12 = 10 points
Northeastern 12 + 28 = 40 points
Richmond 25 + 3 = 28 points
St. John’s 30 – 7 = 23 points
Bryant 16 – 1 = 15 points
Illinois 35 – 29 = 6 points
Notre Dame 22 +1 = 23 points
Oakland 11 + 29 = 40 points
Georgetown 19 + 19 = 38 points
Monmouth 11 + 15 = 26 points
Cornell 25 + 15 = 40 points
Pittsburgh 30 – 2 = 28 points
Boston College 21 + 14 = 35 points
Louisville 14 + 1 = 15 points
Virginia 35 – 7 = 28 points
Virginia Tech 31 + 10 = 41 points
Notre Dame 22 + 5 = 27 points
U of Miami 32 – 4 = 28 points
Georgia Tech 22 + 17 = 39 points
North Carolina 34 – 4 = 30 points
Total Points: 591 points.
OK, so that system isn’t perfect, either. It probably needs tweaking to account for the venue and to cap the points you get for a blow-out so teams wouldn’t just schedule bottom feeders to roll up the score. (Maybe there could be a mercy rule.) But every game against a Division 1 opponent would matter and every minute of each game would matter as teams try to improve their season standing. You’d get credit for close losses but more credit for wins. It sure beats what we’ve got now.
- Benny Williams and Chris Bell, this season’s two whipping boys, actually played with a lot of energy and aggression in this game. I have no problem with Bell and Benny made a fabulous pass to Joe on the fast break and a terrific drive to the basket to score late in the first half, but there wasn’t enough of that. He had 4 points and 2 rebounds in 20 minutes. Oh, and someone needs to point out the shot clock to him.
- Maliq Brown, after scoring like pacman in recent games, was ordinary in this one with 2 points in 20 minutes.
- Judah Mintz and Joe Girard are a terrific backcourt but they are more like Brett Favre than Tom Brady. They make spectacularly good and spectacularly bad plays. It makes for entertaining basketball but you hope the good plays win and come at the tight time. They scored 35 points but had 10 turnovers between them compared to only 7 assists. Judah had three steals but also fouled out. They also sealed the deal for the Heels when Joe saved the ball right to Nance for the winning basket when all he had to do is hold it and we get to play defense with a 1 point lead and then Judah turned into Larry Csonka on the last play. I remember thinking during the time out that we’d hold the ball until the 10 second mark and then run a play. Nope. Too conventional, I guess.
- Do we have a drill for saving the ball inbounds to a teammate. It seemed like every time we tried it, it went right to a North Carolina player.
- I don’t think a baseline pass to Mounir Hima for a jumper is in our offense.
- Armando Bacot won his confrontation with Jesse Edwards, scoring 18 points with 8 rebounds vs. 8 and 7 for Jesse, although Jesse had 5 blocks to none. Of course he had help from the refs but Bacot was also physically stronger and knew how to use it. There was an exchange in the first half where Jesse tried to push Bacot back to get a shot off and bounced off of him, then tried to stop his shot at the other end with the same result. I felt in the first half that we weren’t putting Jesse in a position to succeed by getting him out in space with the pick and roll where he could use his speed. But they tried that in the second half and Bacot stayed close enough to him to deflect any passes.
- UNC did a great job of playing the passing lanes and SU players with the ball often had no where to pass it and committed turnovers when they tried. Or did our guys do a poor job of presenting them with an outlet for the passes? Perhaps a little of both?
- Oh yes, the refs. There was a point in the first half where I checked the ESPN box score and we’d been whistled for one foul and Carolina for 5 of them. I recall thinking that Tar Heels fans won’t like that. The rest of the game was 6 fouls for them, 16 for us. We attempted 39 two point shots and got fouled 11 times. They attempted 42 and got fouled 17 times. They attempted 23 free throws to our 3 and out-scored us by 14 at the line despite missing 9 times, three times the number of shots we attempted. We out-rebounded the Heels, had more points in the paint, out-shot them from three and from two and had more fast break points. But they won because they attempted 20 more free throws. There was at least one time Bacot drew a foul on Jesse that was clearly nothing and an intentional foul on a Judah drive that wasn’t called.
- I am sick and tired of our game meaning nothing unless we beat a tier 1 or tier 2 opponent. This is a ridiculous way of assessing the quality of teams. Miami and North Carolina will both be in the NCAA tournament and we slugged it out for forty minutes with both of them and lost by 4. It might as well have been 40. There should be something along the lines of my “Against Ranked Teams” posts, (which I’ve now got to update since my computer has been replaced). Use a mathematical formula to rank all 363 teams. Give the top team the 363 and the bottom team the 1. Divide by 10. That’s how many points you get for playing them. Then add or subtract the point differential in the game. Here’s how SU’s record would look, using the Sagarin rankings:
College basketball team ratings 2022-23 - Jeff Sagarin Ratings
Lehigh 13 + 18 = 31 points
Colgate 22 – 12 = 10 points
Northeastern 12 + 28 = 40 points
Richmond 25 + 3 = 28 points
St. John’s 30 – 7 = 23 points
Bryant 16 – 1 = 15 points
Illinois 35 – 29 = 6 points
Notre Dame 22 +1 = 23 points
Oakland 11 + 29 = 40 points
Georgetown 19 + 19 = 38 points
Monmouth 11 + 15 = 26 points
Cornell 25 + 15 = 40 points
Pittsburgh 30 – 2 = 28 points
Boston College 21 + 14 = 35 points
Louisville 14 + 1 = 15 points
Virginia 35 – 7 = 28 points
Virginia Tech 31 + 10 = 41 points
Notre Dame 22 + 5 = 27 points
U of Miami 32 – 4 = 28 points
Georgia Tech 22 + 17 = 39 points
North Carolina 34 – 4 = 30 points
Total Points: 591 points.
OK, so that system isn’t perfect, either. It probably needs tweaking to account for the venue and to cap the points you get for a blow-out so teams wouldn’t just schedule bottom feeders to roll up the score. (Maybe there could be a mercy rule.) But every game against a Division 1 opponent would matter and every minute of each game would matter as teams try to improve their season standing. You’d get credit for close losses but more credit for wins. It sure beats what we’ve got now.
