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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 2829316, member: 289"] - It was the first long, sad drive home after a loss this year. The football team, the basketball team and the women’s basketball team had been undefeated in the Dome: zero losses in the fall semester before today. - A subject that comes up often for the football team each year, (but hopefully not for a while) is “moral victories”. I always point out that it’s an absurd team. What would an immoral victory be? What we are really talking about is that we want two things out of every game: victory and optimism. We want to get the W and feel that there are a lot more W’s to come. If you get the W but play poorly you figure you were lucky you weren’t playing a better team wonder what will happen when you do. If you lose and play well, you come away feeling that with that performance, there are a lot of other games that you will win. If you lose and play poorly, you wonder how many upcoming games we’ll even have a chance to win. Those are the options: 1) an encouraging victory; 2) a discouraging victory; 3) an encouraging defeat; 4) a discouraging defeat. This was #4 because we played like #2, if you know what I mean. This just isn’t the team we thought we were going to see this year and they aren’t improving. We were supposed to have a team with last year’s strengths enhanced by additional depth and firepower. Instead we have a team that doesn’t even seem to have last year’s virtues. - The goal of being curious, rather than nervous on selection Sunday is fading away. Even curious may be replaced by pessimistic or resigned at some point. I wanted us to have single digit losses at that point and thought this team would be capable of that. Instead, we will probably be no better than 9-4 in the pre-conference season. We’ve never done anything in the ACC tournament so that’s a 5th loss. We aren’t going 14-4 in the ACC regular season. It may be a struggle to go 9-9, which would make us an 18-14 team. Those #1 teams we had early in the decade seem like a long time ago. - The most frustrating thing is that we are the country’s most famous zone team but we seem to have no idea how to attack a zone. We look like some of those NCAA teams we’ve beaten over the years that have never seen a zone, or at least our zone and look totally clueless as to what to do. You either need to have an intermediate passer at the high post or maybe to the side that he’s already penetrated the zone before he got the ball and can score from there or pass it to the baseline or back out for a three or you need to get swift, efficient ball movement, probing for a weakness in the zone. We have a weakness in the zone and that is that our center is supposed to cover the corners rather than stay home and ODU got the ball to those corners. They’d either score from there or pass underneath for an easy score. We have the perfect guy to be an intermediate passer in Marek Dolezaj but we don’t use him in that role. Instead we either settle for threes or try to drive into the zone from outside. The guy with the ball got double-teamed every time we did it and every time the center set a pick, there were two guys around him, too. The result was a 23-39 finish in the last 15:46 after we had a 39-28 lead. In that stretch we had 7 turnovers, missed 7 of 12 field goals 6 of 16 free throws. - Coach Boeheim has often expressed his frustration with his centers and this game won’t change anything. Paschal Chukwu and Bourama Sidibe played 32 minutes, got off exactly one shot, which was missed and scored no points (0 for 2 from the line). They did manage 7 rebounds and two blocks. Ahmad Carver had 7 rebounds in 35 minutes for ODU and he’s a 6-2 guard. It’s not entirely the big guy’s fault. They were often left to battle 3-4 guys by themselves as their teammates went downcourt. But they were often out-positioned and out-muscled. - Oshae Brissett was back in his New York mode, staying outside, jacking up three pointers and being too far from the boards where he could really help us. Our double-double machine had 9 points and 6 rebounds. When he did go inside he missed 4 of 5 two point shots and 1 for 3 from the line. Both those last two numbers are bad. When he’s playing well, Oshae gets 8-10-12 free throw attempts and makes most of them. - Frank Howard was 2 for 7 from the field and had 3 turnovers. Boeheim yanked him in favor of Jalen Carey who looked not-ready-for-prime-time, especially with a bad turnover that caused Jim to tell him “I didn’t put you in there to turn the ball over.” - I wish there was stat for who winds up with loose balls. It’s as important as rebounds or turnovers and we would have lost it big today. [/QUOTE]

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