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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 1724835, member: 289"] - We just didn’t play the game we needed to play to beat a superior team. - Jim Satalin commented all game “We’re getting the shots we want”. But we didn’t make enough of them. IN the first half we were 8 for 21 inside the arc, 3 for 10 outside of it and the same at the foul line. North Carolina was 0 for 10 from the arc yet had an 11 point lead. With decent shooting that could have been an even game and it would have stayed that way. - I was really disappointed in our defense at the top of the zone. We’ve got two 5th year seniors with size out there and they were too widely separated, too easily screened off and too slow to close on the ball. Carolina, especially Berry had no problem blowing by them and feeding their very talented big men. All of the big Heels can catch, pass, shoot and rebound and when they get the ball in the paint, any team is toast. We needed to stop the ball before it got there. Instead, they made 31 of 48 inside shots, 65%. You’re not going to win against those numbers. Our defense got us here and it really didn’t show up. - I’ll remember five bad things about this team: bad passes, (we can’t seem to run a fast break any more), missed dunks, missed lay-ups, an inability to score when fouled and charging fouls. We must have set a team record for all of them. - You can’t miss 9 of 13 fouls shot and pull off an upset. At lead one of those was the front end of a one and one. If we’d shot from the line as we have been doing in the tournament, we would have remained within range of them and our mini-rally would have closed the gap and made it a real game without having to resort to the press, which didn’t work well against UNC. - Our senior heroes, dating back to Dave Bing, often seem to go out with a disappointing game. That was the case with Michael Gbinije, who did manage to get to 12 points and thus reach double figures in every game this season but was 5 for 18 from the field, including 0 for 5 from three point range. We needed to have him have one of his special games, like against NC State when he was 11 for 18 and scored 34. But he just couldn’t find his game tonight. - I hate our offense. We have to have more options than three pointers and drive from the basket from 25 feet out, (which gives the defense way too much time to react to it). One poster in the chatroom said that we try too many “hero” plays- plays one guy tries to score alone. That’s what our offense sets up – hero plays. We had 5 assists in this game, to 18 for North Carolina. Normally I don’t think much of assists as a stat but in this case it’s very telling. It’s a team game and this offense is all about individual play. We need more options. We need to put a guy in the high post. We need to drive and dish, not just drive and plow into three guys. We need to get it inside and then throw it back out for open threes to a guy who is already squared to the basket. But we don’t do anything. This is a more serious issue that being in the zone all the time. I reminds me when Pasqualoni and DeLeone had the football team running the nearside option over and over again. It’s wistful to remember when Syracuse was known as a potent offensive team, the way North Carolina is. [/QUOTE]

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