SWC75
Bored Historian
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- Aug 26, 2011
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- In a year when everybody has been beating North Carolina, they decided to become North Carolina again for our game. They dominated from midway through the first period and it was obvious throughout the game that they were going to win. We played had but not well enough to keep up with the Tar Heels, who surely played their best game of the year. We’ve beaten Pittsburgh 7 times in a row but now we’ve lost 9 times in a row to the Heels. We won our first ACC game against them in 2014 but they have owned us since then, outscoring us by 93 points in those ten games. Over the same span we are 4-8 vs. Duke.
- UNC came in the 339th best team, (of 350), in the country in three point percentage and shot 11 for 26, (42%), including 9 for 14 in the second half. We’ve had trouble stopping people from three all year but in this game, the Tar Heels were nailing 25 footers. Even when we were in their face, they were still scoring. Cole Anthony came in hitting 32% and was 7 for 11(63.6%). Most of those were out front and having to stretch the defense out that far opened up the corners and the wings for his teammates. Combined with their size inside and their famed fast break, this shooting made them impossible to stop and you can’t come back if you can’t get stops.
- Of course we can blame the zone for that shooting but you should be able to zone the heels, based on their season numbers. But Jimmy Satalin gave the anti-zoners some fodder when he noted another problem with the zone. He said both Louisville, who scored 90 points on us a week ago and North Carolina, who scored 90 tonight both did a great job of spacing the zone – positioning their players so that the zone had to expand to guard them, creating enlarged spaces between the defenders. Jimmy said he wished they could switch to a man-for-man. That would actually increase the spacing but at least you’d be right up on the shooters. (I understand the arguments JB makes for focusing on one defense and they aren’t necessarily wrong but it’s a fact that if you are playing just zone, you are going to be vulnerable to teams that do a great job of spacing.
- Wash…Rinse…repeat: 6-9 235 Brooks Garrison had 26 points and 14 rebounds, statistically negating the great game Bourmama Sidibe had. .
- I’ve always said that if you have 1-2 guys playing well and are playing a conference game or an equivalent opponent, you are going to lose. If you can get three guys playing well, you have a chance to win. If four guys play well, we’ll win. If five guys play well, we’ll blow them out. In this game, Sidibie and Boeheim played very well. Elijah Hughes got his numbers but most of them came after we’d fallen way behind, (he had 5 of his 19 points in the first 22:23 of the game). Marek Dolezaj actually played pretty well when he was in there. He scored 6 points on 3 for 4 shooting with 3 assists, 3 rebounds a block and as teal in 19 minutes. The key stat was the 19 minutes. He continued to get in early foul trouble and once again fouled out – the 7th time this year, (our record is 9 by Rafael Addison, of all people). The one guy who stunk was Joe Girard, who scored 9 points but missed 9 of 12 shots and 6 of 8 three pointers. He also continued his recent trend of making turnovers with 3, (it seemed like more- sometimes they blame the guy he was passing to). His assist-to-turnover ratio the last four games is 9-14. He’s playing more like a freshman now than he was in November. Quincy Querrier, as Jim Boeheim said in his presser, “did nothing for the first 20 minutes”. In the last three games he has 13 points and 11 rebounds in 66 minutes. Because Buddy played so well, Brycen Goodine played only 7 minutes and got one assist and missed two shots in that time. That’s our rotation. Two guys isn’t enough.
- We were getting killed on the boards early, (I head a stat of 4-15 at one point. It wound up 29-39, so we did OK after that, thanks mostly to Bourama. The problem was long rebounds. UNC got virtually every one. Our backcourt of Girard and Boeheim got one rebound each. Anthony, Robinson and Black, (who is listed as a guard at 6-8), had a dozen between them. Girard had a good run of rebounding, (he had 36 in7 games through the Florida State game, virtually all on long rebounds) but has had just 8 in the last 4 games. They say Buddy may be 6-7 by now. He needs to contribute more on the boards.
- I just heard a debate between the post games hosts on WAER and a caller. The host felt that it was embarrassing to lost to a last place team at home by 13 points. They complained that Jim Boeheim didn’t have his team ready to play this game. The caller was defending n Jimmy and team. I put my two cents in: the game was 17-17 at the 11:11 mark, so we didn’t get off to a bad start. The game was really lost when we went scoreless for the next 6 minutes. You can’t do that against North Carolina. They are going to keep scoring, (and they did, and 0-16) run. We have a counter 18-7 run before halftime, (after a Boeheim time-out so that’s a credit to him and the team). But we never caught up and when the heels hit those 9 second half threes, we just couldn’t catch up. We actually won the other 34 minutes of the game. The ACC this year is full of mediocre teams, of which we are one. Mediocre teams have the widest variance in their caliber of play, (when you’re good you’re good and when you’re not you’re not), and they are different teams in different games. Their record or what they did in last week’s game hasn’t meant very much. If the Tar Heels had shot the ball like this in their other games they’d have a much better record and would have been favored to win this game. But they didn’t and they lost those games. SU has five road victories and three wins by 23 points or more. But they aren’t a dominant team, even if they dominated those games and they are 4-6 at home. Tonight SU didn’t score for 6 minutes in the first half and UNC shot the lights out in the second half. In their next games, something else will happen.
- Are we going to wind up in the NIT? Of course we are. We’ll likely face a #1 or #2 seed in the ACCT. We’ve been an NIT team all year and rarely rose above that level. It’s clearly where this team belongs.
- UNC came in the 339th best team, (of 350), in the country in three point percentage and shot 11 for 26, (42%), including 9 for 14 in the second half. We’ve had trouble stopping people from three all year but in this game, the Tar Heels were nailing 25 footers. Even when we were in their face, they were still scoring. Cole Anthony came in hitting 32% and was 7 for 11(63.6%). Most of those were out front and having to stretch the defense out that far opened up the corners and the wings for his teammates. Combined with their size inside and their famed fast break, this shooting made them impossible to stop and you can’t come back if you can’t get stops.
- Of course we can blame the zone for that shooting but you should be able to zone the heels, based on their season numbers. But Jimmy Satalin gave the anti-zoners some fodder when he noted another problem with the zone. He said both Louisville, who scored 90 points on us a week ago and North Carolina, who scored 90 tonight both did a great job of spacing the zone – positioning their players so that the zone had to expand to guard them, creating enlarged spaces between the defenders. Jimmy said he wished they could switch to a man-for-man. That would actually increase the spacing but at least you’d be right up on the shooters. (I understand the arguments JB makes for focusing on one defense and they aren’t necessarily wrong but it’s a fact that if you are playing just zone, you are going to be vulnerable to teams that do a great job of spacing.
- Wash…Rinse…repeat: 6-9 235 Brooks Garrison had 26 points and 14 rebounds, statistically negating the great game Bourmama Sidibe had. .
- I’ve always said that if you have 1-2 guys playing well and are playing a conference game or an equivalent opponent, you are going to lose. If you can get three guys playing well, you have a chance to win. If four guys play well, we’ll win. If five guys play well, we’ll blow them out. In this game, Sidibie and Boeheim played very well. Elijah Hughes got his numbers but most of them came after we’d fallen way behind, (he had 5 of his 19 points in the first 22:23 of the game). Marek Dolezaj actually played pretty well when he was in there. He scored 6 points on 3 for 4 shooting with 3 assists, 3 rebounds a block and as teal in 19 minutes. The key stat was the 19 minutes. He continued to get in early foul trouble and once again fouled out – the 7th time this year, (our record is 9 by Rafael Addison, of all people). The one guy who stunk was Joe Girard, who scored 9 points but missed 9 of 12 shots and 6 of 8 three pointers. He also continued his recent trend of making turnovers with 3, (it seemed like more- sometimes they blame the guy he was passing to). His assist-to-turnover ratio the last four games is 9-14. He’s playing more like a freshman now than he was in November. Quincy Querrier, as Jim Boeheim said in his presser, “did nothing for the first 20 minutes”. In the last three games he has 13 points and 11 rebounds in 66 minutes. Because Buddy played so well, Brycen Goodine played only 7 minutes and got one assist and missed two shots in that time. That’s our rotation. Two guys isn’t enough.
- We were getting killed on the boards early, (I head a stat of 4-15 at one point. It wound up 29-39, so we did OK after that, thanks mostly to Bourama. The problem was long rebounds. UNC got virtually every one. Our backcourt of Girard and Boeheim got one rebound each. Anthony, Robinson and Black, (who is listed as a guard at 6-8), had a dozen between them. Girard had a good run of rebounding, (he had 36 in7 games through the Florida State game, virtually all on long rebounds) but has had just 8 in the last 4 games. They say Buddy may be 6-7 by now. He needs to contribute more on the boards.
- I just heard a debate between the post games hosts on WAER and a caller. The host felt that it was embarrassing to lost to a last place team at home by 13 points. They complained that Jim Boeheim didn’t have his team ready to play this game. The caller was defending n Jimmy and team. I put my two cents in: the game was 17-17 at the 11:11 mark, so we didn’t get off to a bad start. The game was really lost when we went scoreless for the next 6 minutes. You can’t do that against North Carolina. They are going to keep scoring, (and they did, and 0-16) run. We have a counter 18-7 run before halftime, (after a Boeheim time-out so that’s a credit to him and the team). But we never caught up and when the heels hit those 9 second half threes, we just couldn’t catch up. We actually won the other 34 minutes of the game. The ACC this year is full of mediocre teams, of which we are one. Mediocre teams have the widest variance in their caliber of play, (when you’re good you’re good and when you’re not you’re not), and they are different teams in different games. Their record or what they did in last week’s game hasn’t meant very much. If the Tar Heels had shot the ball like this in their other games they’d have a much better record and would have been favored to win this game. But they didn’t and they lost those games. SU has five road victories and three wins by 23 points or more. But they aren’t a dominant team, even if they dominated those games and they are 4-6 at home. Tonight SU didn’t score for 6 minutes in the first half and UNC shot the lights out in the second half. In their next games, something else will happen.
- Are we going to wind up in the NIT? Of course we are. We’ll likely face a #1 or #2 seed in the ACCT. We’ve been an NIT team all year and rarely rose above that level. It’s clearly where this team belongs.
