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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 4978583, member: 289"] The Upside - JJ Starling shot the ball fairly well and led us with 14 points. He was the whole offense when we had one. - Kyle Cuffe finally got to play and played well, showing the hops we’d seen in his high school tape to throw down a follow shot in the first half. He tried to do the same in the second half but was fouled. He’s an aggressive defender. He had 1 rebound in 12 miniatures. Justin Taylor had 1 in 14 minutes. Cuffe is 4 inches shorter but Taylor is too short anyway – why not use Cuffe in place of Taylor? - Chris Bell’s shot was off, (when he could get one), but he had 5 rebounds, 2 assists, 2 steals and a block. He’s becoming a better all-around player. 16-10 (7-8) with 5+ to go… LET’S GO ORANGE! Net Points This year I’m going to make things a bit easier on myself and just list the net points in each game after the Upside. Once a month I’ll do a deeper dive into the numbers rather than doing a “Net Points, etc.” post after every game. ‘Net’ points are the positives (points, rebounds, assists, steals and blocks) minus the negatives, (missed field goals and free throws, turnovers and fouls committed). Maliq Brown game: 15NP in 39 minutes; season: 375NP in 722 minutes = 20.8NP/40m JJ Starling game: 14NP in 36 minutes; season: 259NP in 906 minutes = 11.4NP/40m Chris Bell game: 8NP in 32 minutes; season: 171NP in 642 minutes = 10.7NP/40m Judah Mintz game: 8NP in 37 minutes; season: 360NP in 873 minutes = 16.5NP/40m Kyle Cuffe game: 3NP in 12 minutes; season: 30NP in 243 minutes = 4.9NP/40m Quadir Copeland game: 1NP in 30 minutes; season: 236NP in 579 minutes = 16.3NP/40m Mounir Hima game: 0NP in ‘0+’ - I’ll call it 1 minutes; season: 8NP in 39 minutes = 8.2NP/40m Justin Taylor game: -5NP in 14 minutes; season: 133NP in 599 minutes = 8.9NP/40m Did not play: Peter Carey game: 0NP in 0 minutes; season: 0NP in 61 minutes = 0.0NP/40m Hurt: Chance Westry game: 0NP in 0 minutes; season: 0NP in 0 minutes = 0.0NP/40m Out for the season: Naheem McLeod game: 0NP in 0 minutes; season: 108NP in 202 minutes = 21.4NP/40m Red Shirting: William Patterson game: 0NP in 0 minutes; season: 0NP in 0 minutes = 0.0NP/40m Thrown off team: Benny Williams game: 0NP in 0 minutes; season: 99NP in 307 minutes = 12.9NP/40m Brent Axe: He didn’t do a post basketball game show because he was at the lacrosse game. The Downside - Allow me to combine a couple of cliches here: Our coach turned into a pumpkin and rolled all the way back down the hill. This is an inconsistent team at best and one that has been deprived of any depth so things have to go perfectly for us to win and they did not go perfectly tonight. - We can’t rebound with anybody so we have to hit a high percentage of our shots to minimize the difference in rebounding. We did that against North Carolina, making 62.5% of our shots and being out-rebounded by 23-31. Tonight, we shot 37% and were out-rebounded 28-49. - We also “let the game come to us” and shot 8 for 17 from three point range. Tonight we were 3 for 17 – at halftime, and wound up 4 for 25. 6 for 25 would have been 24% but it would have won the game. We scored 18 two point baskets to 17 and 12 free throws to 10 but lost because we had three fewer treys. - Having established that we couldn’t beat them from outside, we started driving into the paint to score – and meeting their entire defense. Chris Bell made a trey with 5:50 left to give us a 55-54 lead but we never hit another field goal. Team ball ended there. - I thought we were going to have extreme foul trouble as everybody seemed to have two of them at the half. We avoided a foul-out until the last 30 seconds. But all that needs to happen to destroy this team, no matter how well we are playing, is for the refs to decide to call 20 fouls on us rather than 10. - Our defense, especially in the first half, was of the matador type. JB’s theory that if you try to play more than defense, you won’t be as good at either than you would if you only played one defense and could focus on that. - Justin Taylor continues in his funk, going 1 for 7, (an off-balance floater went in) for -5NP while Quadir Copeland had a bad game with 1NP, going 3 for 9 and fouling out. Either could have won it for us with a normal game, although I guess this is a normal game for Taylor now. - The whole game, (and maybe the season), seemed symbolized by a play with 22 second left and the score 60-63. Kyle Sturdivant, an 88% free throw shooter missed his second shot. SU had three men under the basket to rebound the ball – 6-11 Mounir Hima, (who replaced the fouled out Maliq Brown), 6-8 Chris Bell and 6-5 Quadir Copeland. 6-4 Miles Kelly was the only Yellow Jacket to contest the rebound and he was outside of Hima. But Mounir positioned himself too close to the basket and the ball rolled out and over his head while Kelly grabbed the ball. We had to foul again and this time Miles made both to make it 60-65 with 18 seconds left, essentially ending the game. [/QUOTE]

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