North Carolina @ Georgia Tech, Wednesday January 30th at 8pm

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MidtownJacket

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You sometimes see guys come in and they don't quite seem to fit with how the team is currently built, but seem to obviously fit towards where the team is going. To me that is where Kyle is. On the current team we basically start 2.5 PGs, and whenever Kyle comes in there is still usually a better option to take care of the ball (unless we go something like Kyle, Mike, Khalid). That means he spends more time off ball than he really naturally would, and when he does have the ball in his hands the better option is for him to be conservative which limits him.

However, I think what he has shown really meshes well with the direction the team is going after this year. With a line up of Him, Devoe, Coleman, Moore, and Howard, or with Maxwell/Kelly/Gigiberia mixed in or whatever, we seem to be really poised to take advantage of putting the ball in his hands and him driving and either finishing, kicking to one of the shooters, or dumping it off to one of the bigs. His ball handling will be a bigger advantage with the relative inexperience and ballhandling on the team next year compared to this, and allow for some of the younger players to contribute offensively without the pressure of having to create for themselves.

To me, he's shown good ball handling and good defense as well as a pretty good ability to drive to either score or facilitate. Mechanically his shot looks good enough to keep defenders somewhat honest. The latter two are harder to judge because of his role on this year's team. Overall there is nothing about his game that really makes me that concerned with him taking over the PG duties next year. Obviously you don't lose a guy like Jose and not feel it but I still think we will be okay. Might take a little bit for the team to find an identity but that's not really unexpected.
I think some of this (bolding is mine, for reference) is showing up this season and could have easily been written about Jose when he first got here behind Tadric and Josh. His role wasn't to score (though he is plenty capable). I think we will see CJP continue to build on what he is asking Kyle to do, but there is no need to rush it and we already have the three upperclassman Gs which can all do the stuff on O.

Learning the zone is hard, and it takes reps upon reps (as we saw with the contactless practice making us look a fool).

Back to the UNC Game and the games before and after, I think we will continue seeing the development of Kyle's role on the team and encourage us all to stay patient with what CJP is doing. We are finally these last 24 months or so seeing active development and a style emerge for the team. Josh is putting the pieces together and if we can stay healthy I think the rest of the season is manageable and we'll fair pretty well. No reason to not expect a run in the ACCT and getting into the dance.
 
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