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

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North Carolina (5-3)
Georgia Tech (4-3)

Against the Spread and Away (UNC)/Home (GT).....Over/Under:
North Carolina: 3-4, 0-2.....2-6
Georgia Tech: 2-5, 3-2.....4-2

So looks like a slight home field advantage (as you would expect).

North Carolina hasn't beaten a ranked team yet (they lost to #8 Texas by 2, #10 Iowa by 13), and also just lost to NC State last week. They had some other underwhelming games too - only beating NC Central by 6 and Stanford by 4.

KenPom:
North Carolina: #21
Georgia Tech: #79

North Carolina is well balanced, but to me seems still like a bit of a mess. Their top scorer is #26 in the conference at 12.0 points per game.

We average 83 ppg to UNC's 74 (ours is still slightly influenced by the 4OT game). FG% we're 5th and UNC is 12th, but the difference is 0.456 to 0.435.

I can't find a line on the game, but I'd suspect something like a 78-72 North Carolina victory in terms of a betting line. We need to play a good game. Even with Florida State and North Carolina being ranked, you don't want to start 0-2 when you might need a 12-8 season to make the NCAAT.
 

YlJacket

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goheels.com

Tar Heels Visit Georgia Tech On Wednesday Night - University of North Carolina Athletics

Carolina closes out the 2020 calendar year on Wednesday at Georgia Tech.
goheels.com goheels.com

Good read - Some good basic stats about where they are.

This is going to be a really interesting matchups of seemingly polar opposite teams

GT is a senior laden team while outside of Brooks, UNC is dominated by Freshmen/Sophs
Especially at guard, we are old and they are babies outside of Playtech

We primarily depend on our backcourt for scoring (plus Moses) while they primarily focus on their bigs for scoring

Neither team gets a lot of offense out of the 3 spot - Leaky Black isn't going to scare you on that end but he is a good long defender.

We seem to want to play at a controlled tempo while they will want to push the ball

We hope to break even on the boards while they absolutely pound the boards. They have a 40% offensive rebounding rate this year. :oops:

I saw D'Ron Sharpe in HS. He is an absolute beast. Team put a 6'7" D1 DE recruit on him and he played him like a rag doll. Bacot is no slouch either.

Having said all that, they are eminently beatable. NC State just showed that. The formula is make they shoot outside (they were 2-12 from 3), make your own 3 pointers (State was 8-17), keep them out of transition and the paint, and limit your turnovers. This is a hard matchup for our small ball team as we normally don't push the ball to make a team like UNC pay for both going big and going to the offensive glass hard. They are really good at going high low with their bigs against a zone - recognizing they likely won't shoot us out of it.

If we can't push the ball or somehow make them pay for playing big, we are going to have to get significant contributions from our new bigs. Moses will not last if he is the primary big trying to battle them inside/on the boards in a half court game. If we can shoot and stay remotely close to them on the boards we have a decent shot.
 

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YlJacket said:
If we can't push the ball or somehow make them pay for playing big, we are going to have to get significant contributions from our new bigs. Moses will not last if he is the primary big trying to battle them inside/on the boards in a half court game. If we can shoot and stay remotely close to them on the boards we have a decent shot.
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Knowing ol' Roy, I'm concerned he focuses on trying to take Moses out of the game through foul trouble. Both because he's our top point scorer/rebounder by far, but also because we have nobody proven behind him. I agree with you that North Carolina is eminently beatable - but if they get Moses in foul trouble we could lose by 25 points. North Carolina has 3 guys over 6'10" and 240lbs who play at least 18 minutes. Walker Kessler is 7'1" and plays 8 minutes. I'd use someone like Kessler to try and bang some and see if you can induce some fouls out of Moses. Those 4 guys average 76 minutes a game - they have plenty of people to rotate to spread the foul wealth around.
 

alagold

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Yep, this is team we don't match up with well.Not having good bigs could be a killer.Easy for them to play tap-in on the boards.If we shoot well we have a chance.
 

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bwelbo said:
Knowing ol' Roy, I'm concerned he focuses on trying to take Moses out of the game through foul trouble. Both because he's our top point scorer/rebounder by far, but also because we have nobody proven behind him. I agree with you that North Carolina is eminently beatable - but if they get Moses in foul trouble we could lose by 25 points. North Carolina has 3 guys over 6'10" and 240lbs who play at least 18 minutes. Walker Kessler is 7'1" and plays 8 minutes. I'd use someone like Kessler to try and bang some and see if you can induce some fouls out of Moses. Those 4 guys average 76 minutes a game - they have plenty of people to rotate to spread the foul wealth around.
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Roy won't have to change the way they play to go after Moses - they will do that naturally by the way they play. They will pound the paint with their bigs all game long. If we play Moses on the wing of the zone then we will have Usher trying to guard a 6'10"+ man child right by the rim getting a pass from the high post. They will run a triangle action with the 2 bigs in the paint and throw the ball right over our small guys in the zone.
 
CuseJacket

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RyanS12 said:
I think we win. No one besides FSU really scares me in the Acc this year.
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And to that end, Clemson was favored and beat FSU at home yesterday. The ACC is up for grabs and I don't think there's reason to fear anyone, including in our rematch with Florida State in a month. Taking care of ourselves will do wonders in another down ACC.
 

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CuseJacket said:
And to that end, Clemson was favored and beat FSU at home yesterday. The ACC is up for grabs and I don't think there's reason to fear anyone, including in our rematch with Florida State in a month. Taking care of ourselves will do wonders in another down ACC.
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Damn. I just saw Clemson won! I think the league might be more wide open this year than last.
 
GaTech4ever

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YlJacket said:
Roy won't have to change the way they play to go after Moses - they will do that naturally by the way they play. They will pound the paint with their bigs all game long. If we play Moses on the wing of the zone then we will have Usher trying to guard a 6'10"+ man child right by the rim getting a pass from the high post. They will run a triangle action with the 2 bigs in the paint and throw the ball right over our small guys in the zone.
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Only thing I somewhat disagree with is the assumption that UNC will force-feed their bigs. You’d think they would/should, but that’s part of their issue. Their guards don’t get the ball inside enough.
 

lv20gt

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This really feels like a clash of styles where we are hoping our advantage at guard makes it hard for them to utilize their size advantage and allows us to win through 3 point shooting and penetration.

I have to say, I would feel a lot better about this game if we had developed either Howard or Gigi enough to make me think we'll actually use them, or if we had shot better from 3 on the year.
 
dtm1997

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GaTech4ever said:
Only thing I somewhat disagree with is the assumption that UNC will force-feed their bigs. You’d think they would/should, but that’s part of their issue. Their guards don’t get the ball inside enough.
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So they play like Iman Shumpert with Derrick Favors in the post?
 
GTNavyNuke

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lv20gt said:
This really feels like a clash of styles where we are hoping our advantage at guard makes it hard for them to utilize their size advantage and allows us to win through 3 point shooting and penetration.

I have to say, I would feel a lot better about this game if we had developed either Howard or Gigi enough to make me think we'll actually use them, or if we had shot better from 3 on the year.
Click to expand...

Well I'd feel better if we had developed another QB this year.

People in hell want ice water.

Hope this is a good game.
 
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