UNC GAME THREAD

orientalnc

orientalnc

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Sothron said:
The last five minutes or so of the first half is what killed us. The lack of rebounding and massive free throw disparity just put the dirt on the coffin.

Very unimpressive effort, it must be said, by the team. We were definitely up for the rival game against UGA but it seems we forgot to pack in effort when we went on the road today.
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Basketball, much more than football, is about individual matchups and we do not match up well with UNC when Bacot is in the game. Love and Davis are so good on defense that our potential advantage with our "small" guys is greatly reduced. And we simply have no answer for Bacot. Driving to Chapel Hill my friends felt GT had a real chance to win if Bacot could not play. Not that he was very effective, but Franklin's early injury left us with Meka and Howard to defend an All-American. It was not a coaching problem.

In the last 5 minutes of the 1st half, our possessions went like this (forgive me if I have something out of order):

At the 5 minute mark we were ahead by a point.
At the 3 minute mark we are down by 4 (UNC had outscored us 7-2).
Then, Smith missed a shoot,
Kelly turned it over,
Sturdivant missed a trey, then turned it over,
Then Terry and Smith missed shots.
I do not think we got a rebound in those five minutes. Certainly not an offensive board.

Every team has stretches where nothing seems to work, but UNC outscored us 16-2 in those five minutes. Otherwise, we played them even up.

Coming into this season we all knew the fortunes of this team would depend on the play of Howard and Franklin. We had to have something inside on both ends of the floor. So far, this is not happening to the extent we need against good teams. Could it get better? Yes. And we are not going to face another ACC player like Bacot
 
SecretAgentBuzz

SecretAgentBuzz

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Yeah, that was about what I expected. Especially with our best rebounder and big man going down after 7 minutes, it would have been a huge upset to win at Chapel Hill.

What I liked:
-The first 15 minutes. We played solid defense and hit our shots.
-Jalon Moore slicing to the basket and scoring in the paint. It is fun to see his improvement, and he has scored in double figures in 5 straight. He even hit a three.
-5 blocks and 8 steals. We had stretches of good defense, and some nice individual effort.

What I didn't like:
-The last 35 minutes. Like others have mentioned, those last 5 minutes of the first half killed us. Our defense went soft and our offense looked reminiscent of the old "clogged toilet" offense of Hewitt days.
-36 points given up in the paint, and a 22-43 rebounding margin. Ugh. Again, I still want to see more of Meka and Martynov, but I guess they just aren't going to get the minutes. We had no answer inside, and the stupid 5-switching man defense only makes it worse. Yeah, let's matchup Deivon Smith on Bacot and see what happens! :mad: We needed to pack the lane and make them shoot threes...and we didn't. That is poor coaching.
-You know we aren't going to get calls @UNC, but man, the refs were pulling hard for the Tar Heels to win this one. 24 FTs to 8, and they called 20 fouls on GT and only 11 on UNC. They called three fouls on JMoore in one possession!
-Howard handling the ball too much. I've said it before, as "a play" in our playbook, I don't mind the 5 at the foul line when we make good cuts and screens around him, but when we go to it too often, we get killed by Howard's poor decision-making and ball handling. Box score says he had 4 TOs, but it felt like more.
-It looks like it was our game plan to not even try for offensive rebounds (especially the first half), but to try and hurry down the court and not give up easy buckets. That didn't really work as they still had 17 fast break points.

I hope both Smith and Franklin get better quick, because we need them. I like what Moore, Kelly, and Coleman are bringing, but they need help.
 
AUFC

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Franklin got sorta shredded by Bacot while he was in the game so I don't think it would have changed the result too much had he played. I know the numbers don't exactly show it but I thought the swarming team defensive rebound was pretty good. For the most part, Bacot didn't get 2nd and 3rd and 4th chances like we've been seeing for every opponent's big. The strategy seemed to be prevent him from grabbing the ball with two hands at all costs and use numbers to pull down the second chance rebound.

I imagine it's a spacing issue, but can a basketball strategist explain why we have so much trouble getting easy layups on backdoor cuts with this team? We used to score double digit points of freebies in that '20-'21 season using cutters along the baseline. I thought this was predominantly the point of the Princeton offense. At one point in this game, I think it was Miles Kelly cutting along the baseline and Tristan Maxwell(?) completely missed his cut.

The reality is we have lost 4 games to 4 tournament teams and the team is getting better. I don't think it's time to go doom and gloom yet. Go out and win at home against Alabama St and Clemson and I think that would put us about where we hoped to be going into the UVA game.
 

g0lftime

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SecretAgentBuzz said:
Yeah, that was about what I expected. Especially with our best rebounder and big man going down after 7 minutes, it would have been a huge upset to win at Chapel Hill.

What I liked:
-The first 15 minutes. We played solid defense and hit our shots.
-Jalon Moore slicing to the basket and scoring in the paint. It is fun to see his improvement, and he has scored in double figures in 5 straight. He even hit a three.
-5 blocks and 8 steals. We had stretches of good defense, and some nice individual effort.

What I didn't like:
-The last 35 minutes. Like others have mentioned, those last 5 minutes of the first half killed us. Our defense went soft and our offense looked reminiscent of the old "clogged toilet" offense of Hewitt days.
-36 points given up in the paint, and a 22-43 rebounding margin. Ugh. Again, I still want to see more of Meka and Martynov, but I guess they just aren't going to get the minutes. We had no answer inside, and the stupid 5-switching man defense only makes it worse. Yeah, let's matchup Deivon Smith on Bacot and see what happens! :mad: We needed to pack the lane and make them shoot threes...and we didn't. That is poor coaching.
-You know we aren't going to get calls @UNC, but man, the refs were pulling hard for the Tar Heels to win this one. 24 FTs to 8, and they called 20 fouls on GT and only 11 on UNC. They called three fouls on JMoore in one possession!
-Howard handling the ball too much. I've said it before, as "a play" in our playbook, I don't mind the 5 at the foul line when we make good cuts and screens around him, but when we go to it too often, we get killed by Howard's poor decision-making and ball handling. Box score says he had 4 TOs, but it felt like more.
-It looks like it was our game plan to not even try for offensive rebounds (especially the first half), but to try and hurry down the court and not give up easy buckets. That didn't really work as they still had 17 fast break points.

I hope both Smith and Franklin get better quick, because we need them. I like what Moore, Kelly, and Coleman are bringing, but they need help.
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We will not get to the FT line until we force teams to move or reach. Passing around at the top of the key and shooting three's doesn't do it. Give and go at top of the key doesn't work with a slow footed center. The top teams will make more FT's than their opponent will take. Also makes your opponent less aggressive if in foul trouble.
 

alagold

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About exactly what would be expected.We got killed on the boards and Fts. If the WHOLE team could stay together til next yr, MAYBE we could be sort of competitive vs good teams. Not now.
 
orientalnc

orientalnc

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g0lftime said:
We will not get to the FT line until we force teams to move or reach. Passing around at the top of the key and shooting three's doesn't do it. Give and go at top of the key doesn't work with a slow footed center. The top teams will make more FT's than their opponent will take. Also makes your opponent less aggressive if in foul trouble.
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I am not a person that drones on about officiating, but this game was played at the Smith Center. Nuff said. Plus, UNC is good.
 

YlJacket

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AUFC said:
Franklin got sorta shredded by Bacot while he was in the game so I don't think it would have changed the result too much had he played. I know the numbers don't exactly show it but I thought the swarming team defensive rebound was pretty good. For the most part, Bacot didn't get 2nd and 3rd and 4th chances like we've been seeing for every opponent's big. The strategy seemed to be prevent him from grabbing the ball with two hands at all costs and use numbers to pull down the second chance rebound.

I imagine it's a spacing issue, but can a basketball strategist explain why we have so much trouble getting easy layups on backdoor cuts with this team? We used to score double digit points of freebies in that '20-'21 season using cutters along the baseline. I thought this was predominantly the point of the Princeton offense. At one point in this game, I think it was Miles Kelly cutting along the baseline and Tristan Maxwell(?) completely missed his cut.

The reality is we have lost 4 games to 4 tournament teams and the team is getting better. I don't think it's time to go doom and gloom yet. Go out and win at home against Alabama St and Clemson and I think that would put us about where we hoped to be going into the UVA game.
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I'll take a shot at this for discussion. Combination of 3 things to me: I think the primary issue is Howard and to a lesser extent Franklin are not really looking for the back door cut. Howard in particular is focused/worried about making the next move to hand the ball off - I don't see him looking at all for the back cut. He is not comfortable at the elbow with the ball and hitting the back cut requires confidence he doesn't really seem to have. Franklin is better at it but his focus is more to take the other 5 off the bounce. Lammers and Moses in particular were a lot more comfortable on the elbow. Even Banks was better. For completeness Mekka is worse than Howard.

Second is the opposing 5 is sitting in the lane not worried about a Lammers level shooter. The corollary is the ball side defender doesn't have to help or worry about the ball so the back cut is harder to execute. And finally while Devion or Kelly can be explosive, Coleman, Maxwell and Sturdivant are not exactly explosive ACC level cutters. End of the day, it hasn't really worked and I doubt they are really looking for it anymore. :rolleyes:

Specific to UNC, they had the offense well scouted - The guards went under the handoff screen and the 5 sat in the lane. The ball side wing defender stayed on his man (generally) and didn't help. So we would pin down for Devion, Sturdivant or Kelly - the guard would trail and be ready for the drive from the top of the key with Bacot backing them up. We had more success when we swing across the lane and the wing has a chance to drive the lane straight off the screen rather than having to turn around off the pin down. Regardless I still don't understand why we have our 5's being a/the primary ballhandler decision maker in the offense.

UNC also dared Sturdivant and Devion to shoot from deep. Didn't guard them.

Our defense had our guards run hard into Bacot trying to play over the screen and rarely accomplishing it. This made Howard switch onto the guard and left Devion wrestling with Bacot in the lane off the roll. I hope to god the idea was for Howard to hedge and recover but we flat assed switched that simple high ball screen way too many times. It broke down our D. Last time we played in the Smith center we doubled the guard off that screen so I guess that is some progress.

All that aside, UNC beat us when they looked like UNC for the 5 - 10 minutes before half when they got out in transition and flat assed beat us downcourt or got great looks off the secondary break. That was the team that went to the finals last year. They coasted the other 30 min and it didn't matter.
 
Sothron

Sothron

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Steverc said:
The Nike Air Monarch is the shoe for white gentlemen over the age of 50. However, they have been my go to shoe since my late 30s.
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I wear these as my every day sneakers. Converse Aero Jams made famous by Grandmama Larry Johnson:

ef6b6379b52311c576ea74ff14ea48d9.jpg
 
4shotB

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Northeast Stinger said:
So, what happened in the UNC game other than they wore tennis shoes of some kind?
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I'll summarize the whole thread for you. They scored more than we did so we lost. It you want futher details, analysis and opinions then read the entire thread. But this is it in a nutshell. ;)
 
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