The overall reason I’m pessimistic at this point is that the team is regressing. Deon is way off of what he was when he started the season; it may be that Hansbrough’s return and need to share space with him has thrown him off. Lawson’s play, and not just his shooting, has been off since the Michigan State game. Indeed, the greatest single difference between what we see now and what we saw then is that our team is not taking good care of the ball — primarily Lawson’s responsibility. Ed Davis is also slightly off from the promise he initailly showed.

The only one who has improved is Green. And thank goodness, or we would be in more trouble than we are for the moment.

I agree with wb3 that it would be imprudent to count on Ginyard to bail us out. First, he also is regressing: After a couple of games of undistinguished play, he was back in street clothes at the Wake game. Regressing physically is of course not his fault; injuries do not respond well to a mere desire that they get better. But there it is, one way or the other. Second, Ginyard was in my opinion overrated to begin with as a defensive “stopper.” He’s a good defensive player, the best we have when healthy, but the actual instances in which he has “stopped” another team’s best player are infrequent.

This is why Iron Mike didn’t want to fight Foreman because he had seen what Foreman did to Joe Frazier from above so Tyson decided to fight Buster Douglas instead, who was even taller than Foreman but seemed like less of a puncher. That didn’t turn out so well for Iron Mike, who probably suffered the worst knock-out by a heavyweight champ in history.

I understand that Lawson does not take it to the basket in the half court anymore because the coaches told him not to. Deon and Tyler are not going to leave their blocks, so it gets too crowded inside. We are an inside-out team, not a dribble and kick team. That is just how we do things.

I think what some of us here (myself included) and the media is losing sight of is how Carolina is built, or its recipe for success. I work at a Division 3 school in the Midwest, and our hoops team is pretty solid. We don’t get the greatest athletes compared to other schools in our conference, so we don’t typically dominate on the glass or force a bunch of turnovers. What our team does really well is take care of the ball, be efficient on offense and don’t foul (we’ve led all of college basketball in least amount of fouls per game the last two seasons). Sure, we want to make sure we take care of the boards and be opportunistic on defense, but we don’t have the athletes to get out and pressure the ball or rely on outrebounding teams by 10-15 boards per game. Usually, if we shoot around 45-50%, stay even on the glass and have fewer turnovers than the opponents, we win.

Carolina’s “recipe” is get up more (and better) shots because of its pace, dominate on the glass, and use its defense to generate turnovers that lead to easy baskets and speed the other team up. We’re not a team that’s built to hold teams to under 40 percent shooting–it’s just not our strength. I think Giglio’s point about running the HC offense through Tyler (and I would add Deon and Ed–frankly Deon is the reason we annihilated teams early in the season) and basically work inside-out. Right now, I feel like Wayne and Ty are trying to prove to NBA scouts they can ‘get their own.’ I don’t think it’s for selfish reasons, but rather they’ve put in a tremendous amount of time on improving that part of their game, but it’s just not quite there yet. Ty needs to find the mid-range game again, but he also needs to drive to set up opportunities for teammates, but he’s getting too deep (under/close to hoop) to find passing lanes. He could really help Wayne get going in this area, IMO.

The last thing I’ll say is that the defensive thing I worry about, outside of effort (aka BC game) is that Wayne and Tyler are so slow laterally it just kills us. It’s not lack of effort or knowledge or execution—it’s flat out ability. If we have bad match ups, we struggle. I think, because of this, we could see more zone in the future, but that is counter to our ‘recipe’ to speed up the game and generate TOs into easy baskets on the other end.

For a long time, Carolina would never list anyone at 7 feet. They were always 6′ 11 1/2 or whatever, although we haven’t had that many really big centers.

I would say that Lawson and Ellington should check with Danny about what shoes to wear since Danny’s add an extra 1/2 that Ty might use profitably. If they round up to the next 1/4 inch presumably now 1.75 inches is about the most you can add over your stocking feet, if you were just barely over a mark.

Grew up in the same town as Iron Mike… agreed!

As for the NBA measurements, I would say I doubt they are similar to boxing promoters. It would cost the NBA a lot more to list a player as taller than he is. I think the Jordan and Ewing examples are prime examples of why the NBA, like the NFL, started doing the measurements themselves, rather than trust the schools. The first real example of this was Shawn Respert, who was listed at 6’6 while at MSU, but was measured by the NBA as 6’1…