You could call this one the Marcus Ginyard press conference.
The bulk of questions and discussion surrounded the status of Marcus Ginyard.
Do you expect Marcus to practice today and do you have an idea when he might play again?
“I don’t know. I’m very – you pick the adjective – frustrated, concerned. But I just thought and Marcus thought that he would be farther along at this step. We are even discussing holding him out for a little bit and just letting him rehab and seeing if he can get back to that point where he was in the past. And if that’s the case, we’ll be a heck of a lot better off. Again, the guy was our defensive player of the year.“You look at our club right now – is there anybody that we can put out there that can make life miserable for the 6-foot-3, 6-foot-6 guy on the other team? And I don’t know that we have. He hasn’t practiced 50 percent of practice yet. Not a single practice that he’s had since he came back that he’s practiced at least half the time. There’s some times when I’d like to have a healthy Marcus Ginyard out there and we don’t have him.”
Is the problem that there is pain in the foot, or is it just conditioning?
“I don’t know that you can put a finger on it, but I’ll say it to you this way – is it the Marcus Ginyard that you’ve seen the last three years? And that’s what I’m standing on. In practice, I don’t see the offensive rebounds. I don’t see the steals.“I put him in the game the other night against Boston College down the stretch, and who else did I put in with him? Do you remember the substitution? Bobby [Frasor]. Why did I put those two guys in? Because they were going to get to the right spot. Not necessarily because when they got there, they had the most.
“Because if you were to list Wayne, Bobby, Danny, Marcus – who would you put as the least athletic of that crowd? Bobby, but he was going to get to the right spot and we were trying to trap and those kinds of things. Marcus, mentally, he knows where to go, but when he gets there, he doesn’t have a heck of a lot in the tank.”
Is there any situation in which you could envision red-shirting him?
“Right now, I’m trying to get Marcus ready to play for our team. Period. You guys look at it yourself – isn’t there sometime that you’re going to want a healthy Marcus Ginyard? And that answer is every day. But you also open your eyes yourself and look at it and we don’t have that right now.”Has he practiced this week?
“Yes, he’s practiced every day this week. He will practice today. After today, I don’t that, well, I don’t know what I’m going to do with him. I really don’t. I’m just being honest. I don’t know what I’m going to do with him. But I will say this again – he has not practiced 50 percent of any practice all year. So that means that he won’t practice 50 percent of practice today, either.“We’re trying to… I don’t know, guys. We’re in unchartered waters. What was he operated on, Oct. 8? So I’m thinking on Dec. 3 [is when he will play]… And I don’t think the doctors would have told me I was wacko at that time…
“There is one f’ing source – that’s frickin’, don’t put anything in there that’s not there – and I don’t know.
The transcript tends to trunctuate some things. I listened to the audio and he was fairly testy faced with the persistence of the reporters trying to get an explanation. Also not mentioned here is Roy saying that Ginyard basically was out August and September with a high ankle sprain which was unrelated to the stress fracture. Ginyard then had the surgery at the beginning of October and missed whatever time associated with that. That is a lot of time to not play basketball.
On a side note, this sort of reminds me of my junior year of cross country at UNC Greensboro. I started team practice in August with a good summer of training behind me but developed tendinitis in my knee and missed around two weeks of running having to do the bike instead. When I returned I practiced well but in my first meet at Western Carolina I did not finish. In subsequent meets I found that for 1-2 miles of the five mile race I was fine but after a certain point my body shutdown. Through the rest of the season I was posting times that were 2-3 minutes worse than any race I had run in the previous two seasons. My coach tired various pre-race routines to try and shake me out of the funk but in the end nothing worked. For whatever reason I never got back to the level of running I had been out for two years and never figured out why. I left the team and went to work in the SID’s office during my senior year not wanting to put myself thorugh another season like that one.
All of that is to say that I hope Ginyard is not going through the same thing. This sort of thing happens from time to time. Certain players have an injury and regardless of how mentally tough they are or how hard they work, that “something” which divides the elite players from everyone else gets lost. Hopefully that is not the case but I have my fears.
As for the rest of the press conference:
- Roy says he spent some time at the end of the CofC game telling the starters sitting on the bench that they need to bring it every single night. He also said he should not have to do that with an experienced team but it is what it is.
- Prior to the BC game, Roy had a bad feeling about it. Turned out he was right but as he pointed out he thought they would play great versus Kansas and he was dead wrong.
- Roy thinks the Heels will be ready to play well on the road but then again says you have no idea who things will turn out until it starts.
- The better defensive play in the 2nd half against CofC was a result of the Heels executing what had been worked on in practice. He also said not all situations where the other team scores is the fault of the UNC defense saying that Rakim Sanders drilled two threes with Tar Heels playing as well as they could play him on defense.
- Wake freshman Al-Farouq Aminu was very high on Roy’s wish list during recruiting.
- Roy still hates the unbalanced schedule. Don’t we all, Roy, don’t we all.
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I don’t know. That sounds really strange and I am not sure what to make of it or what he is trying to accomplish by talking about this in the media. You might be right.
Of course, until Sunday, I am not sure many of us even thought that we really needed Ginyard or Zeller. And then, bam, Ty has a poor defensive game, as does Wayne, and Larry Drew has a bad game all around. I know Roy loves Bobby, maybe like a son, but he seems to have a much higher opinion of Frasor’s play than most people do.
So, all of a sudden, especially defensively, Carolina’s guard depth looks a lot less impressive than many of us thought. I really though Drew would have improved a lot more than he has by now. Quentin Thomas is being missed a lot more than I ever would have expected.
Drew will be fine. That was his first bad game, and with freshmen games like this will happen.
I think Roy likes Bobby because he executes on both ends of the floor. He may not score, may not be able to create his own shot, etc., but he does what needs to get done. Until someone else shows that ability, Bobby will get minutes.
To me, this sounds like Roy calling out Lawson last year. Are you going to man up and play, or sit on the bench and whimper? It will be interesting to see how this plays out the next few days.
I would be surprised if this is similar to Lawson. It was known after a certain point Lawson was being soft and skittish about his ankle. Ginyard has always been fairly mature and played most of last season with various aches and pains. I think missing three months for the ankle sprain then the surgery is part of this. His conditioning is shot and it could take awhile to get it back. Based on the way Roy responded to the redshirt question this is an all-in year and if that means he gets healthy Ginyard for 15 games nine of them in postseason that is what he is going to do.
This may have been Drew’s first really bad game but unfortunately, his offensive efficiency rating is, along with Bobby Frasor, by far the lowest among the guys who play regularly.
Ty Lawson’s rating after the BC game was 136.1, which is spectacular. Larry’s was 90.4, which is even lower than Bobby’s 90.9. This means there is a huge drop-off in offensive production whenever Lawson is on the bench.
By way of comparison, Quentin Thomas’s offensive efficiency rating, after all of last season and its tough schedule, was 98.8. The next lowest this year, after Frasor and Drew, is Ed Davis at 110.7.
For the good news, Ty and Danny, and somewhat unbelievably, Tyler, are all more efficient offensively this year than last, although we haven’t yet played the toughest 2/3 of the schedule.
Ty, Danny and Tyler are respectively, the 5th, 20th and 27th best (most efficient) offensive players in the country.
Other top categories for guys on this year’s squad:
Lawson is 23rd in assist rate and 30th in steals. Ed Davis is 10th in defensive rebounding percentage. Danny Green is 27th in effective field goal percentage.
Last year, it seemed that we couldn’t get clear information about Tywon’s ankle injury. The same thing has basically been true this year with Zeller and Marcus’ injuries. For whatever reason, Roy is not very clear in his press conferences about injuries. While this is frustrating to the fans, I assume there is some reason for this. In the end, I guess the bottom line is that these guys either play or they don’t, and (if they don’t) it doesn’t really matter why.
More interesting Ginyard stuff from the source:
http://tarheelblue.cstv.com/sports/m-baskbl/spec-rel/010909aaa.html
This line is particularly interesting:
When the season began, this was supposed to be a Carolina team without any holes. But injuries have created a couple of missing pieces. Tyler Zeller’s absence was felt against Boston College, when Deon Thompson was ineffective and Ed Davis’s playing time was limited because of his struggles in moving his feet to defend the Eagles’ flex offense. Zeller’s presence on that night would have provided a third big man to pair with Tyler Hansbrough and another scoring and rebounding option; remember, in Zeller’s one full Division I game, he notched 18 points against Penn and made a team-high 10 trips to the free throw line.
Having looked a couple of other articles, I guess if I understand correctly, Ginyard cannot redshirt if he plays anymore this year. Wake Forest is the cut-off game.
From what I have seen, assuming he wants to come back, I don’t see any reason for him not to focus on rehabilitation and come back next year. I know he wants to be a part of a possible championship run, but with him, possibly Ellington, possibly Frasor, Drew, Davis, Zeller, Graves, and the new guys coming in, UNC will still probably be a top ten team with title possibilities next year. If Lawson were to come back, too, they could conceivably be just as good or better next year, but I don’t guess that is happening.
Better to be a full cog on a good team, than risk both losing his eligibility and not being able to contribute anyway.
Interesting post from Inside Carolina re defense:
Our defensive strategy requires a high energy level and a high skill level to be successful. Trapping with rotations, help man with rotations require the weak side defenders to move without a lot of thought to the correct places on the floor.
The key is how well we rotate and cover. That is why Frasor, who isn’t a great on the ball defender, grades so well on defense. He is always where he is supposed to be on rotations and weak side coverage.
Davis and Drew II are better athletes, but are still caught out of position, because what we do is complicated. However, once a team gets the hang of it, it can be devastating. The 1993 team was not all that athletic, but they played nasty trapping defense very well, well enough to force Michigan to call a timeout they didn’t have.
I listened to the full audio of the press conference and Roy was rather annoyed at the persistence of the reporters. They kept asking about why Ginyard was out, was it related to injury, conditioning, other factors and seeking some kind of explanation which led Roy to say “I don’t know” apparently nine times. He even launched into a whole speech about the media acting like he is hiding something on this when really he does not know what will happen.
The article you referenced looks like an attempt by UNC to frame the situation and explain the impact of Ginyard missing and giving a summary of what Roy said today.
I’m not too worried about Drew right now. I mean yes, I’d like for him to be awesome, but let’s cut the kid a little slack. He’s played in 15 college games, so experience will improve his game because I think it’s clear he has athleticism. And as far as the BC game, Jesus, he had to guard a potential NBA lottery pick. I think I’ll forgive him if he didn’t have a stellar performance with that matchup. Lawson didn’t do so hot either, and he’s one of the best PG in the country.
That is true. Statistically, Lawson is still having a monster year, far better than Chris Paul back in 2005, another guy not known for defense, except for steals.
Carolina is currently 17th in adjusted defense. Skip Prosser’s 2005 Deacons, who were loaded at every postion ended the year ranked number two in the nation in offensive efficiency. UNC ended that year number one.
Here is why UNC won it all, though and not co-preseason favorite Wake Forest. UNC finished the regular season that year ranked fifth in defense; Wake Forest finished ranked 72nd and went out in the second round of the tournament when West Virginia dropped 111 points on them.