EDITOR’S NOTE: I don’t have time today to monitor the blog and the comments. I am going to trust you people to keep it clean. Be respectful of the players and each other. Don’t say anything you would not say to someone’s face. This will be your only warning. Thanks.
I don’t like Rick Barnes.
I place Rick Barnes just a rung below Duke on the dislike scale. So a win today would be almost like beating Duke.
Almost.
Comments if you have them.
GO HEELS!
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1. Anyone know why Thompson, Drew, and Graves all didn’t make the trip to this weekend?
2. What is gonna take to get Henson and Davis some HGH?
3. Do our guys ever get pissed or fired up?
4. A few second half baskets doesn’t change my opinion. Ginyard needs to do a lot of sitting from here on out.
5. I don’t think the Wear twins will ever make a mistake, but will they ever step up?
6. Being down big 3 times this season before conference play is very deflating.
Sounds like Deon is still hurting…
again, i am surprisingly not upset at losing. these games are valuable experiences, and more important games are to come.
i would just like to have fewer head-droppingly-frustrating mistakes. you may lose by 5 or 6 buckets here.
and you easily had 10 excruciatingly bad mistakes. and 8 more missed FTs.
UNCGirl glad you are passionate. But, instead of providing excuses for the guys of how they didn’t get enough sleep or cookies from mom this week look at how they played. Awful. Period. They aren’t tough and they don’t play with passion. They’ll grow and they’ll get better but their performance today was pitiful. Maybe if they got mad like you they wouldn’t give up 103.
Me neither HTTE. I am strangely calm. I think I might even do some Christmas shopping.
Here are my thoughts:
1 – We’ve got to develop another bruiser down in the paint. I’ll take a 6’9″ bulldog over a 6’11″ or 7″ “finesse” kid any day of the week.
2 – I don’t understand the mental lapse that seems to show up in every game. There are times when our guys just look lost out there for long stretches of time, particularly on offense
3 – I really think we aren’t fast/physical/tough enough to beat teams (or win the rebounding battle) with man to man defense. I think we have to start experimenting with the zone defense.
4 – Thompson should be taking fewer shots and Zeller should be taking more. Ginyard’s minutes should decrease and Strickland’s minutes should increase.
5 – Everybody needs to play with more hunger and desire underneath the basket
Texas looked great. They are #2 in the country. This was a “learning experience” game. They actually looked bigger than us, especially that guy who just dropped 90lbs. And they made their free throws and went to the line much more often than us thanks to the officials.
At one point we cut the lead to 4. This team does have toughness and fight or they would have just given up. And Roy called a couple of timeouts although they did not seem to help that much, they were a little late.
We have alot to look forward to this year. There will be losses but also many more wins.
Go Heels!
I still think the more important hunger they need is at the dinner table.
We can argue the passion/no passion thing until we’re all old, but there really isn’t a way to settle for good. What we do know is that they are not strong players. It’s not really the players fault not being physically strong. The front court players were reed thin when they were recruited. There’s only so quickly that they can put on weight with their activity level and metabolisms. The problem with this is that it’s going to be a problem this year and likely next year too. Even if Davis were to come back for another year, He’s going to be hard pressed to put on as much weight between now and then as he did last offseason. The same goes for Zeller. Even if Henson were to put on the freshman 15, he’d still only be 210. The Wear’s are pretty much the only hope for getting much stronger in the frontcourt in my opinion and there are no bigs coming in next year. We’re going to be living with skinny bigs for a while.
“They aren’t tough and they don’t play with passion.”
They aren’t strong, which is certainly quantifiable, and they often have moments where they don’t play intelligently or with composure, but to say that they aren’t tough and lack passion is kind of a weak accusation. First of all, it is not at all measurable. Secondly, every single time they have been down by 10+ (3x) they have come back to cut the lead under 10 and make it a game again. This would not be true of a team that wasn’t tough and/or lacked passion. They would simply fold and get beat by 20+.
Had a different opinion about games until I started coaching 5 years ago and have no problem with 3 losses to top 5 teams on the road this early in the season. Texas worked harder on the glass and it showed but like they said, Roy will use this game to teach them a thing or two and come March they’ll be much improved. We just have to keep our expectations reasonable.
UNC RAJ,
One thing I’d add to your list:
- Wouldn’t mind seeing seeing David Wear or Zeller start in place of Graves. Ideally Strickland would start at the 2, with Ginyard at the 3, but you can’t have your 3 primary ball handlers in the starting lineup.
How do you think that playing zone will help the rebounding? It’s always been my understanding that zone defenses leave you vulnerable to offensive rebounding because you are often left in a poor position to box out.
^Yes… Graves fades in and out… sometimes he looks electric, but most of the time he looks lost. My biggest concern is developing an aggressive big man in the same mold as Hansbrough, May, Jamison, Montross etc. And its a very big concern. Ga Tech, Wake Forest and FSU all have big physical players in their frontcourts this year. Right now, our big men don’t look ready to play their big men.
First off, if you need quantifiable proof to show you that we lack grit then you must be watching a different game. It is a completely legitimate assertion. The reason why we come back from those deficits is pure talent and coaching. I hate the unnecessary screaming and yelling in basketball at times, but just once I’d like to see one of our guys wear it on their sleeve.
Here’s some tough/passion stats for you: Rebounding TEX: 54 (25) UNC: 37 (9). For having “an NBA” frontcourt we sure got ruined on the boards today. There is no reason why we should ever get out-rebounded. Ever.
Marcus – the zone defense puts three guys in the paint, in a position where, if they are tall or can jump they can turn around and snatch the ball down, or run into position to box out (as soon as the shot goes up)… much like Syracuse did against us. The zone defense does leave you vulnerable to long rebounds, but thats not what we struggled today. Today, we couldn’t get in position to pull down rebounds that were within 2 or 3 feet of the basket.
UNC33 is right.
So is whomever said that the team isn’t tough and plays with no passion.
Getting embarrassed on the glass and playing ZERO defense are both hustle/heart issues stemming from effort. Period.
UNCGirl’s blue tinted glasses prevent her from seeing the obvious.
Perhaps it’s true that these soft prima donnas played like lazy posers because they just had exams. Then again, the Tejas players did too…
Deon did his usual disappearing act. Graves was too busy hitting a bong and/or Thickburger to do anything worth mentioning. Z played well on offense but doesn’t play D. Davis played quite well, but got knocked around by Jabba the Longhorn a bit too much on the block; he’s got to have some help on the glass. The rebounding margin was a function of hustle and effort. The FT shooting (again) was a function of mental focus.
This level of underachievement is unacceptable; the gap between potential and performance is the problem, not the losing itself.
Loving your team means expecting that they perform to potential and not accepting simply suiting up as fine and dandy.
IronFist, Does the fact that Pittman has 60 pounds on everyone on our roster not mean anything to you? Does the fact that Damion James is physically stronger than our toughest player, Ed, not mean anything to you? Those two guys had 30 rebounds between them. They have good players on they’re side too.
Everyone talks about we have NBA size because of how tall we are. We don’t have NBA size, we have NBA height. Height isn’t the only component of size.
@Marcus
No doubt, Pittman and James are strong and talented. No way any two players should pull down 15 boards apiece against a rotation of Davis, Thompson, Zeller, Wear A, and Wear B. If that happens, this is just flat out determination and effort. 15 rebounds don’t just fall in your lap against our guys.
Davis did have a solid game, but if you happened to have recorded the game, go back and watch the position that Pittman had against him consistently. You don’t have to be tall to fight for position.
I’m done being critical of our guys. This is frustrating to watch though.
The good news is that we have yet to lose to an inferior team. All three of our losses were to better teams — indeed, legitimate top ten teams.
The bad news in that we aren’t going to practice our way out of it, or find what we need in the weight room. Our players simply are not strong enough to deal with the near-NBA type frontcourt players we saw today. Deon Thompson isn’t going to become Tyler Hansbrough no matter how much we want or need it.
Our seniors, Ginyard and Thompson, aren’t up to the task. Thompson is a productive player and merits his PT, but we need a leader and he’s not it. Ginyard still makes too many mistakes and is overrated on defense; I agree with UNC RAJ that his minutes should be cut and Strickland’s increased.
We’re just not quite there yet, and this is not our year. Next year, maybe, particularly if Davis stays.
One thing we CAN do (and need to do) this year is develop a go-to player — i.e., a leader both in terms of clutch production and personality. I don’t see him right now, but Strickland looks the closest. When you’ve scatched your way back to be only 4 behind with five minutes left, you need someone who wants the ball and can do something with it. I can see some of both Ellington and Lawson in him, and that’s what we need.
Henson, on the other hand, continues to disappoint. He was pretty much invisible in this game. I know he’s learning a new position, but I expect better, and I imagine Roy does too. I swear there are times that he looks like he’s never played basketball before. This cannot be allowed to continue, for his sake and the team’s.
One thing I must disagree with some of our commenters about is how much this game “counts.” There seems to be a theory that the November/December games are just a prelude to the ACC season. Not in my book. We have now had two nationally televised, Saturday afternoon games in two weeks and we lost both by double digits. That is not unimportant. We play a full season, not just a full ACC season. We are a national power, not a regional power. How we do in games like this is PLENTY important.
More generally, I do not regard any game or set of games as merely a prelude. Taken to its logical endpoint, this would mean that we can chalk up as a “learning experience” any loss other than in the national title game.
A theroy like that seems bizarre on its face, and is particularly bizarre when applied to a team, like ours, that has very little chance of appearing in the national championship. What we are seeing now IS the season; it isn’t March but it isn’t October either.
To my way of thinking, there is no such thing as an unimportant game or an unimportant loss. Our program has higher standards than that. Does anyone think Hansbrough went home after a (rare) loss and brushed it off as a “learning experience” in a euphemistically-termed “fun and intersting” season? I sure doubt it. And our team needs some of that same fight. It still won’t make Drew into Lawson or Ginyard into Ellington, but it might persuade us to concentrate harder at clutch time, which we sure could have used today.
Correction: It was the Syracuse game, not the UK game two weeks ago, that we lost by double digits. I apologize for the error.
Ugly, ugly loss. Manhandled. Lots of damage by their freshmen, who are bigger and stronger than ours. Fortunately, we play a string of beatable teams before conference play, and there is no one in the ACC as good as either Texas or Kentucky. There is a ton of work to be done for this team to be a threat by year end, but it can be done. Strickland is improving. The Wears and Zeller will get better. Drew did not have a good game today, but mostly he has been adequate at the point. Davis needs more touches. I don’t know what to say about Deon, Graves and Ginyard. W/o better play from our upperclassmen, there’s only so far we can go.
Rath,
I agree with most of what you said, especially with regard to Strickland, I think he has an All-ACC future, but UNC only lost by 2 to UK. Syracuse was the other 10+ loss. As you mentioned, all three of UNC’s losses are to T5 teams, but they were also on courts that were far less than neutral (Cuse as MSG is a de facto home game). Young teams, against good teams, on the road is a bad combination.
Edit: Beat me to it!
There seems to be a little lack of perspective around here…several of you weren’t on this site for the past four-plus seasons, and, consequently, you may not be looking at these games in the larger context.
There is a comment that I desperately want to make, but I will hold it for the mid-ACC season evaluation.
I’ll still take 8-3 at this point with two top-25 wins, versus 6-5 and staring down the Seth Davis (paraphrased) “UNC will be unranked by February” scope.
For those of you who might be wandering what the comment, or perhaps question, is, think about the traditionally brutal non-conference schedule played by one national power located outside of New York City (heavy sarcasm in relatiom to the non-conference schedule), and how that type of scheduling would help/hinder the overall development of this year’s (young) Heels squad.
I don’t think that upperclassmen are up to the roles that they’re playing. They are not serving as the stabilizing influences that you look for. Deon is just too casual with possession of the ball. Ginyard makes too many mistakes as has been said, and is not playing the David Noel like role that I expecting of him. Will Graves makes some good plays sometimes, but he still has too many times where he over handles the ball, has bad turnovers, or lapses in concentration on defense. I thought Ginyard at least would be more able to handle the load placed on him than he has shown.
I too think that Strickland has played well enough to merit more time. He is the quickest player we have, appears to be able to get to the bucket whenever he wants and has shown a better perimeter shot than I’ve expected. obviously he and Drew can’t play together all the time but they can play significant minutes on the court together if Drew2 is going to get around 30 minutes. Strick could play say 20 or 25 and play plenty alongside one another.
I think that Ed needs to get the ball in the post more and Deon less. One Issue that I’ve always had with Deon’s offensive game is that he relies too much on jump shots and fadeaways. There’s not nearly enough going to the basket for him. He’s productive, and shoots a fairly high percentage for those types of shots, but those are shots that the defense would much rather you take than going hard at the rim. Ed takes pretty much all of his shots at the rim. He makes a higher percentage, gets fouled more, gets more and ones, and he’s much more likely to get an offensive rebounds on his misses. That is more valuable offense. He also isn’t stripped of the ball as often as Deon.
“For those of you who might be wandering what the comment, or perhaps question, is, think about the traditionally brutal non-conference schedule played by one national power located outside of New York City (heavy sarcasm in relatiom to the non-conference schedule), and how that type of scheduling would help/hinder the overall development of this year’s (young) Heels squad.”
Well, there is Syracuse (though I wouldn’t call them, “outside of New York City;” 250 mile is a pretty big outside). They usually are in the running for the NC/NC (Non-conference National Championship) and you can usually set your watch by their March collapse.
There is Pitt (stretch to call them outside of NYC). They are a traditional NC/NC threat with a pretty abysmal March record.
And let’s see… there is also the State University of New Jersey’s satellite campus in Durham, and we all know how well their runs in march have gone lately…
How did I do?
dont think its on tv here, but Alex is having a good game in a potential upset of Tenn.
17 pts and 16 boards so far.
^^^Don’t forget that Strickland is not a PG. He played shooting guard in High School. So he and Drew can be on the floor at the same time if he is moved back to his natural position. Unfortunately, that would require benching Ginyard.
^ True, but in some ways, Ginyard is more suited to play the 3, which was is position he played the two years he played with WE and Ty.
HTTE,
No question Alex would be a big boost to the Heels this season. It’s too bad that his father’s health concern’s took him back west.
I’m well aware of what Strickland’s natural position is. With the turnover problems that Ginyard is having as it is, I don’t trust him to be the backup 1 right now.
Funny, I was thinking how much Stepheson’s strength would be helping us this year.
^With the turnover problem that Ginyard is having I’m concerned with having him on the floor at all. If nothing else, he should be limited to backing up Strickland (at shooting guard) for 20 minutes each night. Give Strickland the start and budget him to play 30 minutes: 20 minutes at SG and 10 minutes backing up Drew (as needed). If Ginyard is still a liability at 20 minutes, then cut that in half and try using Watts or MacDonalds for 10 minutes per game.
I’m not as down on Ginyard’s play as you are.
i didnt bring up Alex because i was wondering what he’d do for us this year. that ship has sailed.
brought it up, because its nice to see him doing well.
I was just mentioning that he was on my mind also, if for somewhat different reasons. I’m not pining for Alex to be back. I’m glad that he’s close to his family. I agree it is nice to see him doing well.
Ginyard is averaging 11/4/4 with 2 SPG and an A/T of 1.61, which, while not great, is not catastrophic, either. He is also shooting 52% from the field and an outstanding 46% from 3PT. To me, the only troubling thing is his sub-60% FT percentage.
He is definitely not the problem.
HTTE,
Gotcha. I agree with your sentiment completely.
Gonzaga really showed up to play, huh? unreal. thanks for nothing, Zags.
boxscore-wise, it looks like Dook didnt even play that well.
They didn’t. I had the game on for a bit and had to switch it to the New Mexico Bowl because it was such an ugly game.
“We just have to keep our expectations reasonable.”-HeelDawg
OK. I expect us to beat Dook once. How’s that? And I expect a minimum 20-win season. Beyond those two, I hold no expectations for this year’s edition of Carolina Basketball.
UNC33, UNC RAJ, C.Michael, rath – thank y’all for the intelligence and savvy your posts reflect. I enjoy that. The puffery posted by some others (some of it obvious attempts to project “personality”) not so much. Degrades the conversation.
My thoughts on this team are not modified by today’s showing.
IT IS GOING TO BE THE D that defeats strong, talented opponents – or not.
But 95% of the chatter on this blog continues to focus on our Offense, or lacks thereof and within. And that is valid, of course. Roy has no experience with developing a group of tall, finesse players like this; Dean never had one to establish the coaching template. Brutal, but true. I think there is a learning curve for him as well as the one noted for the players.
And, yes, we need the kind of play that Strickland brings; that type of play is sorely missing.
But it is the D that is all-but non-existent, except for some blocks and except in late, brief “intensity spurts” with pressure put on the ball.
Defense begins with Rebounding.
Free throw shooting is also defensive offense.
And turn-overs continue into mid-December.
These are all coachable, meaning they can be corrected. It is up to Roy to deliver that. For the failure to block out, to make free throws, and to take care of the ball to CONTINUE without improvement is inexcusable.
DJ JOEK, you may want to keep snoozing through February 10th.
I don’t think this team lacks heart. Someone earlier asked if they get “fired up” or “pissed off,” and they don’t. But at the same time, I don’t want them to get that “false hype” that you see in Durham because it doesn’t really get you that far if that’s not your team’s personality.
In terms of what hurt UNC today, it was turnovers, rebounds, and free throws; LDII and Ginyard both were even in assist to turnover ratios (5/5 and 4/4 respectively) and Texas just destroyed us on the boards. The woes at the stripe continue, as UNC shot an abysmal 11-19. Just hitting four or five more could have change the complexion of the game.
On somewhat of a brighter note, UNC shot 7/13 from the three point line, and .480 from the floor. The perimeter game (or lack thereof) hasn’t really been the downfall of the Heels in the three losses; it’s the lack of a physical presence and stupid mistakes that I think go away with some time.
Anything to be said has been said at this point. Fortunate enough to attend in person, it was a lot of burnt orange with scattering of carolina blue. The foul calls and pace of play were, at times, horrible. Interestingly the giant video board played the ‘UNC intro’ same as what plays for a Smith Center game. 100 years, final fours…all of it. Quite cool.
Cowboys stadium is ridiculously large…today attracted 37k-38k people, and it easily fits 95,000 fans for Cowboy games.
Texas fans were griping as well on the fouls…but seroiusly they shot quite a few more FT than UNC attempted. While certainly a pro-Horns crowd, there was only smattering of boos and ‘miss it’ on free throws.