You can at least say this. Instead of losing the game because they didn’t put forth the effort or failed to show up they lost because they really couldn’t catch a break or get a key shot to fall. Oh yeah, they still turn the ball over entirely too much and they did not play the greatest defense in the world. Still, I find myself not overly upset with the result. Maybe I am just comfortably numb.
Instead of focusing in the crappy stuff such as berating Marcus Ginyard(who was slightly better) or Deon Thompson let’s bask in the glow of John Henson and David Wear. Especially Henson who looked like the player we all thought was coming to Chapel Hill. To quote John McClane: “Welcome to the party, pal!” Henson was very good, especially on offense. Likewise David Wear was a part of a huge performance from the bench. The question is whether these two continue to perform like that. I sure hope so because Henson is fun to watch.
Dexter Strickland had an odd game. He only had one point, one assist and seven rebounds? Didn’t see that coming. Ed Davis was the only regular that played well dropping in 15 points, seven rebounds and three blocks. Will Graves simply could not find the range and had that last three spend about three seconds inside the cylinder before popping out. Yeah, that about sums it up. Larry Drew had a great first half but was effectively contained by the Hokies in the 2nd half, had six assists but ended up with four turnovers.
I would venture to say this team looks like they might turn the corner but we all thought that after the NCSU game. I liked the toughness they showed to rally after doing the deer in the headlights impersonation to start the game. The bugaboo for this team has been consistency so the real test comes Sunday at Maryland to see if they can locate some.
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Neil Fingleton…. Does anyone remember him? Apparently he was a McDonald’s All-American as well.
I recall seeing Fingleton at the blue/white scrimmage…to call it ‘running’ up or down is an insult to running itself. Dude was super-tall…and that was it.
er…he was not running. plodding may have been more appropriate
Roy has damaged this team beyond repair.When the season began,the early games should have been learning experiences for the freshmen. Instead if they took a bad shot or missed an assignment then they got yanked out of the game.Now the are so terrified of getting yanked that they can’t handle the pressure.If roy don’t let next years freshmen learn on the court without fear of sitting on the bench,we’ll be having these same frustations.
I’m new to the blog and would like to say, after reading the latest posts, I am highly impressed with the level of intelligent comments made by everyone. As a life-long Carolina basketball fan, I feel the pain that we all feel as we suffer through an exasperating season. I echo many of the thoughts and realize there may not be much we can salvage from this campaign, other than maybe beating Duke twice and NCSU one more time. I work with a bunch of NCSU engineers, so you can probably gather how much fun it is to go to work after we beat those guys. Thanks, THF, for a great forum and I look forward to posting my opinions.
yeah, this class is not fingleton boone and morrison.
sc11 from a few hours ago, right on the money about the recruits. our top two guys are asked to be playing out of position, and the wears, while mcdonald’s aa’s are not really top 20 kids. i do think that the two of them in the game at once in 3 years will be better than marcus and deon in the game now.
i think larry will be better next year when he’s pushed by kendall marshall and he has some true threats to pass to on the wing and a (hopefully) more motivated davis, a healthy zeller, and a henson who gets PT in the post.
william or sc11, one of you made the comment that it’s partially larry but partly the fault of the ineptitude of those who start with him.
gosh i am so hoping that kendall is a big time PG, and let larry come off the bench….but as long as he just improves and graves moves to the end of the bench then we’re going to be okay next year. we might be a few years away from the title.
2012 starting lineup/backup
larry drew II Sr / Kendall Marshall
Dex/Bullock
Barnes/Hairston
Henson/McAdoo
Zeller/McAdoo (doubtful davis is still here)
‘other subs’: wears as juniors, mcdonald as a junior
that’s a championship lineup if you ask me!
I think Deons problems are not entirely his doings. I am in no way taking up for his play but i do believe that when the offense gets him involved very early and gets his confidence up,then he usually plays alot better. When your a senior and you are not even getting passes on the offense, after awhile its got to mess with his mind.Deon,like Roy,is not accustom to losing games like this. He and Roy always had someone else to make the game winning decisions.Now they have nobody but themselves.
Don’t forget that McCants was out of that Duke game. That changed the rotation. I am not sure who is complaining about being compared to Derrick Phelps, who was highly recruited and started on a national title winner. Any guard on our team would do well to end up like that. Jimmy Black was another guy who was pretty mediocre his first two years and ended up being pretty clutch in 1982, but Phelps and Black played a different kind of style and did not shoot all that much.
I would have liked to have seen Ginyard used this year the way that Melvin Scott was used in 2005, just enough to honor him as a senior, and not enough to do much real harm (except for that horrible shot against Illinois at the end).
There are positives to be had from a season like this. Look for the paperback version of Roy’s book, with a whole new chapter entitled “Really, Really Hardwork,” or “Tyler, Where are You?”
This McD All America stuff is interesting to review:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald's_All-American_Game
Most of the contributing players on UNC teams of late are listed here. About half of the AA players have done well. But certainly not every one.
The Wears, Strickland and Henson are on the team from last year of course.
The transition from high school all america to college success is obviously complicated.
@william…read your post about “breakfast at Roy’s house” yesterday and laughed til I cried. Dead on the money.
william, you know EXACTLY what I was making reference to. I’m just surprised nobody else called you on it.
Is it just me, or did it look to anyone else like Deon just gave up in the last few minutes? I would go so far as to say that he deliberately committed that last foul so he could go to the bench. I know he must feel bad about the team’s slide, but he’s the one who was talking last week about UNC pride and playing hard. I think he needs some time on the bench to realize how good he’s had it for 4 years.
Last thought on the subject for today….which individual or group is relishing the demise of our basketball team the most?
A) Duke fans
B) Billy Packer
C) My friend Marty
D) NCSU fans (blatantly unfair, as this group has little or no knowledge of basketball, proven daily in my office)
E) Matt Doherty
F) Rick Barnes
G) None of the above
Correct answer…(G)
If you went outside the box and answered JOHN WALL, you win.
I actually don’t what you were making reference to, 52BGJ, and I wouldn’t have said I did not if I did. Does that screen name stand for 52-year-old–big–grump? –cause the Tar Heel are in the middle of a big ol’ slump?
Do you know what James Worthy used to do to deal with stress?
We are all posting on here. If you have a point, please make it for me so I don’t have to go traipsing back to try to see if I am getting Alzheimer’s and misunderstand a clear and frank call-out.
Nope, I looked at your post and I still have no idea what you are complaining about from you one line posting of “wtf.”
I will just try to re-address the point again.
Obviously, none of these current UNC guards were highly recruited in the way that Phil Ford, Kenny Smith, Ray Felton or Ty Lawson were, or even Derrick Phelps, if my memory serves me correctly. If you want to pretend that they are of that caliber, then I can only pray that you are right and I will be the happiest person on the board when you remind me of it when one of them makes All American or even first team All ACC or leads us to a national title. Quentin Thomas was highly regarded by many people, although Ty Lawson emphatically showed just how much better he was last year when Lawson was gone and we had no competent backups for him. I remember you being quite high on Lawson, but he was also the top guard in his class. None of these guys were.
Thanks, stephens, I am glad you liked my breakfast dialogue. 52bgj made a specific point of saying it wasn’t funny yesterday so I am glad someone enjoyed it.
It is all in good fun and we are all much, much less negative than the other sites, so I think we can poke some fun at ourselves. Laughing is better than crying….
I think John Wall, Matt Doherty and Coach K are all able to sleep nights seeing Coach Williams do some Hard Work.
Let me add one other thing, for all those people who love to throw around the term bandwagon. “Bandwagon” fans don’t bother to post on web sites. Those people have either tuned out or they are rooting for Wake or Kentucky or whoever this year.
In terms of criticizing Roy Williams:
Coach Williams has a job with a variety of facets. One of them is recruiting.
Recruiting is a bit akin to being a stock analyst. It is an imperfect science. One day you win the national championship, i.e., your broker says you are worth $10 million, and the next day you are broke.
According to all indications, our broker, Roy, had made very good investments on our behalf. In fact, we were told that we had investments among the top five universities in the country. That seemed like an excellent performance. He is paid the big bucks to know who is good and who is not, just like a good stock analyst.
However, after we spent all of our endowment, and Lawson et al left last year, we returned to Roy and said, show us how you invested for us this year. We heard it is just as good as ever. But when we got to the vault, instead of gold and silver and platinum, there was a bunch of bronze, some tin and two older looking decrepit nuggets of four and five year old gold, which actally turned out to be “fools gold.”
“What happened?,” we shout. We are broke. Roy says he is just as sorry as he can be. He has spent hours and hours and hours trying to polish up this bronze and tin, and he just can’t do anything with the older nuggets. “I am just as frustrated as you are,” he says. “I have been polishing gold for over 20 years and it has always worked. I just figured i could do the same thing with tin and bronze, too. Talk about Hard Work”.
william
That is a nice analogy to the team situation this year. The beahvior of everyone involved is more difficult because there are lots of unusual factors involved.
It has been a mercurial deal as well and it is probably going to play out over the next two or three years. Not just this year. It will take a while for things to get back to where they were.
Maybe that isn’t going to ever happen.
Look at things in Durham for example. They have a very experienced coach who has won plenty in the past. Well obviously the last few years haven’t been going the best there.
The things they are trying haven’t worked and aren’t working especially well this year.
There are other schools in the ACC which have traditions of excellence. They are all having a tough year this year.
Maybe there are some factors in the players coming along now that are different, which make them more difficult to judge and coach.
I don’t know.
There is still a great deal of capital in the strength and depth of the core parts of the conference to certainly get past this difficult and strange season and to build for the future.
But it is beyond comprehension for now.
Looking back at the last ten recruiting classes for UNC, this one looks like a winner on paper. It just isn’t happening. So when the coaching staff and players say things that aren’t proper or make losing plays, it has to balance against the success of the past.
For now.
heh–maybe you’re right–I might need to visit James’ “tailor”, lol.
the burr under my saddle is this:
Quentin Thomas = Ish Smith or Derrick Phelps
that was what your post appeared to me to be–if not, help me out.
I was ecstatic beyond words when Roy Williams left Lawrence and came to Chapel Hill. And I believe that the majority of knowledgeable bb fans will always put him on a top 10 best list. I refuse to step over the line and totally trash the man for what has happened this year. I will, however, raise my voice when it is painfully obvious to me, as well as most of you on this board, that his methods show no signs of pumping any life into this madness. I have no doubt that he, more than anyone, understands that “it’s broke, so I gotta fix it.” At the risk of beating a dead horse, it’s becoming almost impossible for me to watch the games because I know that I’m not going to see any attempts at “fixing.” Continually relying on a system that’s worked for 20 years, but is obviously not working NOW, leads to the horrible stagnation that we are seeing on the court. Hell, I would be a mental case myself if suddently everything I successfully taught kids for 20 years quit working. But I don’t see Roy recognizing and re-evaluating his methods, and for the life of me, I don’t understand why.
I sincerely hope that we are not witnessing a great coach entering into some sort of twilight zone that he can’t, or stubbornly won’t, escape from.
@william…help me out with the Worthy comment. What did he do to relieve stress?
Oh, man, I don’t want to go there, stephens. James was always one of my favorite players. It wasn’t drugs or gambling or alcohol.
I agree with you about Roy. I was rooting for Kansas almost as hard as I was rooting for UNC back in 2002 and 2003 when he came so close each time to winning it all. Of course, there wasn’t much to root for back home then was there?
Roy might be a bit like a lot of people’s parents. You like them even more when they live in Kansas, then if they move to your neighborhood….
When I mentioned Quentin Thomas, I meant the Thomas of late January and February 2008, i.e., the best he ever played, obviously not most of his career. He may have been the worst freshman guard I have ever seen, although Drew was almost as bad last year. I thought Ishmael Smith was terrible as a freshman, too.
30 inches of snow, by the way, here in suburban Maryland. I wonder if the Heels made it to College Park.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/local-breaking-news/?hpid=topnews
Regarding Worthy…I’d thought it was, ahem, a similar method that Wilt Chamberlain used for stress reduction. To be fair no one was quite the purported stud as Wilt.
Right there with you though…James is an all-time favorite. I’d like to see Dallas dealing with 1/3 of that snow fall…LMAO
“However, after we spent all of our endowment, and Lawson et al left last year, we returned to Roy and said, show us how you invested for us this year. We heard it is just as good as ever. But when we got to the vault, instead of gold and silver and platinum, there was a bunch of bronze, some tin and two older looking decrepit nuggets of four and five year old gold, which actally turned out to be “fools gold.””
That’s Gold Jerry! Gold!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0qm0KUPeD8
N offense to anyone, but I think Roy has a better grasp of what to do and how to do it than any member of the peanut gallery. That’s not blind fealty to the guy. I do agree that he’s made mistakes in this time, such as leaving Marcus in when Henson has a hot hand, but I’m not about to make larger statements than that. I know I can’t recruit, train and coach as well as Williams. Keeping it in perspective: 2 national titles, 5 excellent years and one poor one. Like I said before, we (at least a vocal contingent) seem to be looking for scapegoats.
i’m on record that i find more “fault” with the players.
and that that sometimes happens.
ya know, that’s a fair analogy…and also a warning: investing with the hot hand is never a guarantee of future returns (!)
“i’m gonna puke…puke’s a funny word, hey can i use that ?”
That 30 inches of snow may be a Godsend, William. Gives Roy more time to work hard.
stephens: google “James Worthy Houston” and see what comes up.
I think QT was a lot like Frasor, and leave it at that.
fwiw: Hubert Davis thinks the real problem is a lack of an identity. Digger thinks it’s no guard play. I’ll go with Hubert–we (& Roy) were spoiled by an offensive juggernaut last year, but even then (as Hubert noted) they didn’t really perform to expectations until they decided to play some defense. Tyler, Ty, Danny or Wayne ain’t coming to the offensive rescue this year, and nobody has any control over that. What they do have control over is how they play defense. Again for the umpteenth time, their “identity” this year was supposed to be a defensive one. Outside of Roy, that hasn’t been applicable
Make being the best defensive team in the League the goal for the remainder of this season, and a lot of things will fall into place imho.
@buonrotto…Nobody with any real sense and/or knowledge is looking for a scapegoat. We all know Roy’s numbers and we all know what his capabilities are. Most of the positions taken here that are questioning coaching decisions are not presented with any malice. None of us would ever be so delusional as to think we could do his job better than he can. When you suffer through a season as horrible as this one, it’s pretty normal to ask the questions that are being asked here. There’s plenty of blame to spread around and Roy is going to get his share.
Since this is the time of year I have a lot of “down time”, I have participated some in the blog and reverted to one of my favorite pastimes: looking at, and compiling, dubiously useful facts and figures pertaining to college basketball and the Heels.
One of the things that has been discussed a lot this year is the quality of our 2009 recruiting class. I’m probably with a lot of others who think this class, obviously along with the players from last year, has not lived up to its billing or potential. ( I will say one thing about John Henson though, and that’s everyone basically said he was too skinny to be ultimately effective in college, much less the pros, and needed to gain weight and improve his strength) While there’s always a certain amount of guess work about how players will pan out, there is predictablity based on their ratings versus past performance of similarly rated players.
The 2009 UNC class was highly-ranked , but more so on the number of good players than the very best players. Also, there is much variation from class to class, so the #5 player from one year can be much better or worse than the #5 player from another year. So I thought I would take a look at our highest rated recruit, John Henson, and compare him, in the very limited context of MPG, PPG, and RPG compared to the last 6 players who were ranked #5 coming out of high school. Again this has to be taken with a grain of salt because these rankings are from the single view of Rivals.com ….averaging all the ranking services would have been way too complicated. Also, the limited comparison based on PPG and RPG doesn’t give a complete picture, but at least none of the players were PG’s. I’m not trying to interpret any of this, I’m just throwing it out sort of as a composite profile of what a #5 high school player looks like and how they progress.
Class of 2009:
John Henson / 6-10 F – UNC
10.7 MPG – 3.5 PPG – 2.2 RPG
Class of 2008:
Scotty Hopson / 6-6 SG/SF – Tenn.
Fresh. Yr.: 23 MPG – 9 PPG – 2.7 RPG
Soph. Yr.: 27 MPG – 13.8 PPG – 3.3 RPG
Class of 2007:
Kyle Singler / 6-8 F – Duke
Fresh. Yr.: 28 MPG – 13.3 PPG – 5.8 RPG
Soph. Yr.: 32 MPG – 16.5 PPG – 7.7 RPG
Jr. Yr.: 35 MPG – 16.8 PPG – 7.1 RPG
Class of 2006:
Thaddeus Young / 6-8 F – Ga. Tech
Fresh. Yr.: 30 MPG – 14 PPG – 5 RPG
Drafted #12 by Phil. 76′s
Currently w/ Phil. 76′s : 32 MPG – 14 PPG – 5 RPG
Class of 2005:
Martell Webster / 6-7 F – Straight to NBA from HS
Drafted # 6 by Portland Trailblazers
Currently w/ Portland Trailblazers : 28 MPG – 11 PPG – 4 RPG
Class of 2004:
Rudy Gay / 6-8 F – U. Conn.
Freshman Yr.: 28 MPG – 11 PPG – 5 RPG
Soph. Yr.: 30 MPG – 15 PPG – 6 RPG
Drafted # 8 by Houston Rockets
Currently w/ Memphis Grizzles: 39 MPG – 19.PPG – 5.8 RPG
Class of 2003:
Charlie Villenueva / 6-11 PF – U.Conn.
Freshman Yr.: 19 MPG – 9 PPG – 5 RPG
Soph. Yr.: 26 MPG – 13 PPG – 8 RPG
Drafted # 7 by Totonto Rapters
Currently with Detroit Piston: 27 MPG – 14 PPG – 5 RPG
Sorry for this being so long but I wanted to include a number of players. So how do you all think John compares to these guys? I know he would have to be ranked close to the bottom with his freshman performance but how about his future, his overall abilities?
Thanks 52bgJ…my memory has been sufficiently jogged.
LarryS
That is interesting information. If you look at the Mcdonald’s AA info, it is similar.
What your composite does show for Henson is that he hasn’t played much.
What will be telling now is does he get to play more and how does he perform. At this point, it isn’t only Williams, but the entire program (and maybe even the players themselves) that should be able to see that what he did in the last game was not a fluke.
Ditto for Wear!
Let them play!!
@ William:
FYI – UNC went straight to Maryland after the Va Tech game, so they’re socked in with you.
LarryS, after all of your comparisons you conclude by questions that can only be answered by speculations or randon guesses. 2 plus 2 will always equal 4 but A plus B can equal C or D or many other unknowns. The best you can say about any freshman is that he will become a sophmore and a more productive player as they advance. Our present team is proof that this is also a point of speculation shattered by cold reality.
I will tell you why they call it Ovaltine. It is a corruption of the latin word for eggs, which is similar to our word “ova”.
Ovaltine was considered a health drink at one time and I remember reading that the Tar Heels used to drink it before games I believe, back in the 1950′s.
Kenny Bania should be getting more minutes than Ginyard.
It is just unbelievable up here. It reminds me of Little House on the Prairie or something but we are only an hour’s drive from DC.
We had to clear a path to the satellite dish so we could knock the snow off and restore the televison’s picture and it looks like Alaska with the snow walls of 30+ inches on either side of the path….
“N offense to anyone, but I think Roy has a better grasp of what to do and how to do it than any member of the peanut gallery.”
Thanks for reminding everyone that disagreement with any coaching decision by Roy Williams is off limits. If everyone was up hear blowing sunshine up Roy’s butt for doing such a wonderful coaching job would you be taking a similar tone? That’s what is so tiresome from those who throw out the “Roy knows more than you” card. Why is it OK to prasie, but not OK to criticize? We all know Roy is a better coach than we could ever be that is not up for debate, but that doesn’t make every coaching decision he makes the perfect one. So what’s wrong with calling a duck, a duck without “fans” coming out of the woodwork to say “Roy knows more than you so unless you have something nice to say shut up”.
ESPN Classic is showing several classic UNC/DUKE games over the next 24 hours.
We don’t get Classic on Directv anymore. Has anyone else noticed how bad the HD feeds of ESPN1 and ESPN2 are on Directv?
We have cable and the signal is fine for now. The cable people are constantly adjusting it though and sometimes it doesn’t work. Filters are placed. Etc.
Maybe the direct TV people can come out and check your signal. Tonight, before the big game tomorrow. Just tell them to bring the sled dogs!