I will be in the building watching what could be the last stand of the 2010 Heels or the beginning of the greatest ACC Tournament run ever.
The best place to follow me will be on Twitter.
As I pointed out before, UNC has never lost a basketball game I have attended so I am risking much here. I should also point out that the last game I saw UNC play was against Michigan St. I hope to see the same thing tonight that I saw three months ago.
Comments if you have ‘em.
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Some offense. Some offense.
My kingdom for some offense.
Thanks LDII. This one’s on you.
Going to Reyonld on Saturday to get some hope and life injected into my Tar Heel blood… Need a first hand look at Bullock, Dex might not be the answer at two.
Did Carolina put together two good halves all year? I can’t remember, and should have known not to get my hopes up in the first half.
We saw a great overall effort and good execution in the first half and lack of focus by most everyone not name Tyler Zeller in the second.
No one else other than Z could throw it in the ocean, so there’s your loss.
NIT or not to NIT? We won’t have a choice and will watch that game too even though it’s just an old cold tater, not the turkey dinner we’re used to.
boxscore says…
the last 11:09…
6 missed layups or tips.
5 missed 3s.
4 turnovers.
3 FGs, 2 FTs.
GT only scored 13, so it wasnt exactly unreachable.
congrats to Zeller on his first career double-double.
everyone not named Zeller shot 27.6%.
Well. Our guys played to the best of their abilities. The problem is that they have such limited abilities. This is Roy’s fault. There is no way in hell we couldn’t have recruited more talented players then these guys. Five guys who can’t shoot. When – and why – did Roy decide that shooting ability was not important when evaluating recruits? Has he learned nothing from his own past success?
So if Larry is PG next year we can look forward to a lot more of what we saw tonight. Is that what we want?
RIP 2009-2010 team. Please NIT spare us fans and don’t ask. This way at least it’s not a losing season.
Positive for next year….. its not this year,
Can we learn to shoot over the summer?, is there going to be transfers?, does ed go pro?, how big of an impact will the new guys make??? so many questions??? are we ranked in the preseason???
Woody has resorted to talking about football. Am I caught in some sort of twilight zone?
What is Graves’ line from the last two games? I just don’t think I bear watching Graves another year playing 30 plus minutes a game.
I might have to take back what I said yesterday about Bobby Frasor. Compared to our current guys, Bobby Frasor shoots like Larry Bird….
How can a player with 4 years experience and 2 final fours make such a stupid mistake???
2005 Championship Team: McCants, Felton, Melvin Scott, and Jawad Williams could all shoot three’s
2009 Championship Team: Ellington, Green, and Lawson could all hit three’s
Both teams were also excellant free throw shooting teams.
So what does Roy do? He recruits ZERO shooters. What sort of screwed up experiment was this?
Will 2 of 18 the last 2 games, for 6 points and 6 boards.
his final non-Dean Dome ACC shooting is 24% from 3, 25.3% overall.
i wouldve given him the red light to shoot on the road long ago, but thats me. he clearly cant.
be the first tournament i wont care about in a long time.. man, i can not believe are season is over…. FACE PALM,
^Were they decent scorers in high school?
UNC33 and makeitWayne22 are right in wanting to stop the season now and avoid any further embarrassment in the NIT.
Right now we have an even record, i.e., a non-losing season. LarryS is correct in dearly wanting an offense, but we don’t have one and we are not going miraculously to develop one. With no offense to speak of, our chances of losing our first NIT game, if there is one, are high. We can say this without even knowing who the NIT opponent would be, because it is sure to be a mediocre team, and we have spent 2010 losing to mediocre teams. Indeed it has become something of our trademark.
So stop. Please. Just stop. Let’s move on to trying to build a better future.
Henson limited to 18 minutes.
I don’t get the limited minutes for Henson. He’s the only one on the floor who can flush it. Or should I say chooses to flush it rather than lay up a wimpy shot that rolls out. And how bout our bigs getting stuffed so often. I can’t believe it.
Now just watch, if we ever win another Championship Roy will try the reverse this year’s screwed up experiment and recruit 5 guards and zero forwards. We’ll shoot 40% as a team from 3 point range and average 2 points in the paint and 10 rebounds per game. What the hell was he thinking?
Roy just said “if somebody’s gonna invite me to go play, we’re gonna go play.” WOOOOHOOOO. One more to go!!
Well, you saw glimpses of what is possible. If they could make more inside shots… If they had better outside shooting… If they had more power inside… If they had a clutch player…
I saw good D.
I saw LDII and Strickland play well (yes, everyone saw the late turnover by LDII, but he played a hood game and flinched then. I think he can overcome that).
I saw Henson play hard and just not have enough strength this day.
I saw Graves miss a ton but kept trying. He needs to practice shooting in unfamiliar surroundings.
I saw Zeller look like the Zeller we thought he could be. He just needs a major power move inside to dominate, and of course stay healthy.
I saw everyone give effort, lose focus for a bit early in the second, and then couldn’t hit the side of a barn the whole time.
I hope they play in the NIT. I don’t think they will shake the problems we saw tonight all of a sudden but unless they roll over again, they can at least keep working things through.
^HTTE – Henson had his hands full on defense and did OK but couldn’t shoot and fouls kept him on the bench.
So, we end the season last year in the championship game and it looked like we were shooting fish in a barrel. This year, we switched places with the fish.
Henson was in foul trouble most of the game. He was being manhandled by Favors.
I think Roy thought that Thompson, Zeller, Henson, Graves, Strickland and probably MacDonald were all shooters. I don’t think Roy went into the season thinking he had a dearth of scoring options except for outside shooting. I can’t explain the poor touch of shooters inside.
Another note: I’d still like to see Henson work on becoming a good 3 next season too.
NIT gives us the opportunity to finish the season with a losing record. Let’s leave well enough or should I say bad enough alone. I don’t know about the rest of you but if I don’t have to watch this team again this year I will be a happier person since if they do play again I will watch and feel like this again.
I didn’t see anything tonight to change my mind that we basically have two guys coming back who deserve minutes.
I know Henson had foul trouble but letting the game get away with him on the bench seems strange. I still think that he and Zeller should have gotten more minutes.
Beyond that, you guys need to start throwing out some names about most improved people from the past, because right now I am thinking we have a lot of dead weight on our roster. I think Roy is probably too nice a guy to do like K and Self do when a guy doesn’t turn out, but I don’t see any reason why most of these guys need to be getting any court time next year.
I would put Zeller, Henson, Bullock, Barnes and Marshall out there in game one and play them until their tongues hang out.
oh, i know it was foul trouble that limited Henson.
you guys keep asking why Roy didnt recruit any shooters. pay attention now…
the STARTERS shot 27%.
the BENCH shot 47.6%.
yes, mostly Zeller, but Strickland and McD only took 5 shots combined.
the bench was only oustcored by 4. add Henson, a fresh, and those 5 guys outscored Deon, Marcus, Will, and Larry.
Roy recruited the starters, too.
Strickland hasn’t exactly been lighting it up from outside this year. McD had a great game against Wake, haven’t seen much out of him since then… but he hasn’t really had the opportunity to show us much since then.
Does anybody know if we happen to get a home game in the first round of the NIT whether or not it will be played in Carmichael?
For folks who accuse the team of quitting, folks asking the team to pass on the NIT are guity if quitting on them, and are no better.
K has had a bunch of McDonald’s duds, who either ended up quitting or transferring. It was bound to happen to us, too, but it really came back to bite us bad this year, because we happened to have Ginyard as a starter, who may actually be a worse shooter than Dudley Bradley was.
The other thing we saw this year is the difference between real points and junk points. Thompson, Davis and Ginyard could all score on weak opposition but they really struggled against quality opposition. Does anyone know what Ginyard ended up shooting in ACC compettion? I don’t see how he could have shot much above 20%? No team can win with that kind of liability at shooting guard, not to mention that Drew and Graves are incredibly erratic from outside.
we arent gonna get a home game. not at 16-16.
Adam Lucas said that there are teams that are going to take up a lot of slots. teams that come in 2nd in the lower conferences.
we may not get a bid.
Oh well – if Bullock and Barnes end up being good shooters, then that’ll give us two good shooters next year. Zeller and Henson give us a solid foundation down in the paint. PG = who knows? Either way, we’ll be a middle of road team at best next year… unless we also learn how to play good defense, but who am I kidding? I haven’t seen good defense in Chapel Hill since Dean Smith retired.
William….I just remembered, Ginyard is our SHOOTING guard. Holy moly!!
well, you HAVE to get more than 22 points from your 3 upperclassmen in 93 minutes.
BuonRotto –
We have had 32 games for “working things through.” They have not been worked through. They are not going to get worked through with another game in a week (or whenver it would be).
Someone said here recently that if this season were a horse, you would shoot it. That was right on the money. You wouldn’t make the wretched, suffering creature haul one more load.
We have nothing more to show. It’s all been shown and the picture isn’t pretty. Nor is it an allegedly disloyal and faithless fan base that’s to blame. The fans did not produce this result. The players and coaches produced it. That does not make them lousy human beings. But neither does it impose an obligation of the fans to be blind to the season we actually saw nor to act as if we were.
Fans are supposed to remain in their team’s corner through thick and thin, and almost all of us have. But staying with them through thick and thin doesn’t mean pretending you can’t see the DIFFERENCE between thick and thin.
Time to move on.
I love Will Graves’ attitude, his hustle, and his battling inside for rebounds and the occasional putback.
But if he is a shooter, I really view him as the kind of shooter that does well in HORSE, where you can make good shots as long as you aren’t guarded (read – wide open) I don’t know if he will be able to quicken his game, and improve his dribbling, to the point where he can create a shot and get open, but basically he is a very limited type of shooter.
I’ll give Will a small pass, these last 2 games, for not being 100% with his ankle, but 2 out of 18 is bad even considering that.
I really hope Marshall and Bullock are good enough to start (along with Zeller, Henson, and Barnes) because if they aren’t I feel it’s going to be a very challenging process next year.
Ginyard…31% ACC shooting.
Graves….34.5%, but 25% on the road.
Deon…..44.8%
LD2…..35.5%
i give LD a little slack on shooting. its tough to shoot well when you are overwhelmed with PG responsibilities. yes, some awful awful turnovers. but 8 assists. he CAN trim his errors next year, i think.
I just checked and Ginyard was shooting 32% in conference play this year. I guess tonight didn’t officially count, but basically against ACC competition he shot 30% from the floor. From three point range, Ginyard ended up shooting under 19%.
Why would anyone even bother guarding him during the 33 minutes that Roy plays him, come hell or highwater….
“For folks who accuse the team of quitting, folks asking the team to pass on the NIT are guity if quitting on them, and are no better.”
No, actually we are very good compassionate fans.
If Marshall and Bullock are not able to start over less highly recruited guys who had horrible, horrible freshmen seasons, then we are indeed in big trouble because that means we botched two classes in a row.
It doesn’t matter whether you or I say that we have basically given up on this entire class save one guy. It is what it is, but I have a hard team seeing anybody from this current class ever being anything but a role player, except Henson. I would tell McDonald and Strickland to basically not even work on their game at all this summer, except for shooting,because if they can’t even make 40% from the floor, there really isn’t any point….
Ya’ll the first half we played great, yeah we missed some easy ones. But I did see alot of heart during that first half. If I’m not mistaken Graves got in one of the Wears grill motivating him on the free throw line. Ginyard was communicating…Guys were standing up from the bench when guys came out and it looked like they genuinely cared. These were all good signs during the first half. I wish we could have seen more of that during our actual season but they did come ready to play tonight. We just ran out of steam.
No matter what I still love me some Heels. All of them. Even Roy.
^^worse than that, William, Marcus had 3 of his 7 ACC 3s vs Maryland. he was 4 of 30 in the other 16 games. he wouldve had the red light from me.
maybe i’d make a bad coach.
with enough statistical backup, i’d say “Will, no shooting on the road, and your minutes are cut on the road for sure. and Marcus, no shooting from 3 at all, period. We arent good enough getting those rebounds to afford those 62 missed 3s from you guys.”
***
^i see your point, steph. i saw enthusiasm from the bench, and that moment from Will, too.
i just dont get how they werent about to BUST with energy coming out in the 2nd half. you could NOT let GT get back in like that. even if you had to run through someone. scream. look like a lunatic. but get that energy out there.
Rath makes a good point.
It is hard to call the regular posters on here, fair weather fans. If anything, you might call us masochists or obsessive compulsives….
This team has to be the least fun team to watch going back to Frank McGuire. The only thing that even possibly made them more interesting than the 2003 team was the play of Zeller and Henson in February. Just imagine if Zeller doesn’t come back and Henson stays on the bench and it would have been about as interesting to watch as …..
“I saw Graves miss a ton but kept trying. He needs to practice shooting in unfamiliar surroundings.” You mean like on a basketball court?
The second half was so painful, just all of it. It hurts to lose to Georgia Tech, at least it wasn’t Miami beating Wake like they stole something. Also Wake took our NIT spot. Game over, game over man.
Let the season end, end it now. Too painful. I’m just at a loss. Like Woody, I’m looking forward to some football, starting with the Spring game. But I do know that I’ll be watching Kinston go for the state championship – I will yell “Make it Wayne” several times, very loudly, maybe we can say hi at the game just to put a face with a post.
“This team has to be the least fun team to watch going back to Frank McGuire”
How true. I kept watching as I have the past 4 decades because I couldn’t not watch. Like a bad accident.
Can you imagine what Billy Packer would say about tonight and our season in general? So glad he is not around.
Well I won’t say I’m satisfied with the outcome but I can accept it a lot better then I can what happened against Duke. The boys didn’t quit tonight, and if the team we saw tonight had showed up all year we probably would have been about 8-8 in conference play and we probably would have drawn BC or UVA (whom we match up with better IMO) today instead of GA Tech (whom we did not match up with well) and might have won. We had the opportunity to win tonight but just couldn’t close the deal.
Honestly, those of you down on them are being too harsh tonight. We knew we probably weren’t going to win before the game started. We already knew this season was a bust. Let’s look at the positives from tonight instead of banging our head against that same wall.
First, Zeller played very well, with a double double and a point total that nearly matched Ga Tech’s All ACC Favors. He is certainly worth keeping and is not dead weight. If he can finally stay healthy he is going to be a game changer.
The team fought, and hustled for every loose ball tonight. They didn’t stand around and spectate. They didn’t allow Tech to rain 3 point shots on us over and over again. They didn’t allow tons of easy penetration layups. Tech had to work for their points.
I need to see the box score but I think they actually had less turnovers then GT did. That might be the only time this year against a fellow conference member. What’s more there weren’t a ton of bad turnovers thrown in to the stands. The passing looked far crisper tonight then we’ve seen in a very very long time.
We actually got penetration. OK a lot of close shots didn’t go down but at least we got open looks for a change. Will Graves showed an ability to create open looks for himself and others, again his shooting tonight was putrid but at least he was able to move with the ball to set up what should be high percentage looks.
The rebounding especially on the offensive end was outstanding. Carolina got multiple looks on a lot of possessions tonight and was able to convert a good many of those second chances in to points.
Larry Drew had a decent game, all the detractors are going to remember is that last turnover but he did a good job running the offense tonight before that and he showed an ability to run the break as well.
Speaking of which, we actually saw the Heels run tonight and even score baskets. It’s the first time all year long I have seen them play Roy’s brand of basketball and execute it properly.
I think Travis gave decent minutes tonight. He hit 1 of only 2 threes made by the whole team tonight. He played decent D, he didn’t dribble the ball off of his hip. He didn’t look lost on both ends of the court.
Henson, actually had an off game by his standards and we still could have won it. He only made 1 shot from the field, and got pushed around on defense by the stronger Favors. If he hadn’t had an off night we probably would have pulled this one out.
Strickland looked as good as I have seen him in a month, no glaring turnovers and good ball movement at least. If he can migrate back to shooting guard next year with the arrival of Marshall (assuming Drew doesn’t transfer) I think he can be a real asset to the team.
If the player’s try and hustle and fight I will accept their efforts as the best they can do and hope for better next year. I’m not willing to beat these guys up after this game because they played with heart and they didn’t quit, and that makes all the difference in the world to me between a bunch of undeserving losers, and a team that I will support no matter what their record is.
unc steph me to Billy was the worst, It seams to me that after Larry makes the first mistake he gives up. sill love me some HEELS
“I would put Zeller, Henson, Bullock, Barnes and Marshall out there in game one and play them until their tongues hang out.”
Thank you, William.
I couldn’t agree more. This season was hell…pure hell. I am…I am done.
Thanks for a lot of pain, Roy & Co. I just can’t see how ore why good coaching never surfaced to make the necessary changes. If you are watching a bad show, change the channel. If you are eating a bad meal, send it back or re-order…don’t force-feed yourself just to prove a stinking point.
Man, I just can’t beleive this year…
One more thing…
Dear Coaching staff,
Watch tape until your eyes bleed. Mandate effort or trim the fat. If you chose not to do these things, don’t dare complain about fans not feeling the Dean Dome.
SHAMEFUL performance. SHAMEFUL. I’m embarassed for them…all of them. SHAMEFUL.
Wow UGA you’re definitely a glass half full poster. I am left with no good feelings about this season. I want it OVER and hope like hell that there is no carryover to next year. The incoming freshmen are going to have to be unf***ingbelievable to make these heels competitive for the ACC title.
Does anyone know which UNC team had the highest number of freshmen starters?
The heart was fine tonight. A lot of that was due to Zeller and Henson, though. The game is called basketball, however, and it helps to actually insert the ball in the hoop from time to time.
We would have had to have been the greatest defensive team in the history of basketball, to have lived up to our ranking this year. Even the 1989 Pistons, had Isiah Thomas and Dumars. There was just nobody on this team who was a reliable scorer. I have never seen that before. I read that Roy thought Ellington was coming back. Wow, that was news to all of us. Nobody on here expected Ellington back.
I need a long break from UNC basketball, I have never left a season feeling so hopeless about the future.
If is..
Marshall, Bullock, Barnes, Henson, Zeller we have a shot to be decent.
but sadly I think it will be
Drew, Stickland, Graves, Zeller, Henson
^Yeah, I’m worried about Roy’s upperclassman love.
So if Ed leaves which i guess is pretty much a definite who will Roy use that scholarship on? Any leads in the recruiting world?
Didn’t the 2003 team have 3 freshman starters? That ended up working out pretty well for us a couple of years later….
I doubt that we even had 2 very often, except for that year.
Not to mention that Tyler Hansbrough started pretty much from day one, and Ty was the starting point guard by the end of his freshman season. If the new guys show talent and ability then they will most likely get the starts and the minutes.
What I don’t wan to carry over to next year is the attitude. If the team loses that problem then a lot of positive things are possible. I don’t think the incoming recruits have to be unbelievable for us to compete. I just think they have to live up to expectations and our returning players have to continue to grow and mature.
2009 and 2005 were not built overnight. Lawson was NOT the best PG in the country in 06, 07, or even 08. Danny Green did not play at the same level in 06, 07, and 08 that he did in 09. The players that won it all in 05 were the same basic crew that couldn’t get 20 wins in 03.
Last spring’s expectations of this year and this recruiting class were wildly unrealistic. Roy Williams tried to tell everyone that before the beginning of the season but no one would listen. Everybody expect UNC 2006 version 2.0 or Kansas 2009 and it didn’t happen. It was foolish to have this team listed in the preseason top 5. It was foolish to think we were going back to the Final 4. Granted that this team did NOT live up to it’s potential, but you can’t expect to draw 3 Aces every time the cards are dealt.
All the gloom predicted for next year is no more realistic then all the pie in the sky that was predicted for this year. I for one can’t wait for next year, and look forward to it being far better then this year was.
Was it just me or was Mike Wood channeling his inner Karl Hess?
Mike Wood is so much worse than Hess, you just dont realize.
^^^^True. It went 19-16, w/ an NIT invitation, that year.
That was a very good freshman class. I hope this freshman class, coupled with the returning players, can significantly exceed the performance of the ’03 team , which I think it should, or it ain’t exactly going to be Pleasantville around here.
Dean never played as many guys as Roy does, but the substitutions really got enervating this year. Frank McGuire played 6 guys and that was it. Dean basically played 5 guys the whole way against Georgetown back in 1982 and that was with fewer stops in play.
I actually am not enjoying the games as much because of all the substitutions. I understand that there was a point to it in 2005 and 2007 when we were so incredibly deep but this year, it was basically take out one average guy and put in someone even worse the whole year. Next year, I hope he follows Dean in 1982 and basically plays his starters all at least 30 minutes a game. If it wears them out, too bad. We don’t expect to win it all next year anyway. I just can’t take anymore of watching Graves flail around on the court and the other guys coming back, except for Zeller, Henson, and possibly Drew as a back-up, don’t deserve many minutes unless they pull a Darrell Elston (most improved player under Dean).
Why am I smelling an NIT championship? Must be congested.
youre smelling something else.
how bout the SCACCHOOPS data…
5 of 6 on dunks
14 of 26 on layups
2 of 20 on jumpers
2 of 16 on 3s
so 4 of 36 on anything outside what…3 or 4 feet? if that?
thats tough to do.
but you could be that bad, if youd just make 3 more layups.
Ginyard probably ended up having just about the most varied experience in UNC history. He played on two teams that followed national titles, one incredibly successful and one dismal. The other three years, he played on teams that were all ranked number one in the nation.
Unfortunately, for whatever reason, Ginyard peaked in 2007 and I don’t think it was due to injuries. He is one of those puzzling guys who went from being an excellent free throw shooter early in his career to being a very poor one at the end. How does that even happen?
Sad as it may be, Ginyard and Roy Williams will forever be linked in my mind. Al McGuire once joked that it would take an amazing player to ever get his pedestrian son, Allie, out of the Marquette line-up. I think we saw that for Roy, it took at least someone of the caliber of Wayne Ellington, or an injury to take Ginyard out of the line-up. It didn’t seem to matter to Roy how poorly Ginyard played in virtually all of the big post-season NCAA games, he still sent him out there for 30 minutes a game.
One reason that Roy doesn’t get nearly as much credit for his second title as for his first is that many of us feel that if Ginyard had not gotten hurt, UNC would not have won it at all. It is sad to say, but Roy Williams simply was blind when it came to Marcus Ginyard. And it hasn’t served Ginyard well. He will now be remembered for this pathetic season and for being played unfairly, it seems in front of Danny Green.
Aside from that, I really can’t remember any big Ginyard moments or anything. Ginyard was essentially Pat Sullivan in terms of being fairly highly recruited and being around for five years. But Dean Smith had enough sense to realize that Pat Sullivan wasn’t going to lead his team to wins. For some unknown reason, Roy Williams thought Ginyard would.
Ahhh I guess you forgot that moment in the 93 title game where Dean substituted bench players for all 5 of his starters in the second half. Obviously this year can not be taken as an example of normal substitution pattern for Roy. Last year the only guys I remember coming off the bench on a regular basis were Frasor, Drew and Davis. What’s more Davis and especially Drew got very few minutes to speak of. To be honest Drew’s lack of minutes last year has a lot to do with his struggles this year IMO. 08 was very similar in that respect. Green came off the bench and got plenty of minutes but who else did? In 05 we didn’t run a ton of bench minutes either.
Roy probably ran so many players in and out this year in an attempt to find a combination that worked, and to try and develop young talent. Unfortunately neither task got done very well this year. I think that problem will be improved next year. Their won’t be but one senior and probably one junior that get playing time next year. Who knows if David will come back next year or at all from his hip injury. Who knows who else might leave or transfer.
I say it again, making gloomy predictions about next year at this point is as foolish as making pie in the sky predictions about this year was last year. Let’s put this year behind us and enjoy a good baseball and football season(or part of one) before we start burying next years team already.
No, I didn’t forget Dean’s substitution of all those guys in 1993. It was due to a fluke where the game went like 8 minutes straight without a time-out and he credits it for the comeback. It also was consistent with his blue team practices of the past. But he did not ever mindlessly substitute, the way Roy has this year.
The reason why Drew didn’t play last year was because he was horrible. Roy did try to get him minutes but he was almost as bad as Quentin Thomas was his freshman year.
State looks good for a win over Clemson.
the Tigers will join the parade of teams limping into the NCAAT.
What’s really kind of weird to me, and is sort of lost in all this looking-ahead talk, is the ever-languishing Justin Watts. And he still has two years left on his scholarship.
I know it isn’t uncommon for certain recruits to very little PT in their careers, but if we’re talking about top 50 HS recruits deserving sparse minutes, where does this put Justin? Does anyone think he will ever be more than a 2 to 3 MPG-when-we’re-way-ahead type player?
I am basically racking up this season’s recruiting class as bad luck. It happens.
We have had plenty of good luck. David Noel ended up being way better than anyone could have thought. Wes Miller was essentially one of those walk-ons you put on the team for morale and he ended up second in the nation in offensive efficiency in 2006. How many teams have two walk-ons like Noel and Miller?
Marvin Williams and Brandan Wright were one and out guys, but they had truly great freshmen years. Ed Davis had a really good freshman year last year. Tyler Hansbrough way overperformed, even given his five star rating. McRoberts was supposed to be definitely better than he was. Reyshawn Terry, another Doherty guy, ended up overperforming, and Danny Green ended up overperforming.
So now, we have tasted the downside. Obviously, we will all be happy to be proven wrong, but even as happy as we all are with Henson, let’s face it. He was ranked coming in equal to Williams, Wright, Lawson, Ellington and Hansbrough. Did we get anything even close to that kind of production from John?
So basically, UNC added five guys this year, none of whom met expectations. Not a single one of them. The only reason we are happy about Henson now is because he looked like he had been playing after sniffing nitrous oxide earlier in the season, but his final numbers are not going to be impressive at all, except for blocked shots.
So the luck turns. It is like calling heads or tails wrong five times in a row, essentially, when you bring in five four or five star guys and not a single one of them meets expectations.
The reason Drew didn’t play last year was because A. Roy had Bobby Frasor to backup the point and because B. he had Ty Lawson to run the point and because C. they were trying to win a title. Oh and yes he struggled last year too.
Are you really suggesting that Roy has no system at all to his substitutions? You are really telling me that you have seen his actual game plan, and what’s more even crawled around inside his head to find out that he doesn’t think about what he is doing during the game? That is a bit presumptuous of you isn’t it?
Yes that 93 substitution was due to a fluke but a lot of people(including Michael Jordan) thought Dean had lost his mind when he did that. What if it hadn’t worked? What if Michigan had built a lead that we couldn’t recover from? I don’t imagine you would be saying Dean had a plan that worked if that had happened. It would probably be called mindlessly substitution if we had lost that title game.
if playing basketball, regardless of where, is important to Watts, he HAS to transfer. without a stunning increase in skill, he is barely going to see the court next season.
^^^I think the Wears actually met expectations (maybe just mine – I’m not sure what the consensus was on what they were supposed to be able to do) based on their scouting profile and rankings. I don’t know about Leslie, maybe, maybe not, although he was actually ranked lower than the Wears. John did only in spurts. Dexter did not.
I think too much was expected out of the class as a whole. Most of those rating services give high “class rankings” based on depth of Top 100 players vs. how many are actually in the Top 20, for example.
Dean took a risk. He probably received less credit for the risk he took than he deserved because he would have been lambasted if it had not worked.
I think I said that Roy’s substitution patterns made sense in 2005 and 2007, which were both years where a lot of guys played. Last year, Bobby Frasor was so horrible through about Valentine’s Day, that the back-up position was right there for Drew, but Drew managed to be just as bad as Frasor somehow.
We have had a lot of duds at the guard position under Roy Williams. I liked Quentin Thomas as a person and he did end up having some moments, more actually than Ginyard ever would, but he was not as good as I would have liked. I think we could have gotten guys better than Ginyard and Frasor in 2006. They ended up being mediocre players at best. Watts does not seem to be good enough to play. I am not sure Strickland or McDonald are good enough to play in the ACC. Wes Miller and Reyshawn Terry were not recruited by Roy.
That basically leaves Ty Lawson and Wayne Ellington, who were excellent guards, but the ratio of hits is not good.
I hope the guards coming in are better.
To be fair to the Wears, they may have gotten more hype due to being twins than to their ranking. Nevertheless, they ended up being, at least to people who don’t scour the recruiting sites, the face of the class.
The other thing, is that you could quibble about the Wears individually meeting expectations, but does anyone think we needed two guys of that caliber?
And you make a good point about the depth thing. That is why I keep saying that the Wears could have made a huge difference at a decent program like Cornell or Davidson, but they make barely a blip at UNC.
We would have been far better off with one Brandan Wright coming in and nobody else, with regard to this year, than five mediocre guys to add to the five mediocre guys we already had.
Who knows if we even have two of them at this point. It was a minor looking hip injury after all that ended Bo Jackson’s career. I think it unfair to ask the question did we need two of them without even knowing who else our coaches tried to recruit at the same time, who else turned us down for someone else, and who our coaches chose not to try and recruit.
Yeah everybody wants to throw Wall up in our face but does anybody think Wall would have saved this year or done more then get us to the Sweet 16 if we were lucky? And next year we would be starting all over again since he would be gone.
If we are including Ellington and even Ginyard as guard recruits then I think we have to include Danny Green as well. He certainly did more guard play then post play in his time on the court at Carolina.
is this Deon’s final stat line?
1339 points/695 rebounds/107 assists
Kris Lang?
1391/678/73
Jason Capel?
1446/807/329
Ademola Okulaja?
1249/887/326
Deon’s career ended up definitely being a disappointment. He might have been better off trying to focus on being a Bill Bradley type player. He definitely will not be playing on the inside at the next level. I think he has more of a European game.
^^^The point that has been discussed, several times here, is not so much whether we recruited anyone else, or could have gotten someone better or different than David or Travis at the time, but that we didn’t necessarily HAVE to use two scholarships for such similar players . Coaches don’t have to use all their scholarships, and sometimes they can be put to better use later, and when more suitable players become available. (Like now maybe)
Again, this is no knock on any individual players, it’s more of a strategic philosophy of recruiting.
Larry that’s fair enough, but that may happen anyway. Davis is probably going, Drew might transfer, and David Wear may not be able to come back from his hip problem. Any one of those three factors frees that scholarship up, and the complaint everybody has about it is solved.
Evidently Roy or one of his assistants saw enough potential in them to think they were worth the scholarships. I’d say that they know a lot more about recruiting then any of us are likely too. It’s easy to criticize someone after they are here. It’s a lot harder to tell what they are going to do before they get here.
“Larry that’s fair enough, but that may happen anyway. Davis is probably going, Drew might transfer, and David Wear may not be able to come back from his hip problem. Any one of those three factors frees that scholarship up, and the complaint everybody has about it is solved.”
Not necessarily, even then. If a scholarship becomes available for next year, and it is filled, and all the underclassmen return for year after next, then, combined with the committments for 2012, UNC will be “over-committed” . 13 available scholarships vs. 14 committments.
That’s the discussion that has taken place regarding whether Roy would even fill that scholarship for next year, if open, because of the potential conflict, and not exactly knowing what’s going to happen. If he does, then we can assume he is pretty confident with how it will all play out.
Now if we had TWO scholarships to play with for next year………different story.
That’s what I’m saying though. We don’t know what’s going to happen next year. D Wear might not come back or might have to redshirt. Drew might transfer(actually kinda hope not at this point). Zeller might have a sensational year and leave after his junior season. Same thing could happen with Henson. It’s pointless to second guess it at this point we just don’t have enough info available to make a good decision.