Basketball cometh.
This will be a box score only analysis which actually does not tell us much and even that is with a grain of salt since the Heels were playing a team that was going to be chopped liver no matter what. Anyway, here stood out to me in the stats:
- 22 turnovers? Really? Well, considering UNCP had 29 miscues I suppose 22 is not so bad. The trio of Lawson, Ellington and Frasor combined for nine of those turnovers and Deon Thompson had four. This is likely not an issue as the season gets rolling but rather can be chalked up first game jitters.
- Rebounds: UNC 44 UNCP 37. I am going to chalk that up to the loss of Hansbrough and Ginyard as well. Hansbrough, given the effort he exerts will be missed on the boards. Someone else needs to step up and Deon Thompson surely tried with 10 rebounds to go along with 14 points.
- UNC did shoots a healthy number of three pointers and hit almost half of them. UNC was 10-21 from behind the newly extended arc. Danny Green, Wayne Ellington and Bobby Frasor each hit threes. Like the rebounding issue, this probably results from missing Hansbrough which creates a more perimeter oriented offense.
- The freshmen performed well, especially Tyler Zeller and Ed Davis. Zeller, who started for Hansbrough, had 13 points and six rebounds. Davis was very productive off the bench with 12 points, six rebounds and three blocks. The latter stat is where I think Davis can make the biggest impact.
- Ellington and Green led the scoring with 16 points apiece. Green also had a blocked shot, two steals and had four assists continuing his jack of all trades type of play.
- Ty Lawson has 14 points, five assists and six steals. You have to hope that steals stat is a sign of things to come on defense for Lawson.
- The Heels ended up shooting 53% from the floor after a poor first half where they shot 42%. UNC was 47% from three point range for the game. UNCP shot poorly to go along with the 29 turnovers created by 17 Tar Heel steals.
That really about covers it. The offense is in flux a bit with Hansbrough sitting out and the same could be said of the defense with Ginyard out. It was good to see Frasor back and performing well not to mention the play of Davis and Zeller. Thompson appears to be making the effort to step in for Hansbrough which he did well enough. And since this was an exhibition, all of this can be take with cautious optimism that whatever went wrong can be fixed and the postives we saw can be built upon.
We will begin to get some answers for that next week versus Penn.