Painful.

Now *this* is the kind of thread I was trying to start.

On Mar 27, 5:06 pm, larrytxe... DeleteThis @gmail.com wrote:
> On Mar 27, 12:09 pm, Donnie Barnes <djbSPAMSU... DeleteThis @donniebarnes.com>
> wrote:
>
> > The breaks we "gave" them were a combination of mistakes of youth and of
> > just plain missing shots that we normally hit. Credit some of that with
> > Georgetown, though...they started playing perfect ball which upped the
> > pressure on young athletes. They didn't handle it well. I guarantee they
> > will learn from it, and barring mass defections we'll be even better next
> > year.

> Simply enough, I could not believe all the 3s Carolina was hoisting up
> all of a sudden. Why in the WORLD would they do such a thing?

Well, Donnie can and did speak for himself, but I think at least some
of those threes were the mistakes of youth that he was talking about.
Seems like, at that point in the game, and at that point in the shot
clock, it would've made sense for Ellington to keep trying to work it
around for a better shot. Of course, if the only change was that we
took more time off the clock, we might not have had time to try the
last play for the win.
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On Mar 27, 5:55 pm, "Edward M. Kennedy" <d....RemoveThis@wox.com> wrote:

> F'rinstance, there have been several years where one would
> have to wonder how in the hell Duke is going to match up
> with UNC's frontcourt, much less beat them, and yet they
> did.

Well, that may have been how things looked from that end of the
boulevard, but this was the first year in a long time where I've
thought a victory by Duke over us would be at all surprising.
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On Mar 27, 6:21 pm, Donnie Barnes <djbSPAMSU... DeleteThis @donniebarnes.com>
wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Mar, larrytxe... DeleteThis @gmail.com wrote:

> I like how you answered your own question but denied me the right to give
> you that answer all at the same time. :-) But the answer *is* the zone.
> ...
> Attend some coaching clinics if you want in depth specifics as
> to why, but in a nutshell we saw about 97% man to man this season (with a
> lot of doubling down) and 3% zone.

That seems about right, now that you mention it, but now I'm curious
-- why didn't teams throw zone at us more? You'd think we'd be the
team you'd want to use it against, with our front line strength and
mediocre outside shooting. Is 3% more than most teams get? Or are
zones weak against a good driving point guard?

> And sometimes players just do things they shouldn't, like a
> couple of those quick jumpshots (that's the youth thing).

Oops. I forgot you said that or I wouldn't have repeated it in my
other post. :-)
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<larrytxeast.DeleteThis@gmail.com> wrote

> Simply enough, I could not believe all the 3s Carolina was hoisting up
> all of a sudden.

If one of them goes down, you win. But they didn't, so you
don't.

> Why in the WORLD would they do such a thing?

Because they were open?

> They had
> Tyler Hansbrough and Brandan Wright to throw to,

And, hopefully, to rebound.

> And please don't tell me it's because of the zone and Georgetown
> "collapsing" on those players. I'm sorry, but I've never bought the
> theory that a team could so smother a big man--let along 3 of them at
> the same time--that you can't even get them the ball at all. Please.
> Bullfeathers.

It's not just a question of getting them the ball but in a
position to shoot or drive. Granted UNC did a poor job, but
it isn't nearly as easy as you seem to think.

F'rinstance, there have been several years where one would
have to wonder how in the hell Duke is going to match up
with UNC's frontcourt, much less beat them, and yet they
did.

--Tedward
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On Mon, 26 Mar, Mark Foskey wrote:
> On Mar 26, 6:51 pm, Charlie Board <charNOTlieORTHISbo... RemoveThis @nc.rr.com>
> wrote:
>> And they ran it very, very well over those last 10 minutes. With all
>> the talk of a UNC meltdown people seem to have overlooked that
>> Georgetown was playing some mighty fine, mighty well-integrated
>> (pun intended) team-oriented basketball. On both ends.
>
> Yeah, Georgetown did play well down the stretch. I do have to give
> them that.

Which is why pretty much every post about this from Tar Heel fans except
Mark make no sense. Sure, UNC had opportunities to put the game away, but
the reality is that Georgetown played great in those last 11 minutes (six
or so of regulation and the overtime). They had to play perfect ball those
last six minutes and they had to have some breaks on top of it, and we let
them have the breaks. They did what they had to do and they won. They
played great basketball to do it.

I'm certainly disappointed to not be going to Atlanta, but I'm happy with
the season and have a LOT less problem losing like we did to who we did
than ANY of the other losses during the season. Georgetown has been
playing GREAT basketball for the last month or more, and to the Heel fans
had no clue they were good (which is pretty much anyone whining right now),
shame on you. You're hanging team members and coaches out to dry who
simply do not deserve it.

The breaks we "gave" them were a combination of mistakes of youth and of
just plain missing shots that we normally hit. Credit some of that with
Georgetown, though...they started playing perfect ball which upped the
pressure on young athletes. They didn't handle it well. I guarantee they
will learn from it, and barring mass defections we'll be even better next
year.


--Donnie

--
Donnie Barnes http://www.donniebarnes.com 879. V.
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larrytxeast.RemoveThis@gmail.com wrote:

>
> Simply enough, I could not believe all the 3s Carolina was hoisting up
> all of a sudden. Why in the WORLD would they do such a thing? They had
> Tyler Hansbrough and Brandan Wright to throw to, and heck Deon
> Thomspon as well while we're at it. All 3 had been killing Georgetown,
> scoring and drawing fouls as well. why fire all those 3s in that
> situation? It's called force-feed that puppy to Number 50 and get the
> freak out of the way.


Just to bring a little perspective to that argument:
FIRST 6:40 OF GAME: UNC attempted zero 3's, outscored by GT
NEXT 26:50 : UNC attemts *11* 3's, blows out GT
LAST 6:31 (REG) : UNC attempts 5 3's, gets blown out
(all according to ESPN play-by-plays)

I don't see a pattern of success/failure wrt to how many 3's
UNC was trying. The problem wasn't taking too many....it was
missing them all.

>
> And please don't tell me it's because of the zone and Georgetown
> "collapsing" on those players. I'm sorry, but I've never bought the
> theory that a team could so smother a big man--let along 3 of them at
> the same time--that you can't even get them the ball at all. Please.
> Bullfeathers.
>
> Maybe my memory is escaping me, but I can't recall us losing a game
> because they couldn't get the ball to Sean May at all. I never heard
> of that with Eric Montross either.

It happened quite often with MOntross, iirc.
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Donnie Barnes wrote:

>On Mon, 26 Mar, Mark Foskey wrote:
>>On Mar 26, 6:51 pm, Charlie Board <charNOTlieORTHISbo....TakeThisOut@nc.rr.com>
>>wrote:
>>>And they ran it very, very well over those last 10 minutes. With all
>>>the talk of a UNC meltdown people seem to have overlooked that
>>>Georgetown was playing some mighty fine, mighty well-integrated
>>>(pun intended) team-oriented basketball. On both ends.
>>
>>Yeah, Georgetown did play well down the stretch. I do have to give
>>them that.
>
>Which is why pretty much every post about this from Tar Heel fans except
>Mark make no sense.

I agree with Mark's comment that "behind every great comeback, there is a
choke."


> Sure, UNC had opportunities to put the game away, but
>the reality is that Georgetown played great in those last 11 minutes (six
>or so of regulation and the overtime). They had to play perfect ball those
>last six minutes and they had to have some breaks on top of it, and we let
>them have the breaks. They did what they had to do and they won. They
>played great basketball to do it.
>
>I'm certainly disappointed to not be going to Atlanta, but I'm happy with
>the season and have a LOT less problem losing like we did to who we did
>than ANY of the other losses during the season. Georgetown has been
>playing GREAT basketball for the last month or more, and to the Heel fans
>had no clue they were good (which is pretty much anyone whining right now),
>shame on you. You're hanging team members and coaches out to dry who
>simply do not deserve it.

Oh I knew it would be a tough game. It's the way we lost that I'm upset
about. We shouldn't have lost that game after having been in control for
almost the entire first 34 minutes.


>The breaks we "gave" them were a combination of mistakes of youth and of
>just plain missing shots that we normally hit. Credit some of that with
>Georgetown, though...they started playing perfect ball which upped the
>pressure on young athletes.

I don't buy the youth excuse. I believe UCLA last year was just as young
as UNC this year. I believe Ohio St is also just as young as UNC.


>They didn't handle it well. I guarantee they
>will learn from it, and barring mass defections we'll be even better next
>year.

I hope you're right. But history is riddled with teams that should have
been better the next season, but weren't. That's why it hurts that we
didn't capitalize on a golden opportunity.
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Edward M. Kennedy wrote:
>It's Roy's fault UNC only won the National Championship
>by a few points. Noted.

They had a 15 point second half lead. And Illinois ended up tying it.
They were lucky to win.
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On Tue, 27 Mar, larrytxeast.TakeThisOut@gmail.com wrote:
> Simply enough, I could not believe all the 3s Carolina was hoisting up
> all of a sudden. Why in the WORLD would they do such a thing? They had
> Tyler Hansbrough and Brandan Wright to throw to, and heck Deon
> Thomspon as well while we're at it. All 3 had been killing Georgetown,
> scoring and drawing fouls as well. why fire all those 3s in that
> situation? It's called force-feed that puppy to Number 50 and get the
> freak out of the way.
>
> And please don't tell me it's because of the zone and Georgetown
> "collapsing" on those players. I'm sorry, but I've never bought the
> theory that a team could so smother a big man--let along 3 of them at
> the same time--that you can't even get them the ball at all. Please.
> Bullfeathers.

I like how you answered your own question but denied me the right to give
you that answer all at the same time. :-) But the answer *is* the zone.
IMHO, we simply don't have players experienced enough at dealing with zones
properly. It's much more complicated than man to man, and still a bit more
complicated than doubling situations in a man to man to deal with a zone
PROPERLY. Attend some coaching clinics if you want in depth specifics as
to why, but in a nutshell we saw about 97% man to man this season (with a
lot of doubling down) and 3% zone. Sure, you can prepare for it in
practice some, but your practice guys can't always emulate well how
Georgetown is going to play zone, particularly with one day in between
games.

Watch closely another aspect...our guys are coached to never throw an entry
pass to a post player (whether he's calling for the ball with all his might
or not) who has a player behind him close enough to get there quickly.
That is the definition of what a zone is going to do most of the time, too.
So Tyler gets one guy on his hip and starts calling like mad for the ball,
but nobody throws it because there's another guy Tyler can't see who is
only a step away (and bigger and more athletic than Tyler). So why not
throw it anyway? Tyler thinks he's got *great* position and thus is likely
to take off hard to the basket if he catches it. Charge city.

You need zone plays that are effective. I think we had zone plays, but for
a variety of reasons they only left us with fairly open jump shots and we
chose to take them. They were good shots, and as Ted pointed out, if any
one of them goes in, we probably win. So I still don't think we played as
horribly against the zone as you (or the others who have been much worse)
infer.

> Maybe my memory is escaping me, but I can't recall us losing a game
> because they couldn't get the ball to Sean May at all. I never heard

There was this dude named Rashad McCants that was pretty good at keeping
defenses honest. Nobody did that for us in our losses this season, anyway.

> of that with Eric Montross either. I did hear that excuse all the time

You might recall some Montross teams with good shooters.

> with Brendan Haywood, but then--no bad-mouthing intended here--but
> Brendad did have his tendencies to underachieve at times. Who can
> forget his getting 1 or 2 rebounds (or was it 0) against a small team
> like Weber State in '99? Heck, Ed Cota called him out in public over
> that. So I can kind of see how this could happen to Brendan, but you
> NEVER heard of Carolina losing a game because they couldn't get the
> ball to Sean May or Eric Montross no matter how hard they tried
> because of the other team "collapsing" on them.
>
> Am I way off-base here?

Are you way off base that we should have gone inside at some point down
that stretch? Not really, no. But I think there are a lot of decent
reasons why we couldn't or didn't that I do admit aren't entirely obvious.
I do have the benefit of knowing coaches and some about what's supposed to
happen here and there, and I honestly think that the coaches weren't wrong
in letting us shoot *most* of the shots we took. The damned things just
didn't go. And sometimes players just do things they shouldn't, like a
couple of those quick jumpshots (that's the youth thing).

My own criticism of the coaching is simply that I think someone other than
Wayne (probably Reyshawn) should have shot the end of half and end of game
shots from outside if we were going to take those. But I honestly don't
know what the coach knows about the condition of either player and how they
act in those situations, either. Seemed like to me Reyshawn would have
been a better choice, but he may have been worried about how that bug had
been affecting him.


--Donnie

--
Donnie Barnes http://www.donniebarnes.com 879. V.
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Donnie Barnes wrote:
>So I still don't think we played as
>horribly against the zone as you (or the others who have been much worse)
>infer.

Can't do much worse than missing 22 of 23 shots.


>My own criticism of the coaching is simply that I think someone other than
>Wayne (probably Reyshawn) should have shot the end of half and end of game
>shots from outside if we were going to take those.

Agreed. Wayne has been struggling lately, and Reyshawn has been, for the
most part, a clutch shooter the last several games.


>But I honestly don't
>know what the coach knows about the condition of either player and how they
>act in those situations, either. Seemed like to me Reyshawn would have
>been a better choice, but he may have been worried about how that bug had
>been affecting him.

Didn't affect him on his 2 threes in the first half.
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On 27 Mar 2007 22:21:38 GMT, Donnie Barnes
<djbSPAMSUCKS.TakeThisOut@donniebarnes.com> wrote:

:IMHO, we simply don't have players experienced enough at dealing with zones
:properly. It's much more complicated than man to man, and still a bit more
:complicated than doubling situations in a man to man to deal with a zone
:PROPERLY.

Gosh, if only the university employed someone whose
job it was to prepare the players for dealing with different
situations that arise in basketball games, and advise them
what actions might be appropriate! It's to bad there wasn't
someone like that on the UNC bench.
--
I'm not an actor, but I play one on TV!

George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'
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On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 21:34:07 -0500, "tarheels_fan" <tarheels_fan> wrote:

:I don't buy the youth excuse. I believe UCLA last year was just as young
:as UNC this year. I believe Ohio St is also just as young as UNC.

While I don't buy the youth excuse for UNC
either, I really don't by it for tOSU, either; while they
have two very important freshman, the majority of
court time is taken by juniors and seniors.

--
"If you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce, they taste more like
prunes than rhubarb does" -Groucho Marx

George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'
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On 28 Mar 2007 03:06:02 GMT, Donnie Barnes
<djbSPAMSUCKS.TakeThisOut@donniebarnes.com> wrote:

:> Gosh, if only the university employed someone whose
:> job it was to prepare the players for dealing with different
:> situations that arise in basketball games, and advise them
:> what actions might be appropriate! It's to bad there wasn't
:> someone like that on the UNC bench.
:
:They had one day to prepare for this team, and they are all incredibly
:young.

They aren't all incredibly young. Hell, Hansbrough
turned 21 before UNC played its first game. They've got
three upperclassmen who play meaningful minutes,
incuding a senior starter. And you don't wait until the
postseason to teach your team how to play against the
zone.
--
Real men don't need macho posturing to bolster their egos.

George W. Harris For actual email address, replace each 'u' with an 'i'.
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