Thursday, January 08, 2004

UNC fans pontificate on GT...

... and what it will take to beat us.

Should be a very interesting game. Here are my keys:

1. Deny the ball to S.May in the post. While Luke can do a good job defending down low, against big-men one-on-one in the post, May could expose us. If he does get the ball, we need quick double-teams. However, this is dangerous, because May is a good passer. But there is no doubt that when Sean May plays well, UNC wins. Hopefully they can front him a lot and get a weakside defender behind him when he does get the pass over the top.

2. Turnovers. We have to protect the ball, and we have to force UNC to cough it up. That feeds our break and transition game.

3. Shot selection. GT needs good ball movement in the half-court offense and use their cutting and driving ability. Too much reliance on the 3-pointer and we will probably lose.

4. Defense. We have to get back to the swarming double-teams that marked our play earlier in the season. We missed a lot of assignments in the UGAy game.

Everyone thinks this will be a high scoring affair since both teams like to run. But GT opponents are averaging 55.5 points/game and the most points scored against us was 83 by UGAy but it took them 2 OT's to do it. Prior to that, nobody had scored more than 69 points. So I predict a final score of 74-71. However, I am not confident who will have the 74. Even though this is on UNC's home court, which is a BIG deal, I will go with the Jackets, because my conscious can't bear to do otherwise. GO JACKETS!!!