Saturday, January 20, 2007

Hoops - Jackets Get Crushed in Chapel Hill

So what do you say after a night like tonight? Not really a lot to say - hey we were up 2-0 at one point. Unfortunately it went downhill from there, as the Jackets lose 77-61. It was never really close, as UNC played excellent defense and Tech's offense made it look even better. Some quick points


OFFENSIVE FLOW - WHERE DID IT GO
The Jackets are one of the best offensive teams in the nation, but tonight they looked overmatched, they looked young and they looked inexperienced. The looked like they had a freshman PG running the show. It's not good when you're holding your breath for your team to complete a pass 25 feet from the basket. Ball movement was poor, passing was weak and shot selection was questionable at times...................... oh yeah - 21 turnovers............ ouch


DEFENSE - EHH
The defense actually wasn't horrendous in the first half, but there were once again some bad breakdowns that resulted in easy buckets / dunks / etc for UNC. The key stat for me in this game was that UNC turned the ball over 19 times and we didn't score many points off those to's. Not many at all.


THIS DOESN'T CHANGE ANYTHING
Hey, face it - the odds of winning this game were small. Forget "shock the world". Wasn't happening. However, you would like you team to look a little more respectable. However, don't lose sight of the prize. This is just one game - one we were likely to lose. So we buck up - Hewitt runs the ............ out of these guys and gets them ready for the next game. This team still has a VERY reasonable chance at 10 wins in the conference. VERY possible. That will get us to the dance folks.


Meanwhile, UNC is just a deep, deep team. They can do some serious damage. They took it to us tonight and we were outmatched, intimidated, pushed around and run-over. It happens.


GO JACKETS!!!!!!