UNC-Davidson

Jeremy's post about the UNC-Davidson game inspired me to write out some thoughts from yesterday's UNC game in Charlotte. While we certainly didn't play great, Davidson is definitely a quality team (probably 2nd or 3rd best out of conference team we'll play this year behind Louisville and maybe UK or Ohio St) and we essentially played the 1st half with no contribution from our 2nd best player (Tywon) and the 2nd half with no contribution from our best player (Tyler). Those 2 will certainly play way better than they did last night almost every game (I'd be willing to bet this will be one of Ty's 2 or 3 worst games of the season, if not his worst) and that'll make a big difference. I also expect more from Deon, though not nearly as much as some others. Lasting things to worry about from this game imo: 1. getting the ball into the post - we couldn't do it consistently against a solid team and when we did, both Tyler and Deon were terrible passing out of the double team. One thing I noticed last year and again last night is that QT is by far our best player at feeding the post and Danny is unbelievably bad at it. 2. interior/help defense - Brandan was not a great defender but he was a shotblocker, something we do not have right now. Tyler and Deon are completely worthless in this area (Tyler in particular doesn't even challenge shots because he's worried about getting into foul trouble), so when our perimeter defenders got beat, it was an easy layup more often than not. Hopefully Danny and Stepheson can help with this throughout the year and that Deon is better at it than he looked last night (he did lead that under-19 USA team in blocks over the summer...the performance that it seems has led to much of the hype surrounding him as a capable replacement for Brandan). Surprisingly Encouraging things: 1. Danny at the 4 - if Deon doesn't live up to the hype, we'll see a lot of this throughout the year. Assuming we're not playing a team with 2 legit post scorers (and I can't imagine we'll play a whole lot of teams that have these), Danny is a serviceable rebounder/defender as a 4 (and an upgrade as a help defender over Deon) and adds a lot by giving us another 3 point shooter (think Jawad/Marvin playing the 4 in '05) and a great free throw shooter at the end of games. He's going to be very important this year. 2. Wayne, Wayne, Wayne - best game he's ever played. Made big shots at the end, scored in a lot of different ways. His game reminds me of Joe Forte, good enough 3 point shooter, great pull-up game and willing to go all the way to the basket. People forgot how good Forte was, but if Wayne can be as good this year as Forte was his freshmen year (soph year, Forte averaged like 22 ppg), we have a great shot at the championship. 3. QT/Bobby - QT was solid as the backup point and Bobby looked healthy and confident playing the 2 (he did a good job defending Curry, as did Marcus) and also looked better at the point than he did last year. Playing Bobby at the 2 is an extremely smart move by Roy imo and sets up a great rotation with set roles for everyone (huge contrast from last year). Ty, Wayne, Marcus, Deon, Tyler starting...QT is the backup point, Bobby is the backup 2/3rd point, Danny will jump around between 3 and 4, Alex is the 3rd true big man. 4. We won a legitimately close game that could have gone either way in the final 2 minutes. We lost these more than we won them last season... I actually went to the game in Charlotte and it was a good time. The Bobcats arena is very nice and the atmosphere was quite good with very impressive support for Davidson in about half the lower level for their 'home game' and the rest being UNC fans. Though we didn't play especially well, I was thrilled to get out of there with a win. I'll be very interested to see how Davidson does against Duke, State, and UCLA to see just how quality a win this was.