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I am cautiously optimistic about the hire.
Keatts won the press conference. He hit all the right points:
Arkansas got some late calls too. Hicks got fouled hard on his dunk to get them within one w two min left, should've been shooting an and-one. And the Jackson clearout after a dropback pass on the break happens twenty times a game and literally never gets called.
They're 38% from 3 tonight. Above their season average. They lost because of turnovers and lack of toughness in a tough environment,.
How ridiculously embarrassing, and of course gives mouth-breathing Big XII homers a ton to cheer about. Nine teams and one (naturally UNC) makes the Sweet Sixteen, and only then on a complete choke job by Arkansas? Geez.
That last miss put them below the average, but again, that's not why they lost. Actually a very similar loss to Zona in 2011. A "good" (sort of) first half was negated by a statistical anomaly (2011 was Williams making some silly 3 pointers, tonight was the turnovers) and then a 2nd half where a few momentum plays caused Duke's buttholes to pucker up. They just rolled right over and once SC got momentum, it was over.Actually below.
I guess my point is that we know duke couldn't defend. This was one of those games they needed to shoot their way out of and they couldn't. Just shooting their average against a very good d against which they couldn't generate other forms of offense wasn't going to cut it.They lost because they gave South Carolina about eight more possessions than their average would dictate. And most of Duke's turnovers were not of the "forced" variety (I'll be interested to see how many steals South Carolina was awarded), but just silly charges, airmailing the ball to opponents, travels, and other such goofiness. Not having a point guard is what killed them, not below-average three-point shooting. And Kennard having his worst game of the season didn't help either.
Meanwhile, nice job by the ACC.
Enh, I guess. Once they went down in the second half I knew the game was lost; there are multiple reasons why including the fact that Duke should have had a halftime lead of about 12 (maybe more) instead of 7, but didn't due to all the turnovers. You knew South Carolina wasn't going to shoot as poorly as they did in the second half. I just read that giving up 65 points in a half is the most for any Duke team since my sophomore year of college, 1989. South Carolina didn't look like a 67% free throw shooting team as they paraded to the stripe to make something like 30 FTs in the second half, but you can't blame them for that. They had a great gameplan and blew Duke off the court. Well-deserved.
I feel like at this point he is a guy who took a football school which almost always put their second focus on baseball and turned it into a top-40ish basketball program that used to be one of the worst hoops programs in the major conferences.
Careful...that sounds a lot like the description a lot of Pitt fans had for Jamie Dixon and when they got tired of just going to the Tournament every year and never making the Final Four, they made it uncomfortable enough for him to feel the need to leave. That worked out really well for them this year (and next year looks to be way, way worse).
We hadn't been to the tourney since 2012, although I will concede we haven't had a losing record since 2005 either, with nine 20 win seasons mixed in there. Something to be said for constantly being pretty competitive I guess.
It sure beats the alternative..which somehow my Pitt brethern failed to comprehend. Guess they weren't old enough to remember the days we'd spend most of February looking forward to the announcement of NIT bids to see if we got in.
Anything is possible, especially when you're dealing with a cranky old man, but I haven't seen or heard any suggestion of it. He's got a pretty good thing going right now with this "elite program that can't pull one and done lottery types, so it gets second tier guys that end up staying several years" bit. The Izzo model, if you will.
I haven't heard anything, either. I just know he is 66, and his program may face some penalties before next season. Given those things, I figured it was at least possible he would walk away on a high note if they win.
Are these penalties going to be less or more severe than the ones that were going to make UNC a sub .500 football team for years to come?
It's not really discussed there, but IMO the even more impressive trend is the absence of transfers. None since the Larry Drew II debacle six years ago, according to a feature on the subject in the Post yesterday.
I had read that too. Roy is underappreciated by the media, IMO. He doesn't get all the attention that K, Calipari, or even Izzo receive, but he's been just as good as them.
Not much reason to transfer when you don't have to go to class and someone else does the work.
Scandal broke around the same time that the streak without transfers started. If anything I'd say the players in question were doing more work than their peers at other big time programs because of the added scrutiny.Not much reason to transfer when you don't have to go to class and someone else does the work.
On the bolded- one premise of the Post article is that while he recruits those players, he doesn't promise them particular roles or playing time to the extent that coaches do. I can't say how much of that is truth and how much is just sugar-coating his failure to land them for other reasons (Ingram was supposedly worried about a postseason suspension). But FWIW he did seem to stick by it with Wright and Williams, who both got plenty of minutes but weren't heavily featured or shoehorned into NBA audition roles.
If they have the votes, HB2 will be gone, but the new legislation still contains some of the negatives associated with HB2. It isn't clear to me if the new legislation will satisfy all of the organizations boycotting the state. I wouldn't assume it will as it stands currently.
Agreed. He's been at UNC 14 years and won the ACC regular season outright 7 times and tied for it an 8th. He's been to the Final Four 7 times with them and won it twice with a chance at a 3rd this weekend.
. Just a little joke among some friends about years of stories on how Izzo was so great and Roy just won on talent.)
