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MBB Game 14: WF @ Miami - Saturday 6 pm - ESPNU

Should have gotten one of those two road games, that sucks. We hung in there during an extended period of lights out shooting by Miami, that was good. 5 guys in double figures, also good.

Two pretty good teams, to me it came down to a few bad turnovers like Alondes giving away possessions at the top of the key for scores and a couple just super dumb buckets by Miami. One-footed fade-away bank shot nonsense... Feels like back-to-back coin flip games and both came up tails.

Road wins are hard. Taking 1 of 3 from the VaTech/Louisville/Miami combo isn't that bad, should have had a BC win in there too, it's just not what you want after crushing VaTech. Down 15 points just at the line - that has to change, not sure what's going on with Sy and Walton inside but it seems like neither have the stamina to challenge shots and stay vertical around the bucket with their current minutes. Lots of dumb fouls and uncontested buckets within a foot or two of those two guys. Kinda surprised no Marsh yet given our inside problems...

Not nearly as worried about Whit and Hildreth as some. They look like freshmen with solid upsides to me, playing backup roles and not trying to do too much. Couple nice dimes and a mid range floater by Whitt, he'll start hitting those open 3's and the game will open up for him a bit. Hildreth is solid and will be a good glue guy.

Frustrating loss, but this team is just a few buckets away from 3-0 in the ACC and it's still early. Ceiling still pretty high looking forward imho.
 
I'm not concerned. We had a terrible defensive game and one particular player who made us look like fools. And we still had a close loss. The only thing that makes me mad is we wasted a good offensive day for some players. We actually were playing OK D early when they were just draining contested threes. Then after that, it was pretty much a zero defensive day.

Forbes will fix it. We obviously will still have holes on D, but we were just running around like chickens with our heads cut off today and we paid the price.

We can complain about the FTs, but the only foul that really pissed me off was the offensive foul called on Alondes late in the game. Should've been a no-call. We were fouling a lot because we were playing catchup defensively too much.
 
Miami looked pretty athletic. Some quick first steps from them this evening. Wong is a baller. Miami hit some stupid shots tonight.

It seems to me still that we "stand around" a bit too much at times.

What's up with all these opposition-wide-open-under-the-basket opportunities? Is it big man hedge play? Or just not paying attention?

Tough loss. We'll get better, I think.
 
We shot 55% on the road. Did the poor defensive effort also mean more commitment on the offensive end? Were we a tired basketball team that just did not want to expend its energy on the defensive end and lacked a player or players to lead on defense and pick up the entire team's defensive effort when it was needed? Who, if anyone, is our leader on defense? Who will consistently stop their man, or at least significantly slow him down? Do we have anyone capable of doing the defensive stopper job? We don't seem to have one. So, it's a total commitment to team defense every game, or we are going to have a very mediocre team this year.
 
sailordeac said:
they got 27 chances at the line, we got eight; does not seem to reflect the play on the floor

our defense either couldn't keep up with them, or had tired legs, or maybe it was a lack of effort

were we saving ourselves for offense, hoping they would go cold?
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I missed the game. Did we make any adjustments on D - try playing some zone for example? I recall Forbes previously said they had not had a chance to implement zone or something like that.
 
Buttermaker said:
I missed the game. Did we make any adjustments on D - try playing some zone for example? I recall Forbes previously said they had not had a chance to implement zone or something like that.
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Yes, we were on a zone once by my recall. They hit another long 3 and we went back to the M to M. When a team is hitting those shots constantly, I think you have to change to a zone or something to make them adjust some. Should have tried it longer than one possession, IMHO. Chasing guys with a M to M constantly is tiring too on our team.

Still a very competitive game. Our shots from our top 3 are not falling like they did earlier in year. LaRavia's 3 ball is not dropping like earlier. At least he goes inside to get in the flow, offensive rebound and score. I think their touch will come back. Needs to soon.
Two bad charging calls on A Williams in each of the last two games at very crucial times. Forced him to alter his play some.
 
Some weird stats from the Miami game and WF in recent games:

- Against Miami, WF shot 74% (25 for 34) from 2 and lost
- WF didn't shoot its first FT until midway through the 2nd half
- For the game, WF shot 8 FTs; Miami shot 27
- Miami had been one of the worst 3 point shooting teams in the country until this week; the Canes shot 53% from 3 against NC State and 50% against WF
- Jake LaRavia hasn't made a 3 point shot since December 4; he has been unstoppable inside (9 for 10 from 2 last night)
- Carter Whitt is 7 for 29 (24% from 3); he hit 4 of 7 against USC Upstate; outside of that game, he is 3 for 22 from 3; his TO rate has not improved since last year
- Isaiah Mucius has been on fire lately: 12 for 23 from 3 over the last three games; O ratings of 144, 123 and 137 over the last three games
 
I think we played 3 possessions of zone. First disrupted them and they took and missed a 3, next one if I recall was the backdoor alley-oop by Wong, third was an awkward 3 from that dude who is like 7/9 on the year from deep and tosses it with a knee up like from the 60's. Weird.

Anyway we gave them too much space early then tried getting up on them and it was layups and fouls. Personally I thought Sy and Walton really played horrible defensive games. They had 25 shot attempts with 18 makes inside the 3 point line. Miami mostly played a 4 guard lineup and Sy/Walton had zero blocks and only one offensive board combined. Wonder if their good offensive games messed with their focus on the defensive side - I just thought they did a really poor job disrupting shots in/near the paint of little guys. Dallas in particular has been pretty good (at times) going vertical and making inside shots really tough on driving guards. Last night he seemed to always be low, hands down, or just struggling to track the ball or anticipate shot attempts.

No kills for an entire game is rough.
 
This is the second ACC road game where Wake has a significant deficit in free throws. That is concerning. Is it Wake's style of play?

Pretty amazing when a team can go 3/4 of a game without fouling a shooter. Particularly surprising because Wake drives the ball into the lane a lot.
 
Defense has to improve. We are giving up 40.3% from 3 to conference opponents. That is 7 points above the D1 average. Obviously not sustainable, though I do think we have been a bit unlucky as a lot of them were contested.

Our offensive 2pt% has been insanely good.

If Williams isn’t able to draw the fouls he could ooc, it’s a big problem. He is not getting the benefit of the doubt at all. Defenses are also collapsing on him my much faster when he drives the lane. Opponents FTA are killing us, clearly.

Don’t understand the purpose of having our bigs out past the 3-point line on defense trying to disrupt the guards. It is asking a lot of them, seems like an easy way to pickup a foul and often it is leaving someone open right near the basket.

Mucius has been great in conference and keeps upping his game. Williamson has been real quiet since VT, is he just more of a rotational guy at this point? Whitt isn’t ready. Hildreth is a good energy off the bench. If there is anyway Monsanto can play this season, would love to see what he can do.

Florida State and Syracuse are must wins at this point if we want to stay on the bubble. This is the season, as I don’t think we’ll be favored in the next 5 games. Need some pop from the home crowd.
 
Like it or not, other coaches are out maneuvering Forbes before the game is even starting. According the announcers Larranga mentioned before the game that Wake was very physical.

This is no different than the 'mangler comment' against Darius. Other coaches try and plant ideas in the heads of the refs.

Forbes after the L'vlle game just said we need to foul less. If Forbes wants to make a point he's going to need to be a lot more direct than that. The refs are not going to react to 'we need to foul less'.

Forbes is going to have to take a T or two or suck it up and use some of that multi-million dollar salary to make the point that the refs are calling one sided games against us.

We shot 75%, or so, from 2 but we had 8 foul shots? Those number doing match up, especially since Miami was double teaming in the paint.

This isn't the SoCon where you are the big dog, you are now the little fish in the big pond, he needs to step up his coaching from mid-major to P5 level.
 
I thought the foul situation in the UL game was atrocious.

But honestly, not a ton that I saw to complain about yesterday. They didn't really foul us that much- which is why we made everything we shot. They were very aggressive to the rim and our atrocious defense required that we foul- a lot.
 
Yeah. Part of the problem is that we weren’t that aggressive until later in the game.
 
We played shit defense and got beat. Not much else to say.

On to the next one. Hope the team bounces back with a stronger effort.
 
Forbes just said on his show that he uses the stats to adjust at halftime. Miami did not have stats at halftime for the first time ever.
 
He also said that he had some conversations with "higher up's" about the FT discrepancy.
 
wfunme said:
Forbes just said on his show that he uses the stats to adjust at halftime. Miami did not have stats at halftime for the first time ever.
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The scoreboard stats were broken in the first half. That may be related. I assume he wanted some stats that aren’t available on any sports app.
 
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