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Wake Forest vs. Louisville Game Thread - Sunday. 8PM ESPNU

Strickland33 said:
It was one questionable shot. BC had a few, too. He got bailed out by a very late call and proceeded to miss three free throws. Players can't be clutch all the time and CMM has been clutch for us quite a bit over the past two years. CMM is also an outstanding transition player, just to respond to ChrisL. He did a very good job on defense tonight, too.

I think he has accepted his role as a defensive stopper and slasher, but don't forget that last year he was the guy taking the last shot. He's slowly finding his way back on the offensive end of the floor. Hopefully the staff is able to do a better job of balancing our offense moving forward. There are plenty of other pieces that don't exactly fit together right now, either. Crab, for instance, really should focus more on getting offense off of the dribble (2/3 FG tonight and a rock solid FG percentage this year) instead of continuing to chuck the ball from outside.
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CMM was clutch for us last year? Do you recall UVA, CLEMSON , Syracuse , Duke, and Louisville?
 
Some of you need to give CMM a bigger leash. He's just coming back from injury and finding there is a new PG and alpha in the backcourt. He's still adjusting and needs to find his way to contribute offensively. I like MW's shooting and offensive spacing more but other than that, the edge goes to CMM on defense, transition and creating for others. Neither is a complete player, nor are Hudson or Rondale. The offense looks a lot different now then it did in the last 3 years. I really think CMM will adjust and like that DM knows how much he can help us.
Rondale is earning his minutes. I did not know he had 5 assists in him. I was impressed with his perimeter D.
I love that we have like 5 or 6 guys that can bring the ball up even under pressure. Such a contrast to teams we've had in the past.
9 TOs vs 18 ast tonight should not be overlooked. That's quite an improvement for us. We shot 39%/ 25%/ 33% at Louisville and have a really decent chance to win in the last 2 min. Pretty amazing and shows we do not need to rely on hot shooting to win, or almost-win.
It looks like our guys are finding their way on perimeter switches. I didn't see Louisville do much of anything on the pick and roll in the 2nd half. Our guys recognize when mismatches have occurred off switches and immediately hedge to adjust. They looked very fluid as a team defense.
Dinos, while generally a bad defender in the post and on the perimeter, is definitely well ahead of where he was defensively last year and has even had some solid stretches in recent games with steals and blocks.
We only scored 57 points. Can't pin anything on one player.
 
CMM has been a great transition player in the past. Has he been this year? No. Without his ability to drive and score in the lane, he is very limited offensively because he can't shoot.
 
While Codi has been admittedly atrocious on offense, it is not a coincidence that our defense has improved since his return. His offense will improve as he gets back to game speed and as he adjusts to/accepts his new role.

With the addition of Crawford, Codi is a liability in our half court offense and his shot selection in the half court should reflect that. He took a few shots last night that we simply don't need him to take anymore. He's worth having on the floor, however, simply for his defense and transition offense (which will return).
 
http://www.journalnow.com/sports/wf...cle_e1ffd448-b299-11e5-91fc-0b4a35f77c43.html

Thomas based his case of Wake being a Top 15 team on the fact that, in his mind at least, the only team other than Vanderbilt to beat the Deacons this season were the Deacons themselves.

"We beat ourselves against Richmond,'' Thomas said. "We beat ourselves against Xavier. We beat ourselves against Louisville. The only team that straight-out, flat-out beat us was Vanderbilt because we came out slow.''

Saying it is one thing, proving it is another. The Deacons won't have to wait long to get their next shot against a ranked team. Duke, ranked No. 15, is due in Joel Coliseum Wednesday night.

"Hopefully (after) this game we finally realize we can't let these opportunities keep slipping by,'' Thomas said. "Those are resume builders. If we win those two games (against Xavier and Louisville) we're easily in the Top 15.

"We're a Top 15 team. You can't argue against it. We beat ourselves.''
 
Devin's pass at the 3:30 minute mark really bothered me, you can't make that pass has a 4th senior who has played an extraordinary number of minutes in your career. Free throws were abysmal, otherwise we steal one at the YUM. Again, will be disappointed if we don't beat Duke on Wed.
 
Deac83 said:
http://www.journalnow.com/sports/wf...cle_e1ffd448-b299-11e5-91fc-0b4a35f77c43.html

Thomas based his case of Wake being a Top 15 team on the fact that, in his mind at least, the only team other than Vanderbilt to beat the Deacons this season were the Deacons themselves.

"We beat ourselves against Richmond,'' Thomas said. "We beat ourselves against Xavier. We beat ourselves against Louisville. The only team that straight-out, flat-out beat us was Vanderbilt because we came out slow.''

Saying it is one thing, proving it is another. The Deacons won't have to wait long to get their next shot against a ranked team. Duke, ranked No. 15, is due in Joel Coliseum Wednesday night.

"Hopefully (after) this game we finally realize we can't let these opportunities keep slipping by,'' Thomas said. "Those are resume builders. If we win those two games (against Xavier and Louisville) we're easily in the Top 15.

"We're a Top 15 team. You can't argue against it. We beat ourselves.''
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Devin is on mission this year I think, the key is keeping Devin under control and not having a blowout when things don't go well. So far, Manning seems to be doing a good job of keeping Devin under control. Wednesday night is huge, beating Duke and splitting our first 2 ACC games against 2 of the upper tier ACC teams would be huge in our journey to try to get enough wins to get in the Big Dance.
 
simosfrostyone said:
Hard to win when you make three free throws.
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I totally agree.

At the same time, look how far we've come when we see FTs as our major problem in a close loss against a very good team.
We're not there yet, but we've come a long way from a few years ago.
 
We have had team free throw issues for quite some time. Seems like our recruiting focus of the past valued athleticism over shooting but hopefully DM will transition that. Even our good shooters couldn't make free throws last night. Just helps to have guys on the court in close games that you know will capitalize on those foul opportunities.
 
These defenses of Dinos's defense are really short-sighted. "His man" may have only scored a dozen points, but that doesn't account for the bad switches, blow bys, ducking under screens, slow footwork, horrible hedges, same old same old we've seen from him every game defensively. Granted, he went from dogshit to mediocre after halftime, but it was after we tried a matchup zone, doubled Onuaku, and after he sat out. Missing the front end of the 1-and-1 effectively sealed it, too, though that wasn't the worst of the egregious FT misses.

He wasn't the only reason we lost, which I'll admit I claimed at least once last night, but he continues to be a huge defensive liability and an overall liability if he isn't filling it up from 3.
 
TownieDeac said:
These defenses of Dinos's defense are really short-sighted. "His man" may have only scored a dozen points, but that doesn't account for the bad switches, blow bys, ducking under screens, slow footwork, horrible hedges, same old same old we've seen from him every game defensively. Granted, he went from dogshit to mediocre after halftime, but it was after we tried a matchup zone, doubled Onuaku, and after he sat out. Missing the front end of the 1-and-1 effectively sealed it, too, though that wasn't the worst of the egregious FT misses.

He wasn't the only reason we lost, which I'll admit I claimed at least once last night, but he continues to be a huge defensive liability and an overall liability if he isn't filling it up from 3.
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Is this some sort of elaborate wfu22fan parody?
 
Horrible hedges? Ha, that's really reaching.

The only other guys who really scored any points for them were Lee and Trey. You blaming Dinos for their points as well? We just held Louisville to their season low point output and you're still plugging away on a guy that had 10 points and 10 boards.

It's like you only watched the first 6 minutes of the game. Without checking the game report - how many field goals do you think Onuaku torched Dinos for in the 2nd half? I'll give you a hint - it was less than 1. How many offensive boards did he have? One. If there was switching between him and Devin then it was to their other forwards who did even less damage

Dinos is shooting 50% over the past 5 games from deep and despite the missed free throw last night he's almost 90% from the line. Sure, he's still a step slow on defense. But you don't pull down 10 boards by being in the wrong place on defense all game. His awareness is much better than last year. It just makes no sense to attribute so much of the loss to him when you look at what Hudson/Wilbekin/Codi/Watson put up. And missing the 1 and 1 didn't "seal it" any more than Codi chucking the 3, Crawford going 0/5 from the line, or Watson taking a 3 in crunch time down 4. 5 guys had shot attempts after Crawford tied it and it produced one point from Devin. Plenty of blame down the stretch.
 
You like what you see when he lumbers out 30 feet from the basket and then is super slow getting back to the post? Really?
 
Dinos is really terrible on defense.

He needs to be in the game for threes and rebounding, but it is hard to understate how bad he is defensively.
 
As to your final paragraph, I have no doubts about his shooting ability, neither from the FT line nor the 3 pt line. But if he isn't taking and making 3s and FTs at a much higher clip than last night, he continues to be a liability.
 
After the debacle of the last few years. It just feels good being competitive once again. The W's will come!
 
TownieDeac said:
As to your final paragraph, I have no doubts about his shooting ability, neither from the FT line nor the 3 pt line. But if he isn't taking and making 3s and FTs at a much higher clip than last night, he continues to be a liability.
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When he invited Louisville's center to please have the baseline and dunk on him I thought my head was going to explode. But the issue is not whether he is a liability (he is) but whether the guy who will replace him is more of a liability. DM seems to think that is the case or he would be yanked when his man repeatedly scores or gets put backs on him.
 
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