Wake vs. Presbyterian game thread

[pourdeac]

As bad has Bz is away from home, only having one 'true' road game, @ Xavier on Dec 28th, before the start of the ACC season may not be the best form of scheduling.

The problem seemed to me to be something about traveling so IMO playing 3 pre-season tourny games away from the Joel against stiff competition is the perfect way to adjust to non-home games. Bz has them do something that causes them to lose focus. My guess is he stresses the need to keep up with classes or something instead of focusing on the game.

 

[DCDeac]

So far...

The Good: CMM looks like he's taken the next step. Devin is still Devin but looks better at the line and with the right hand. Coron can shoot it, has stayed in front of quick guards and plays smart. Madison solid at point. Overton and Rountree look like they'll be nice role players. Overall offense moves the ball well, offense being run much better, defense talks a lot and looks improved (albeit against shitty teams). Zone offense has been sharp until we get into the bench.

The Bad: Moto and Cav look the same, like sub-standard ACC players. Love the minutes Washington is getting, but he's clearly not ready yet and if Devin sprains an ankle or something we're still totally screwed. Long stretches of scoring droughts against poor teams suggests we'll still struggle to score this year consistently. Switching everything on defense like we did against Presby will lead to mismatches against good teams - we had Coron defending the post multiple times. Good teams will use that strategy to dictate matchups. Full court presses haven't yielded many (if any) turnovers.

Overall we look better but still limited. Nice to see McKie looking like he's bought into the plan at least. I like the concerted effort to let the young guys play lots of minutes in these early games even if we're not up by 20.

 

[88Deac]

I agree with all of that. Re: scheduling, I don't see a reason to kill ourselves early with the strong tourney field coming up and a bunch of young guys trying to still get their feet under them. Further on the positive side, after a slow first half in our first game, we are manhandling weaker competition now. We could have beaten Presby by 50, but we played a lot of guys a lot of minutes. I agree that is very wise. No reason to try to beat weak teams by 50 with Travis, CMM, and DT playing 35 minutes. Anyone who watched knows we were in complete command. That hasn't been the case in years past with Stetson, Presby, WSSU, HPC, UNCG etc. I think we look very strong with lots of weapons. If Coron can shoot over 40% and handle his defensive assignments adequately, we should be alright against all but the top tier teams.

 

[TBR]

The problem seemed to me to be something about traveling so IMO playing 3 pre-season tourny games away from the Joel against stiff competition is the perfect way to adjust to non-home games. Bz has them do something that causes them to lose focus. My guess is he stresses the need to keep up with classes or something instead of focusing on the game.

That's bullshit..like most of what you say. We are playing almost entirely at home because [Redacted] scheduled a bunch of cupcakes, just like he has done throughout his career. ACC programs don't travel to low majors. We travel during ACC play just like everyone else does.

 

[Ayo]

Devin has yet to really develop his right hand. It'll be interesting to see if ACC teams pick up on this and force him to go right more this year.

 

[Deac83]

When you play teams in the 200+ range you are supposed to handle them no matter if they are 201 or 299. The last 3 years we struggled to wins against these most of these teams. So far this year we are pretty much handling them.

Based on this, all we can say is that this year appears to be starting off better than the last three. We'll know in a couple of weeks if it's going to translate against the top 100 teams.

Of course, just when you see a shred of something good, we'll go out and lay an egg against Jax. Bzz' teams have never been able to 'confirm' their progress.