dook...

Be sad. Be disappointed. Hell, even punch a hole in the apartment wall (coughJeffcouch...). Just don't jump off a bridge.

I think everyone (where everyone = anyone who has the time/interest to get even this far into something I wrote, not everyone in the world) should read Rell's post on dooke-Carolina Aftermath. The part about '93 and the last bit about the road victories of the last three national champs is especially interesting.

But before moving on, its necessary to take one last look at this game, and in doing so, determine that every problem was either a fluke or a patter. And since there's no way to tell which, we might as well toss all analysis out the window. So why read on? I don't know. I'd probably stop here.

ISSUES:

I would say that as a team, we looked pretty bad. No one could pass. dook guarded the ball closely on every possession, pressuring every ball handler, and not just Ray as he brought the ball up the court. I love when people press us. Ray runs through 2 (or 3 or 4) defenders, and it leads to a lot of layups and dunks. But this was different. This was Jawad or David or Melvin, 25 ft from the basket, with a man in their face being forced into bad passes.

Pattern: We could see a lot of d like this for the rest of the year. It worked.

Fluke: Any time someone throws something different at you, it catches you off guard. Now, this same scheme should not. One or two times working against something like this in practice, and we should have this worked out.

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rushed. Rashad just couldn't shoot. He wasn't taking bad shots. A couple were not great. But most were really good. It stinks that they played defense in such a way that Rashad would find himself open and we couldn't capitalize.

Pattern: Rashad start the season off shooting less, but making an even higher percentage of his shots. He looked to pass first, but also gave the impression that at any point, he could score at will. Then Rashad, out of the blue, just started shooting more. Not as good shots. Still not selfish. But he hasn't been shooting well. Over the last three games, Rashad is shooting a pretty low percentage (someone hook me up with the stat). Hopefully, he will not continue to decline.

Fluke: Every player goes through slumps. It is inevitable. This too will pass.

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Free Throws. We hit 73%. That is our average (which leads the ACC, by the way). But they hit 95%. And why do big teams hit free throws against us?

Pattern: Dook was 21/21. Wake was 32/32. Big teams hit the free throws against us. We must be going something wrong...but what?

Fluke: Come on. This is nothing more than good teams giving their best shot against a top-five team.

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Other:

• Jackie played great. His stat line won't stand out (9pts, 75%, 6 reb, 1 st, 2 to, 25 min), but he did a good job on JJ, and if not for some real cheap fouls, he's in the game more and shutting down JJ more...
• Sean May. For weeks, people have been predicting that the human forehead (aka Shewill) would dominate Sean in all aspects of the game. With 23 pts, 57%, 18 rebs, 2 ass, 2 blk, Sean outplayed Sheldon (11pts, 50%, 9rebs, 2 ass, 5 blk).

Overall: We went into arguably the most difficult venue in college basketball, and lost to our rival, and a top ten team, by one point, after playing one of our worst three games of the year.

Pattern: UNC can't win games on the road.

Fluke: Check out Rell's post on the importance of winning big road games.

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OK, now that that's out, bring on UCONN!