Didnāt you miss a game and fail to watch a streamed scrimmage? Iām withholding comment on your form because I just think the sample size is too November
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Interesting thread.
I think almost any point of view, positive or negative can be valid at this point. November basketball is always ugly. I try watch with an open mind and give it until mid-January to draw any firm conclusions. What you see today isnāt going to be what you see a couple of months from now. At least it shouldnāt be. I think the pieces are there for this to be a good team and a fairly tough out by March. But wow. As of right now, they really look like hot garbage and Odom needs to go about business the next few weeks with a real sense of urgency.
I donāt think boosters threw Top 10 money (whatever the exact figure is. Iāve heard everything from $12 to $20 mil) at the basketball program just to end up on the bubble or to be a Top 5 ACC program. They should expect a lot more.
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Yeah I hate this argument. I donāt think anyone is bemoaning us not looking like a top 15 team right now. Itās that we didnāt look like a top 50 Team this weekend. And with our OOC schedule and the ACC not being what it used to, the margin for error isnāt huge.
Odom has had teams get meaningfully better over the course of the season so I trust heāll figure it out. And itās not as bad as weāre making it out to be. We clearly have some very good players such that thereās a lot of room to grow. That wasnāt really the case last year. That said, we just only have so many allowances for games like yesterdayās.
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I think the team has big upside from here. Odom just has to get them all on the same page on offense and defense. Still a collection of talented pieces vs a meshed team/system. Just need reps and intense coaching. I think we will be pretty tough to deal with in early February.
This is probably a bubble team. Because the team canāt manufacture a stop, itās going to be hard to string together wins when they shoot poorly. In some ways itās an opposite, but not dissimilar problem to some of the late Tony teams where, because we couldnāt put the ball in the ocean, if the defense lapsed, we were guaranteed a loss.
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Agreed. I doubt we win many road ACC games. We will hold serve fairly well at home. Possibly zero Q1 non-conference wins. We will be firmly middle of the pack ACC team like every team not named Duke, UNC, or Louisville (maybe NCSU). But Iām guessing a few others outside those 3-4 teams will put together a better non-conference resume than us so weāll be in 6-8 range of the ACC pecking order for the tournament. Weāll see if thatās enough this year
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Haha, thatās what I predicted.
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All of my skills playing in CYO āgymsā would finally have come in handy.
@AnonymooseHoo I think we played like a bubble team in 3 of our 4 P5 games so far, with the 4th being untelevised and hard to read. But so far doesnāt = ācome Marchā so letās stay tuned (unless the game is on CBS-SN and you forgot to set your DVR)
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Spot on. Itās okay to look disjointed in November. But for a high-priced roster, playing the one-year pick-up ball that todayās game has become, they need to be able to look disjointed and still get Ws over teams like Butler.
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Come March wonāt really matter if we lose a ton of games by February haha. I think there is room for improvement, but I donāt see any potential from these first few games for us to get much better at guarding the point of attack. We just donāt have the personnel for it. Tillis, Thomas, White, are all just super weak defenders
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I think the defense is what we thought it was though.
The offense from yesterday is what concerns me. 6 assists is really bad. We have enough offensive talent to get away with just running alternating ISOās occasionally, but this offense should be dominant if we run more of a system which didnāt look like it was happening. It looked so disjointed and that will keep our ceiling down as much as the defense imo
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I think we were hoping it would at least be like a Top 75 type defense. Iām not so sure that is possible anymore. The difference between that and like 115 is probably 4-5 more games dropped.
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The difference between Swiss cheese defense and corrugated packaging defense is a handful of wins.
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My thinking is right now we have the players but not a team. I think Odom will continue to improve thatā¦ā¦
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The second half was a back and forth contest, at most a two possession game, until the 10:08 mark. Thatās when De Ridder obviously traveled. Odom threw a fit over an obvious foul call. The subsequent free throws pushed Butlerās lead to 63-56.
Now, you can argue that Odom was mad because the referees were inconsistent all game. Iād agree. And sometimes ā rarely ā a coach will get a technical to send a message to the refs that is rewarded with fairer whistles.
But picking up a technical in that situation looked like he panicked. Did the team panic, too? They didnāt score from the floor again until the next TV timeout when they had a moment to regroup.
Did Odom lose control because he was just so mad at the refs, or because he was clearly getting outcoached? Either way, it was a bad move.
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Odom was upset because Ajayi had committed an obvious travel on his bucket the possession right before and it was uncalled. It also definitely didnāt work for a fairer whistle because Ajayi blatantly traveled a few plays later and they didnāt call it. Also, Matta did the same thing on that shot clock violation (that should have been a foul on Butler), and instead of calling a T the refs REVIEWED IT.
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Yeah, all true. But the trouble with influencing the refs is you need to throw a fit over a bad call. Odom got Tāed up for throwing a fit over a good call. So the refs didnāt feel they owed him anything.
Yeah I thought Thad earned one too. Really bad officiating all around with a slight edge to Butler imo.
I thought some of the moving picks to beat our press were pretty heinous. I know youāre not going to get many of those called, but none?? A few of them looked more like offensive line play than basketball
I think there are some scheme and execution tweaks available to us even with our guards defensive weaknesses. Like, why are we chasing Jackson over every single screen when the guy is 32% from 3 for his career, and has attempted 5 on the season?
Our bigs could have probably controlled the space on the drop better, made better decisions on when to stay more attached to their man vs coming out to challenge the ballhandler.
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