It was a weekend of stunningly bad performances. I can’t figure out who was the worst:

• Wake Forest (lost by 36 at home to NCSU),
• Jacoby Jones (Texans PR who gave Baltimore a free 80yd TD),
• Lana Del Rey (internet sensation who bombed on SNL), or
• Our beloved Tar Heels

UNC’s loss at Florida State on Saturday was the largest loss for UNC since 1962 and the largest in the Roy Williams tenure. After what was their worst half of the season to that point, the Heels found themselves down 8 points at halftime. Shots were not falling for the Heels, and the team had not found an answer for stopping Deividas Dulkys. The Heels should have stayed in the locker room, however because they came out in the second half flatter than the first. Only 8 minutes into the second half Florida State had extended that 8-point lead to almost 30 points, and the team quit.

Last week NCSU found itself losing at home to a bad Georgia Tech team. However in that game the Pack was still taking smart shots and still trying hard on defense. GT was hitting difficult shots and State didn’t hit shots they normally make. The UNC experience was nothing of the sort. UNC made bad passes, took dumb shots, and quit on defense. Once again UNC made no adjustment to stymie an opposing hot shooter, and he ended up doubling his season scoring total with his 32-point effort.

While Tyler Zeller played well for most of the game, it can’t be said for the rest of the team or the coaches’ efforts to adjust mid-game. Players will have bad nights here and there, but when it is the team coming out soft, then coming out softer after halftime, it is completely on the coaches. Perhaps Roy Williams wanted to send a message to his team. It certainly sent a message to fans.

UNC had just completed a 9-game home stretch where the team went 9-0 against a parade of cupcakes. Long Beach State (RPI #52) was the toughest opponent in that stretch, and the Heels found themselves in a tussle (UNC led by 6-8 points during the entire final 5:00 in a game where UNC was favored by 16 points).

The take-home lesson for the fans, the players, and the coaches is that UNC’s schedule has no middle. They have only played four games against teams in the top 50 (one of those was the Michigan St. game which should not be counted), while 10 of their 18 opponents were ranked below 130.

Not including the aircraft carrier game, UNC is 1-3 vs. likely NCAA tournament teams, and is 1-3 in hostile environments. Couple that with the fact that no National Champion in at least 30 years has ever lost a game by more than 30, and you have some real concerns about the 2012 Tar Heels.

I said before that UNC will wipe the floor with most of their opponents, but then struggle against some hot-shooting team in the tournament. That still stands. The remaining ACC schedule features four games against top 50 teams (Duke and UVA). Duke does not match up well against UNC, so I think UNC will sweep Duke for the first time in many, many years. However I do think the Heels are most likely to lose @UVA (#41) and @NCSU (#57). While the UNC team has performed quite poorly in hostile environments so far this year, the ACC as a league is so bad that I don’t think the Heels will be sufficiently challenged at VT, WFU, MD, and Miami.

After a string of cupcakes at home, the Heels will have some blowout wins at home, and fans will enter the tournaments with a false sense of security. The real question is when the going gets tough, will this UNC team have enough experience to find ways to win. Against this ACC schedule, there won’t be much training.

Local basketball fans with iPhones, Android Phones, Blackberrys, Outlook, Palm devices, and more are in luck! Gogoraleigh’s Calendars Tab is your home for free 2011-2012 ACC basketball schedules for the entire ACC in .CSV, .ICS, and Google Calendar formats.

gogo has gone all out again, offering schedules for each individual ACC team, as well as one giant calendar which includes all 281 games. Events on the calendars include not only the game time, but also links to ESPN’s team pages and the name of the venue where the game is being played. On some devices, like Android phones, the location becomes a link to Google Maps showing the venue’s location.

For those already subscribed to the Google Calendar version of the ACC Complete calendar or any of the other supporting Google Calendars from gogoraleigh, you don’t have to do anything. All 281 events have been added automatically. As event details change, you’ll see automatic changes in your calendar.

And wait….there’s more! Gogoraleigh decided that these 13 calendars aren’t enough, and added home-only calendars for UNC and N.C. State. All for the low low price of ZERO!

Outlook-Based Blackberry/iPhone/Palm Users

• After downloading the appropriate CSV file (see below), create a new folder in your in Outlook calendar (Bball11, for example). Use the File | Import and Export… to import from “another program or file”, then “Comma Separated File (Windows)”. Be sure to pick your new calendar folder as the target. This will set up the schedule in your new sub-calendar where you can make whatever changes you want.
• iPhone Users – Open iTunes with the iPhone connected and sync (you may have to specify your newly added calendar in the “Info” tab’s Calendars section.) Now you can view the basketball schedules as their own sub-calendar or as a part of all calendars.
• If you have a device which doesn’t support subcalendars (like Treos and older Palm devices), you’ll need to copy the imported basketball events into your main calendar. When you are happy with the way the subcalendar looks, change the calendar view to “Events” (instead of 7-day or 31-Day or whatever view you’re using). “Select All” from the list, and drag them over to your main “Calendar” (The Treo and other Palm Handhelds only sync to the main calendar – time for Palm to get with the program on that one!). If you want to keep your sub-calendar intact, use Ctrl-drag instead of plain drag. That will create a copy of each event to the main Calendar and keep the Bball08 calendar in place. Sync your handheld to copy the events to the handheld.

Google Calendar/Android Users

My favorite way to follow the ACC’s basketball calendar is to add it to my Google Calendar set. The Google Calendar is a dynamic, subscribable calendar that offers much flexibility. For instance, several game times have not been announced. As soon as they are set, actual game times will magically appear in your calendar. Also, Google Calendar offers a map link for quick viewing of the game’s venue location.

Additionally, Google has created a simple interface through mobile phone browsers. It allows one to view and implement ACC Calendar events. It also recognizes hyperlinks in the event’s description, so easy access to the team files is achievable by using the online Google Calendar app. To view these add the calendar using the link below, then visit http://calendar.google.com from within Safari on the iPhone or your Android browser.

(Note: Gogoraleigh will also carry the home-only calendars as an integrated feature of its normal Gogoraleigh Do-It Calendar).

To view a Google Calendar, go to the gogoraleigh Calendars page and click on the appropriate calendar link. Once the calendar is displayed, you can add it your set of Google Calendars by clicking on the “+Subscribe” bottom on the bottom right.

iCal Users

There are two options:

• Use iCalTextImport to import the .CSV version (linked above) of the schedule.
• Download the .ics file from the Calendars page and import it into iCal.

Palm Desktop and Yahoo! Calendar Users

My brother-in-law taught me a neat trick. In order to get a CSV calendar into Palm Desktop, one can use Yahoo! Calendar as an intermediary. After downloading the .CSV file from gogoraleigh, open Yahoo! Calendar and click “Options” in the upper right. Then select “Import/Export”. Go to “Import From Outlook”, selected the filename, and click “Import”. Yahoo! Calendar users are done at this point. Palm Desktop users need to verify the import, then return to the “Export to Palm Desktop” section. Pick your target and hit “Export”. The resulting .DBA file should then be ready to import into Palm Desktop.

Beware! It appears easy to lump Yahoo! Calendar events that are unrelated into one calendar. If you are simply using Yahoo! Calendar as a conduit to Palm Desktop, verify that your calendar is clean before originally importing the .CSV file, otherwise unrelated events will get lumped with basketball dates in your resulting .DBA file.

RSS

Each of the Google Calendars carries an RSS feed. This might be an interesting addition to your RSS Feed collection because each calendar change will appear in the feed. This is most useful as an alert to a game time changes in the schedule. The RSS Feed for each calendar can be found when viewing each individual Google Calendar.

Notes

Calendars are apt to change, so check back occasionally for updates. To determine the version of your schedule, open the note associated with any event, and look for the version number. If your calendar is older than those listed above, simply delete the events in Outlook in your old one and import the events of the newer file. Google Calendar is dynamically updated on the back end, so you always know you are up to date when using Google Calendar.

Use at your own risk. I do not accept responsibility for any consequences resulting from errors in the schedule.

Link to Gograleigh Calendars

Wanna see my brackets? Wanna see a bracket that will always come in in the middle of the pack? Alright. Here they are.

What you’ll notice is my pick for UNC to lost the Sweet 16 game against Syracuse. Why is that? See my previous post about chicken counting. While UNC won the ACC regular season, they feasted on bad teams. There were 6 game-winning shot games against a field of teams mostly at the NIT level. We saw the Heels enter the Greensboro coliseum not adequately prepared to play not once, but three straight times. This is a young team that is quite prone to lapses. So it is difficult to see them run off 6 straight against increasingly better teams.

Consider the Heels’ likely opponent in the Sweet 16: Syracuse. The Orangemen are the best team at executing the zone defense there is, and what is Roy Williams’ Achilles heel (besides his emotional attachment to Kansas)? It’s the zone defense. UNC does not have the shooters or the penetrating ball handlers to attack the zone, so I think that UNC will have more than normal offensive troubles against Syracuse.

It is imperative that UNC fans pull for Indiana State on Friday, and the Xavier/Marquette winner on Sunday. Xavier is a tough draw, but they aren’t even close to Syracuse, especially given the style of play that mitigates UNC’s weak offense.

While I am elated with the way this team has responded to the loss of the experienced PG, I am worried when I hear people talking about Final Fours, etc. with this team. I still stand by my goal for this team being to reach the Sweet 16. A Round of 32 exit is not a failure, but a 1st round exit is.

As I said in early December, this team doesn’t have defensive problems, but has severe offensive problems. While the removal of Larry Drew II passes the eye test, the team is still performing poorly on offense.

The goal is to score more than 0.95 points per possession. For us to find the last 5 occurrences of the team surpassing this goal, we have to go back _19_ games (Long Beach St.). The team has missed the mark for 6 straight games, now, during a period where they have only played 1 tournament lock (Duke), 1 bubble team (BC), and one of the worst teams in ACC history (WF).

I said in December that we would hit the ACC season and get a false sense of security because the league is at an all-time low. That has happened. Outside of Duke and UNC, I have not seen a team that is very good at all. Who knows how many teams the league will get into the tournament. With a year of weak mid-majors, it is possible the ACC might get a lift, but our eyes don’t fool us: the quality of play in the conference has been the worst in memory.

Let’s be careful about beating our chests. I will be the most excited person should we beat Duke on Saturday. However don’t be surprised to see us lose on Saturday in the ACC Tournament. Just like Roy Williams has never given any hints that he teaches the zone well, he also has shown no fire for winning the conference tournament. This year there really is something to play for, however: a high seed and a good berth.

In the NCAA tournament the #4 and #5 seeds likely play in the second round, while the #3 seed likely gets a #6 seed. In an article posted 5 yrs ago by ESPN, it almost appears that all 4 of these seeds have about equal chances to get to the Sweet 16. The lower seeds have been upset earlier more than the higher ones have. However the #2 seed (usually ranked #5-#8 in the AP Poll) has a 67% chance of beating a #7 seed. In order for the Heels to get a 2-seed, however, they will need to beat Duke on Saturday and win the ACC tournament.

The other thing the Heels have to play for is a berth in Charlotte. In all likelihood Duke, UNC, and Georgetown are all vying for "host" spots in the Charlotte pod. Georgetown had a bad week last week, so UNC currently is in. It’s no secret that UNC wants to play in its second home-city, Charlotte, and it’s no secret that’s the scenario Duke abhors. 

Whatever happens, it has been a good, fun season. I am just not quite as boastful as some on the board given the way our offense has sputtered. Until we can get some consistent outside shooting, we are sitting ducks for a hot team.

This week feedmyego at Inside Carolina posted a phenominal set of statistics. It shows UNC’s 3-point attempts and the situations surrounding them for 2011 vs. 2009. There are a few interesting conclusions from the stats:

UNC is taking way more 3’s against a zone defense this year. It appears coaches have finally discovered Roy Williams’ biggest weakness, teaching his team to play against a zone.

UNC is shooting 38% from the left corner and 25% from the right corner. It isn’t a shot they attempt a whole lot, but is one they should avoid.

The Heels are better shooting while lightly contested (38%) than they are wide freakin-open (26%). The worst offender is Reggie Bullock who shoots 42% when lightly contested, but 21% when wide open. I propose that we rotate one of our own guys over to guard Reggie if he gets open; not too much, however. Reggie is only 8% when “contested”.

While the improvement of the UNC team since the removal of Larry Drew II has certainly been noticed by everyone everywhere, there still are problems that this team needs to work out with its offense before they can be a team that really does some damage next month.

Against Wake Forest, a team that has hung it up for the season, the Heels had trouble pulling away 3/4 thru the game. The problem wasn’t that they fell asleep on defense. They quit scoring. The Heels finished the game scoring 0.85 points per possession. That marks the third straight game where they have missed the mark offensively. Wake Forest scored just slightly less, so the game was won on rebounding (Heels had 92 possessions to Wake’s 79).

A good team would have scored 10 more points than the Heels did in this game. Turnovers were not a problem. In fact the Heels only coughed it up on only 9% of their possessions. The problem lay at the 3-point line, where UNC shot a dismal 19%. As a team they are only 32% for the season and are now shooting worse than their opponents from behind the arc. To compound matters, UNC took 38% of their shots (3 out of every from a spot where they don’t perform well. Their offense usually takes that shot 26% of the time. However the Heels opened up an early lead and got complacent against a bad team.

The Heels have a good transition game and an excellent inside game. However in order to be a team that can overcome some adversity in tournament play, they have to have some outside threats. The four players attempting to strike from “3” are Strickland, Barnes, McDonald, and Bullock. They shoot 27%, 32%, 37%, and 31%, respectively. Perhaps it is time to shut down Strickland as a “2” guard. Not only is his shooting form badly off-balance (a signal of bad days ahead), he isn’t even getting it done currently. Perhaps it is time to give the job to McDonald and Bullock, and let them rotate with Barnes in the 2/3 positions while Strickland backs up Marshall at 1.

* * *

Luke Winn at SI did a great analysis of Marshall’s distribution. It shows that when Drew was on the court, Zeller and Strikland were the most common beneficiaries. However with Marshall on the court, the ball is getting distributed much more evenly and much more unpredictably. Scroll down to the #12 team on the list for more.

Last night the inexperienced Tar Heel team went to Durham to get a real test of the trimmed down Heels. It was an excellent midterm exam and at this point Tar Heel fans can be pretty happy with where this team is headed.

I actually had a family obligation that prevented me from seeing the first 3 quarters. What I saw in the last 10:00 of the game was a team that looked nervous and took bad shots, but hustled 100% and played good defense; Duke just made shots.

In the first tough exam as the sole UNC point guard, Kendall Marshall played well at the point, but showed some errors of inexperience down the stretch. For instance when one misses the first of two shots and is down by 5 points, you definitely want to miss the second to get a chance at making it a 1-possession game, especially with good rebounders down low. Instead Marshall made the shot, cutting it to 4, and essentially wasting the possession.

There were other errors, but that said, I’d rather have Marshall in there taking lumps and learning lessons in a game that ultimately isn’t that important than to have Larry Drew II in the game down the stretch.

This game will help the Heels immensely in the final run toward the tournament. From Duke they learned what a team that plays with building intensity looks like. They looked at a team that passes the ball well, shoots well, and exploits defensive breakdowns well. In the Heels, Duke saw what a good, versatile frontcourt looks like, what an outstanding point guard plays like, and what it is like to come back from a deficit. Most likely these teams will not play each other past the ACC Tournament, and the experiences gained will really help these teams and the conference.

Why We Lost

The Heels held Duke to 0.87 points per possession. Duke took 38% of their shots from “3” and shot well. With a couple of those rimming out, the Heels’ are right on target defensively, so the real problems weren’t on defense, they were on offense. The Heels only scored 0.80 points per possession and there are two sources of this problem: 3-pt shooting by Bullock and McDonald, and the inability of Marshall to finish on penetrations.

I am confident that these are errors of inexperience, and that kind of stuff will work itself out in the long run. What is a very bright spot is Carolina’s general offense, which is absolutely headed in the right direction with Marshall at PG. Against Duke, one of the best defensive teams in the country, the Heels only turned it over on 14.3% of their possessions. That’s fantastic and a testament to Marshall’s passing ability and ballhandling.

There are two big improvements that need to take place. The Heels took 25% of their shots from behind the arc, and only made 2. Marshall was 3-11 from the field and took 16% of our shots basically on a dare from Duke. If he can learn from Barnes how to keep his head up through the play, then he becomes a very dangerous weapon. Until then he should continue to be played for the pass.

Once the Heels can get some more consistent outside shooting and can convert on penetration, they will be an elite team. They can already beat most teams in many different ways, and are showing vast improvement in each game.

When they get to the point where they can make 3 more, then the

Today Larry Drew, II stunned the Tar Heel program by announcing his departure. Drew has recently seen his playing time diminish at the hands of the maturing Marshall.

Larry Drew, Sr., the coach for the Atlanta Hawks, said this before tonight‘s game:

“He made the decision. I did speak to coach Williams. I thought it was important that we do it in a very tasteful manner. We did that.” “This was a decision that was made long before this season even started to perfectly honest. We’d been contemplating it for a while” “Sometimes things come to a point where a decision has to be made. It had gotten to that point.”

Tasteful manner? Drew informed his teammates via Facebook. He‘s leaving just before two extremely important games. He‘s leaving just after losing the starting role on the team.

The decision was made before the season started? The decision to leave the team on February 3? Why not leave then and retain your eligibility?

The timing of this all is quite interesting, given my most recent post. If we put all of the pieces together, it appears that LDII‘s parents played a key role in this. Back in the summer they knew that an excellent point guard was coming in, and probably felt that Drew‘s job security as the starting PG was in jeopardy. Most likely they expressed this concern to Williams, and Williams likely told them that he had no plans of Marshall coming in and stealing Drew‘s job. However it was important for Drew to continue to improve his game.

In mid-December I heard a story about Larry Drew, Sr. complaining about how Roy Williams was not featuring LDII in his offense enough. At that time fans were starting to notice the offense‘s efficiency when Marshall was in the game. Perhaps the coaching staff noticed, too. Surely they realized that just simply naming Marshall as the starter and demoting Drew would send Drew in a tailspin. My hypothesis is that the coaches would ride Drew as long as they could until a breaking point where it was plainly obvious to everyone, including the Drews, that LDII was simply not the answer at starting PG. However the coaches knew that they still needed Drew as the backup. Drew is not a bad player, and would do a sensational job as the backup.

Once the GT debacle happened, the coaches realized they had reached that point, and made the switch. Since then there has been a VERY steep improvement in the Heels‘ offensive efficiency. Most feel that Drew‘s play had actually improved, too. However at the end of the blowout win at Boston College, the camera panned down the jubilant UNC bench and landed on a sullen LDII. Hmm?

Some stories are floating around about the ensuing events. One such is that the Drew‘s came back and threatened a transfer and Williams barked back with something like “Fine. Go ahead and do it.“

Certainly Williams did not want LDII gone. The team is definitely better with him involved than gone. However it isn‘t completely unreasonable to imagine Williams barking this. He‘s barked at fans and media and carried a “take it or shove it“ attitude publicly. Perhaps the Drews were the chief reason for the coach‘s irritability over the last two seasons. Who knows.

The move was an absolute nightmare for LDII‘s career. He won‘t be able to play on a Division I team until the Fall of 2012. At that point what coach is going to want a stale, backup point guard with bad helicopter parents with a lot of money? The Heels were about to enter a stretch with many nationally televised games. It was a chance for LDII to showcase his skills.

What‘s next for the Heels? Expect Strickland to play a lot of backup at PG. That means that we‘ll see much more McDonald and Bullock at SG. The scary proposition going forward is the weakness of Strickland‘s left-handed dribbling. To be honest, though, Strickland‘s size and poor shot were never going to lead him to an SG spot on a pro roster. Strickland‘s real shot lies at PG. Hopefully his game can change to help everyone involved. If he can play 8-10 minutes of decent PG play, the Heels will not miss LDII.

It was a strange move in a strange season that is about to get only more interesting.

After a few well played games, the Heels find themselves ranked and back into the ACC conversation. What exactly happened to turn this offense around? It’s quite simple: the coach started to utilize the PG who runs to offense well.

I don’t think you have to look any further than the injection of more Marshall to find the reason for the Heels’ improvement. Up to the GT game UNC had struggled to ever score more than 0.90 points per possession, yet the Heels’ +/- was about 20 pts higher for Marshall’s minutes than for Drew’s. That actually hasn’t changed. The Drew improvements are more of a measure of the weak opponents than anything. Marshall was +30 against BC while Drew was +7.

Isn’t it a coincidence that Barnes is starting to find his game as Marshall has played more? The reason is that Marshall puts his teammates into scoring position.

Yes, it really IS that simple. Tar Heel Fans have not been screaming for the next Raymond Felton. They’ve been screaming for the next King Rice. All this team and last year’s teams have needed was an ACC caliber Point Guard. It is the most important position on the court and the one that so many coaches don’t understand.

Maybe Roy Williams has orchestrated this thing in order to make it obvious to the Drew family what needed to be done. If so, then fantastic job, coach. I like to think that is the answer because I’d have to wonder about any coach who would watch game films and try to justify playing Drew that many minutes.

Today’s 49-point annihilation of St. Frances was a game where eight Heels finished with double figures and 10 players played double-figure minutes. The Heels scored a fantastic 1.10 points per possession while keeping the opponent to 0.62 points per possession. The won every statistical category except for FT%. The Heels made shots, made steals, scored on the break, rebounded well, and got the scrubs in after the century mark.

“Some people are never satisfied” has been used to describe me as well as some others. This is not always the case. The Heels played as well as anyone could expect given the level of the opponent. What makes me happiest is that they played a cleaner game in the second half than in the first, the inverse of what happened at Rutgers.

I was also pleased to see the play of Kendall Marshall, who played for 22 minutes to Larry Drew’s 17 minutes. It’s the first time Marshall has gotten more minutes this season, and hopefully won’t be the last. Also nice to see was the work the team has been doing on the trap. They still need better rotation from the wings, but if we can utilize this well, it will lead to some easy buckets if Dexter Strickland is on the floor. He has to be the fastest player with the ball that we’ve seen since Ed Cota. I would LOVE to see him work on dribbling with his left hand. Opponents should always drive him left due to this disparity.

Beware, though. Big wins don’t necessarily carry over into the next game. We saw this after the big 44 point win over Hofstra. The next game was Minnesota, and the team didn’t play well that night. Next up for the Heels is at UVA on Saturday. It’s another off week. Hopefully the team can work on some more trapping exercises and put the Cavs away early.