** My hope this day was that our Panthers could get themselves on a little bit of a roll, especially after that excellent second half against UNC. But apparently they aren’t going to make things so easy on us as fans. More importantly, they are making things tough on themselves if they want to “leave no doubt.”
** In itself, this wasn’t a bad loss by any means. But it’s certainly a missed opportunity, and at some point, we may run short of opportunities.
** What I’ve begun to notice about this Panther team is that there really isn’t one thing we do very well, and because of this, we don’t leave ourselves much room for error in tight games down the stretch.
** For example, last year’s team, particularly Blake, could go off from three. But there is no such weapon this year.
** Generally speaking, we are a pretty efficient offensive team, mostly built around dribble drive penetration. But we’ve seen that can be thwarted, especially when we turn the ball over.
** Defensively, more often than not, we haven’t been a very good team, and our issues on the defensive glass are too well documented.
** Because there isn’t that one thing we do really well that we can count on, we have to work hard to do most everything well, and can’t allow a pure failure in any other area.
** So today, we managed to keep our rebounding issues at bay, and continued to take care of the ball, as we have in our past two wins.
** But instead, we were done in because we surrendered 42 second half points. After missing their first two on the second 20, Wake Forest made 13 of their final 24 shots.
** We just didn’t have many answers defensively in the second half. The zone was spotty, and once Wake was about to get the ball to the wing, they were able to drive.
** This is a team whose offense is ranked around #175 according to Pomeroy. They sure didn't look like it today, Seems like something we’ve seen fairly often this year.
** Meanwhile, down the stretch, we found ourselves taking too many tough shots. Ish, Damian and especially Jaland, were all guilty. Some of those tough ones could almost be counted as turnovers.
** And the usually more reliable Zach Austin was not so from three.
** In fact, the one thing we generally do quite well is shoot free throws, and we did that exceptionally well today. But so did Wake and because of this, we had no advantage in points scored at the line.
** And for a team who now shoots over 79% from the foul line, we need to get there a little more to take advantage of this strength. We average about 20 attempts per game, right where we were today. That’s a pretty good number actually. But much like many of the other things the Panthers do, it’s not a great number.
** So as much as it pains me to say it, if this team is going to go anywhere this season, particularly to the NCAA Tournament, it better figure out what area of their game they can hang their hat on. Oh yeah … then they need to do it, while not falling apart in other aspects. .
** Until that happens, we are going to find ourselves in more dogfights like today, leaving ourselves to hope we can win enough to play later in March.
** And for a team whose motto was leave no doubt, it seems like all they keep doing is create reasons to doubt them that much more.
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