** It’s really tough to put this game into words. So I’ll defer instead to Charles Dickens. It was the best of times … it was the worst of times.
** Actually, calling the first half the best of times might be a bit confusing. Sure, an 11 point first half lead in Cameron is a wonderful thing. And it would be silly to suggest that we didn’t play well in that first half to get there.
** But our lead was aided a great deal but several unforced Dukie turnovers, 12 in the first half in fact. And with Duke unable to set up their half court defense for much of the half, the Panthers were able to get themselves mostly good shots that they were able to knock down.
** But that’s selling the Panther first half defense a little too short. We rotated and covered well, and never let the Dukies get too comfortable.
** For what it’s worth however, the one thing that made me a little uncomfortable with the first half is that for as bad as Duke played, I really thought the Panthers should have been up more. I can recall at least two fast breaks they didn’t capitalize upon.
** But picking on an 11 point first half lead, saying it should have been 15 is kinda silly though. And the only reason it will seem to matter is because of the half that came after it.
** Yet before I leave the first 20, I will give a shout out to Nike, Nate and Guillermo for very high quality bench minutes. They were a big part of the 11 point lead. Nate still struggles to shoot, but he did just about everything else well. And GDiaz stood very tall against the UNC size.
** Nike’s shooting was huge in the first half too, even if it was mostly just one on one shooting.
** But now to the worst of times …
** After Nelly’s 3 pushed our lead to 12 with two minutes gone, we were outscored 41-21. And it really didn’t feel like it was that close either.
** From that point on, inexplicably, we played almost nothing but one on one, breakdown the man off the dribble basketball which got us almost nothing in the half court.
** The Dukies were switching off their taller players onto our guards who just couldn’t get any good shots over them. The other part of the problem was we only used the dribble drive to try to get shots, instead of creating shots for others.
** Although he wasn’t the worst culprit, it’s certainly noteworthy that Nelly played 33 minutes and didn’t garner a single assist. This just can never be a winning recipe.
** One more look at the box score however, reveals the biggest culprit of all. I’m not sure there is any team in the county who can go into Cameron and win when getting outrebounded 51-28. This includes surrendering 24 offensive rebounds and 13 second half second chance points.
** Then, toss in a couple of missed layups and an iffy at best flagrant call against Jamarius and the Panthers let this get too far away in the second half on the road.
** I was slightly encouraged that the Panthers were able to regroup and battle to the end and get it to two possessions. But by then, there just wasn’t any room left for error and we couldn’t make one or two more needed stops.
** I’ll sum up this a-little-too-depressing message board "novel" with something of a silver lining. That is, the end result, an 8 point loss in Cameron, is certainly nothing that should be considered unexpected nor shameful.
** It just feels a little tough to swallow knowing that even a decent second half from our Panthers might have been good enough to make the Crazies go home unhappy.
** The other silver lining is that the Panthers have four winnable games in front of them. And while it might not be the best of times, it would at least be a pretty good time to take on a ranked Hurricanes team sporting a 8-2 league record.
** That’s what an NCAA team would do. Time to learn if we live up to that billing.
www.newspapers.com
