After last night I'm not sure its all Lowe's fault. This is the one of the least talented ACC teams I've ever seen.

Costner - Very talented but no leadership and lack of heart. He's a guy who can just as easily put up 20pts, 10 reb or 3 pts, 3 reb in any given game.

Bottom line: Borderline 2nd or 3rd team All-ACC talent

What Lowe should do: Play him 35+ minutes a game, period. Real coaches know that premium talent helps you when they are on the floor, not on the pine.

Fells - Very talented but doesn't know how to play basketball. He could score on every play if he wanted to but he probably can't read this sentence let alone play with his head. Has no clue how to assert his god-given talent and would probably be ineffective in any career path.

Bottom line: Marginal ACC starter

What Lowe should do: Tell him to only shoot 3's and drive to the basket. He should be going 2-5 from 3's and 6-7 from the FT line every game. If he's not then he's not trying hard enough to get offense.

McCauley - You can tell he's a hard worker because his robotic moves are very effective. Unfortunately, he gets so worked up that he tries to play outside himself sometimes like when he plays blanket defense on All-American guards 23 feet from the basket. When he gets the ball he should post up and demand a double team. We have less chance of turning it over with the ball in his hands in the post than we do with our guards crossing midcourt dribbling. If he ever learns to get his emotions in check he can become a good player instead of a wild card from game to game.

Bottom line: Marginal ACC Starter that should be better than he is based on his fundamental skills

What Lowe should do: Play him and tell him to demand the ball on offense.

Degand - Underrated. He's made a really nice recovery from a tough knee injury. He doesn't understand our offensive system (and frankly neither do I). He should either focus on making entry passes to the post with Costner/McCauley or create penetration off the dribble drive. Our team has borderline terrible outside shooting and zero wing players capable of producing offense so these swing passes around the perimeter are beyond ineffective.

Bottom line: Solid backup/weak starting PG in the ACC

What Lowe should do: Let him know his role on offense is to get the ball up the court without turning it over. After that the offense should be run through the post and that he should be spotting up for open threes or driving to the basket when he sees a gap.

Tracy Smith: He's undersized and spotty on defense. He's also a true scorer on a team that has no clue how to score.

Bottom line: Great bench player/borderline ACC starter

What Lowe should do: Pull his head out of his ass and play this kid 25 minutes so we actually have a chance to win a game

Julius Mays: He can give quality minutes against other backups or at the offguard position.

Bottom Line: Marginal ACC rotation player

What Lowe should do: Only play him with an experienced line-up. Stop playing him with total scrubs and expecting the results to be pretty.

CJ Williams: Intriguing. He seems to be a two way player.

Bottom Line: Marginal ACC 6th-7th man

What Lowe should do: Isn't it obvious? You should play guys who help you win the game instead of guys who help you lose the game. Williams should be getting rotation minutes.

Johnny Thomas: Very intriguing. He's a pure athlete who hasn't gotten enough time yet for anyone to know what his ceiling is.

Bottom Line: Solid Rotation player

What Lowe should do: Play the fucking guy. It can't get any worse than the guys in the current rotation you stupid fuck.

Simon Harris: He is an effort player who has very basic skills.

Bottom line: Solid 10th man.

What Lowe should do: Make him hammer people in practice. He should play limited hammer minutes in games. Any more than that and his deficiencies expose us too much in ACC play.

Javier Gonzalez: Don't play this kid for the rest of the year. He gave us some promise and solid minutes last year but clearly he has something on his mind besides basketball this year. Give him the year off to figure out if basketball is important to him. It's not fair to people who pay for tickets to watch him play this year.

Horner & Ferguson:

On a good day they are borderline ACC rotation players.

On an average day they are the kind of guys who can spark a 5-0 run for the opposition because they will give up a basket for sucking at on-the-ball defense, brick a quick three, then foul a guy as they make a layup sparked by a long outlet pass on their bricked three pointer.

On a bad day they can singlehandedly affect the outcome of a game.

Bottom line: Don't play them

What Sid should do: He should resign if he can't figure this shit out himself.



For the record I hope we don't go 0-16.

For the record I'd set the over/under on our wins at 2.5 right now and if hard pressed I'd take the over. But I'd be nervous about it.

[Edited on January 14, 2009 at 8:44 PM. Reason : a]

1/14/2009 8:41:55 PM

bottom line: we need a point guard

1/14/2009 8:44:15 PM

im lost

1/14/2009 9:06:54 PM

We need 5 players to start a game - So who would you pick as starters since you only really named 3?

1/14/2009 9:43:13 PM

man rally can be a dick and sometimes makes wild overstatements, but the guy knows basketball

[Edited on January 14, 2009 at 9:48 PM. Reason : ^seems like he is advocating costner, mccauley, fells, smith and degand]

1/14/2009 9:48:01 PM

Quote :

"Has no clue how to assert his god-given talent and would probably be ineffective in any career path."

bwahaha

1/14/2009 9:48:17 PM

KNOCK KNOCK


(who's there?)


OWEN


(owen who?)


0-16

1/14/2009 9:48:50 PM

any chance R. Wilson plays bball?

I mean, look how well the Devonte Edwards experiment worked out

1/14/2009 9:53:00 PM

i just cant wait for some of the crazies to come in and bust him down w/out even attempting to put the amount of thought into their response that he put into this post

1/14/2009 9:58:08 PM

After watching the game last night I've decided our seniors (including Costner here) are a lost cause, as is this season. Both Mays and Thomas had flashes of good play last night as have Smith and Williams at other points during the season. With that being said, I think Lowe should start Smith, Thomas, Mays, Williams, and whichever one of Costner/McCauley/Fells took a shit closest to game time. Let the younger players get some experience, pray that they get better, and then augment the lineup with the more talented recruits coming the next two years.

1/14/2009 10:07:47 PM

the bottom line is that we have a shaky back court and no clear leader on the court

without either of those, you will not win games

I still hold Lowe responsible for both

1/14/2009 10:08:49 PM

Quote :

"man rally can be a dick and sometimes makes wild overstatements, but the guy knows basketball"

Yep and he gets trolled and flamed.

This post is spot on.

1/14/2009 10:40:39 PM

i'm sorry, i stopped reading when the OP said that Lowe should have Fells just shoot threes from now on.

1/14/2009 10:44:06 PM

i know right

why would be want a 40% 3pt guy to shoot 3's

that is nuts!!

you need to shoot at least 60% before you should be letting them go

[Edited on January 14, 2009 at 10:51 PM. Reason : i feel like i'm taking fucking crazy pills, who do you want shooting 3's?? fucking horner?]

1/14/2009 10:46:37 PM

Quote :

"SOLID 10TH MAN"

1/15/2009 1:35:31 AM

I can't really disagree with anything op, nicely put. Hopefully next year a top 10 recruit will fall into our laps and Lowe won't have to coach. Oh, wait, JJ Hickson...

[Edited on January 15, 2009 at 2:22 AM. Reason : Least talented ACC team... I've seen Herb do better with less talent. Come on out haters.]

1/15/2009 2:19:32 AM

good post, rally.

1/15/2009 7:09:07 AM

rallydurham: best poster in sports talk.

1/15/2009 7:09:36 AM

i stopped reading after i read

Quote :

"Degand - Underrated."

jk i actually kept reading and it was all pretty good. except for that little tidbit.

[Edited on January 15, 2009 at 7:15 AM. Reason : b/c degand freaking sucks. mays should be the starter and get the majority of the minutes.]

1/15/2009 7:15:00 AM

although i like rally just fine, all of this has been stated like 85 time before.

1/15/2009 7:41:05 AM

although i like most of the read, i do think it's total crap to lump ferguson and horner in the same mold.


Horner is a terrible defender who fouls anytime someone posts in on him OR anytime he defends the perimeter. No matter what there size is, horner is always taller and plays really short. The only real bright spot here is that somehow he's always in the right place for rebounds.

Ferguson is a guy who unlike most of the current team, plays his heart out. Sure he misses some shots, but look at what he was doing before he got hurt. Not to mention he handles the ball really well. Also, you can stick him on a man on the defensive end, and he will do a decent job of shutting down a scorer.

1/15/2009 8:25:02 AM

^^^ yeah true, degand is terrible. if anything he's overrated b/c people think, for some reason, that he's actually good and his knee is to blame.

1/15/2009 9:07:24 AM

OP is great, spot on

^^no one cares how much fergie tries. if he can't produce, then he shouldn't play. both horner and fergie suck and shouldn't be playing.

sounds like this stupid little league shit, where everyone gets trophies and shit, leaking into college sports, "if he tries hard, he should play". fuck that you can try as hard as you want to, but if it isn't good enough, then it isn't good enough.

1/15/2009 9:26:31 AM

if rally knew so much about basketball, he would've figured out before 2 nights ago that its not all Lowe's fault

1/15/2009 9:58:46 AM

^true


but I'll give credit to him for coming around. Only thing I disagree with in his rant is that Degand is underrated. I've defended Degand all year and all of last year but Mays was so much more composed on tuesday its not funny.

1/15/2009 10:31:56 AM

Quote :

""if he tries hard, he should play""

if our starters are talented and play to lose and do with no effort up and down the court, then i am all for seeing people play their tails off and produce just the same. If Lowe's recruits play with more fire than costner and fells and anyone else, i'd rather see them in. No point in developing players who could care less.

Would you rather see costner get beat up and down the court every time giving up easy baskets or seeing someone playing there tail off and making people take harder shots all game?

1/15/2009 10:35:59 AM

agree with most everything except

Quote :

"Degand - Underrated. "

fuck no

1/15/2009 11:08:56 AM

I was upset with Lowe's coaching on Tuesday also. It seemed like he was toying with FSU, almost like he was testing our team to see if they could overcome adversity; like he knew we could pull out the win at the end.

1/15/2009 11:19:25 AM

How much adversity do these guys need to succumb to before they realize they can't overcome it?

1/15/2009 11:49:41 AM

i thought this thread was about the detroit lions.



but really, i agree with the OP. good post. Costner needs to go. He had one dynamic year, it went to his head and he seems to not give a damn about nc state anymore.

[BYE]

1/15/2009 3:42:59 PM

oh shit, how did i end up in sports talk?


(leaves)

1/15/2009 3:52:47 PM

julius mays is the closest thing we have to a pg, degand can run but he doesnt look for his teammates and the few times he does he usually makes a bad decision

1/15/2009 4:17:27 PM

i thought this thread was about UNC

1/15/2009 5:50:48 PM

I'd be happy if UNC went 2-14.

1/15/2009 6:10:34 PM

Quote :

"Fells - Very talented but doesn't know how to play basketball. He could score on every play if he wanted to but he probably can't read this sentence let alone play with his head. Has no clue how to assert his god-given talent and would probably be ineffective in any career path."

Fells was my partner in a Spanish class and he's actually a pretty smart guy, I don't know about his recent on the court smarts but he balled it up in Spanish class I know that

1/15/2009 6:58:24 PM

What happened to all the people on Javi's cock last year?

1/15/2009 7:10:49 PM

he's soft now

1/15/2009 7:15:50 PM

i thought javi would be solid, but man is he not. he's playing w/ nothing out there.

1/15/2009 7:25:35 PM

maybe he'll still injured. There have been times when he has shown he can be somewhat steady, but I certainly wouldn't want him getting significant minutes until he can prove that he can be a legitimate player.

1/15/2009 7:34:01 PM

Quote :

"Fells - Very talented but doesn't know how to play basketball. He could score on every play if he wanted to but he probably can't read this sentence let alone play with his head. Has no clue how to assert his god-given talent and would probably be ineffective in any career path."

hahaha post of the months right there.

1/15/2009 7:58:57 PM

Quote :

"What happened to all the people on Javi's cock last year?"

hahahahahahahah

hahahahahahhaha

what?

who the fuck are you referring to? i dont remember ANYBODY saying ANYTHING good about him EVER

1/15/2009 8:49:14 PM

he had my support last year.

1/15/2009 8:52:36 PM

oh he had my support, i just didnt think he was good...i HOPED he would get better...he has gotten a little better

i just never once thought he did anything great enough last year for anybody to be "on his dick"

1/15/2009 8:53:51 PM

I can't see us losing to Virginia

1/15/2009 10:53:05 PM

Javi is a scrappy motherfucker, though.

terrible, but scrappy.

1/15/2009 10:57:12 PM

I can see us losing to anyone.

1/15/2009 10:59:05 PM

I remember us saying how much Javi had improved over the season

that he would be an ok pg, but certainly nobody expected him to save us this season

1/16/2009 1:22:41 AM

Javi go to the point where he could run a pick and roll competently about 40% of the time. Everyone hoped he would come in this year and run it well 80% of the time, as atsur did when he was a senior.

Not being able to run the pick and roll well is pretty much the sole reason why our half court offense is not as good as it was at the end of Lowe's first year. Atsur was a smart guy, and Lowe got him up to speed really quickly.

Now mays is the one executing the pick and roll the best, and he can actually hit mid range shots and the occasional spot-up 3. Having a PG who is a double or triple threat is the key for us.

1/16/2009 1:32:28 AM

i was ready to make an orlovsky joke

i, too, thought this was about the lions

1/16/2009 1:50:36 AM

setemup

1/16/2009 5:38:32 AM