^^^that is true...he did originally commit to Creighton and he did attend 4 high schools. but that's not *that* crazy, really. i mean, yeah it's a pattern. but nowadays lots of guys got to multiple high schools.

but yes, transferring after 1 game is odd. oh well.

11/13/2018 10:08:20 AM

Quote :

"eh, there are only a handful of teams that we will face with dominating big men. teams make the tourney with small lineups all the time."

Maybe you're right. Just out of curiosity, how many tournie teams have only three guys that are over 6'5" (and one of those 3 is only 6'7")?

11/13/2018 10:23:01 AM

Obviously I’m not saying we’re on Villanova’s level. But they only really had 2 guys with any size get significant minutes on their title team last year.

[Edited on November 13, 2018 at 10:30 AM. Reason : But yes we are thin up front and ideally would have more size. ]

11/13/2018 10:30:18 AM

It's fine to play small-ball in spurts, but we can't play small ball for half a game if we lose Walker or Funderburk.

Especially when we're not expected to be a prolific 3pt shooting team.

11/13/2018 10:36:36 AM

Quote :

"Obviously I’m not saying we’re on Villanova’s level. But they only really had 2 guys with any size get significant minutes on their title team last year."

Going by our definition of > 6'5", they had 3 (Bridges, Spellman and Paschall) that played significant minutes.

11/13/2018 10:54:46 AM

Correct. I skipped right over Paschall when looking at their roster

11/13/2018 10:57:27 AM

I know there's the obvious example of Villanova (and there are probably a few mid-majors), but are there other examples?

11/13/2018 11:03:13 AM

Quote :

"It's fine to play small-ball in spurts, but we can't play small ball for half a game if we lose Walker or Funderburk. Especially when we're not expected to be a prolific 3pt shooting team."

Who says we aren't expected to be a prolific 3pt shooting team? It's pretty clear that is KK's style and although we may not have the perfect personnel for it yet, 8/10 of our players in the rotation can shoot average to above average from deep (shooting 42% from three on the year so far as a team albeit with a small sample size).

Anyways, I am not suggesting that losing Walker or Funderburk won't hurt and may even cause us to miss the tourney. Funderburk in particular may be my new favorite player. I love his game. My response was in the context of losing Steere and I do think the idea that his depth defines whether we make the tourney if one of our top two bigs go out this year is ludicrous.

We won't know for another year how good the kid really is, but from the little we got to watch him, he seemed like a very generous 6'9 and probably wouldn't ever be the guy to guard 5s anyways.

11/13/2018 12:57:57 PM

Quote :

"Who says we aren't expected to be a prolific 3pt shooting team?"

I think most everyone who knows anything about our team is predicting that, although we may surprise.

11/13/2018 1:27:33 PM

I must be reading alot different sources than you fellas. I also watch nearly every game and although we never had any real knock down shooters, we have always taken alot of 3pters in my memory. Since I had my lunch break to look it up I did.

I guess it depends on what you mean by prolific, but Keatt's teams were ranked 1st in conference for the last two years at UNCW for 3p attempts and makes. Last year, our team was middle of the conference in makes and attempts and 2nd in 3p%. It seems obvious his offense is geared around taking lots of 3s when he has the personnel. We seem to be much closed to his ideal type of team this year over last so I see no reason why we can't be "prolific".

[Edited on November 13, 2018 at 2:54 PM. Reason : d]

11/13/2018 2:54:10 PM

Steere transferring is random, I never heard of someone transferring out after the first game. I still think we'll be fine as last year we only had one good big in Yurt.

^^ I'm confused, it seemed like most of the players on the team knocked down 3s in the first two games, I think it's one our strengths this year.
^ Agree, we wouldn't had beaten UNC at the dome last year if it wasn't for us relying on 3 pointers.

11/13/2018 3:41:04 PM

Keatts system is predicated on creating turnovers and making 3's. Not sure how anyone who watches more than five minutes of our team play could think otherwise.

I know its still super early, but I have been very impressed by the Lockett - Hellems - Funderburk combo. They seem to play really well with each other and kind of play off each others strengths. It will be interesting to see how they continue to play together through the season.

11/13/2018 3:57:46 PM

Quote :

"Keatts system is predicated on creating turnovers and making 3's. "

Yes, you're correct. That doesn't necessarily mean we'll be a great (or good) 3-point shooting team.

11/13/2018 4:05:12 PM

We have a completely different team this year and most of the new players are not known as knockdown shooters.

Bryce shot a decent amount but only 33%. Daniels shot 40% but only 1 per game. Lockett is below 30%. And none of the freshman were known as shooters, although they could have all worked on it all summer. Markell and Braxton are really the only known shooters on the team.

In contrast, Yurt, Freeman and Hunt combined to shoot 10 3s/game at a 40% rate.

On the other hand, Dorn was kinda bad from 3 last year after being decent his fresh and soph years, so maybe he rebounds.

11/13/2018 4:17:07 PM

I thought Daniels was supposed to be good? He's been extremely disappointing to me so far.

11/13/2018 7:45:08 PM

Yeah I’ve been fairly unimpressed with him so far. I didn’t see the 2nd game though, so I’ve seen a whopping 1.5 games.

11/13/2018 7:52:14 PM

UNC Ash are dirty. I hope we beat them by 40+

11/13/2018 7:53:49 PM

He's been off so far but there's still time for him to get in a groove.

11/13/2018 7:56:43 PM

Daniels has had a stronger second half imo

11/13/2018 8:42:02 PM

Quote :

"we play unca tonight...they seem to be better than the other 2 teams we've played but still not particularly good."

I think it take this back. They aren’t any better than the other 2.

11/13/2018 8:52:37 PM

Hellem is going be good.

11/13/2018 8:55:32 PM

We haven’t played any good teams yet, but we are beating the shit out of them like good teams should. That gives me hope that we can play well against the good OOC teams. Hopefully PNC will be rocking when Auburn comes to town who will likely still be a top 10 team at that point.

I plan on going to the Hoophall Invitational to see us take on Vanderbilt and the game against Miami in Coral Gables as well. State doesn’t come down here too often, so I feel lucky that they will be here in Miami twice this year. Anyone else coming down here for those games?

11/13/2018 10:26:11 PM

These teams aren't just not good, they're some of the worst in D1. Kk has set a theme for OOC scheduling

11/13/2018 10:56:38 PM

I've enjoyed the White Walker's hustle.

11/13/2018 11:16:28 PM

^^I don't mind it, as long as we have no bad wins in the OCC schedule. This is a mostly new team and only Keatts second year. I expect to see better OCC scheduling in year 3.

11/14/2018 12:33:46 AM

i hesitate to read too much into these results vs very bad no good teams...but, it is refreshing to see us utterly dominate these opponents with 40-50 point wins. seems like in the past we have won these games by 15-20 and kinda cruised the whole time. this year the energy and effort has been there start to finish, even against the worst of the worst. so that's nice.

i'm just glancing through some of the schedules/results of some of gott's teams...(i know it's not a great comparison but fuck it) most of those wins against OOC teams were in the 12-20 point range. a few outliers where we blew out Jackson St, Miami (OH), McNeese by 30+. and i know we've established that the OOC teams KK has scheduled are generally worse than most of Gott's OOC teams...so somebody else can go back and tell me how much better those teams were and why it's a terrible comparison. but it just feels like we aren't sleep walking through the lesser opponents, we're playing with a lotta energy and dominating from start to finish. now i'll brace myself for the sluggish start coming up vs St. Peter's where we trail at the half

11/14/2018 6:06:52 AM

KK track record at UNC-A as far as OOC schedule shows it’s not like he doesn’t want to play good teams before conference play. His 3rd year at UNC-A they played Kansas, VCU, Ohio St, and Georgia. But with the strength of the ACC the OOC Schedule becomes pretty irrelevant as long as you avoid more than maybe one bad loss. Reality is if you can be around .500 in the ACC and have 20 wins you’ll get into the tourney even with a bad OOC schedule.

Also Wisc, Vandy, Penn St, and Auburn are all teams that could win 20 games and make the tourney, Auburn obviously being legit. So I mean those 4 games plus an ACC Schedule is fine.

11/14/2018 7:35:32 AM

UNCW

But that view only totally tracks if making the tournament is your only goal, regardless of seed. And if you are fine with sweating it out at the end of the year if we are indeed right around .500 in the ACC.

Also, if we had been 8-8 last year with, say, losses to Cuse and Lou, we might have missed or started in Dayton.

11/14/2018 8:43:06 AM

We returned 3 guys who played for this team last year and we're introducing 3 new starters. Our OOC scheduling is perfect. We have Wisconsin, Vandy, and Auburn on the schedule coming up in the next few weeks, that's perfectly fine considering how strong the ACC is this year.

It's not like our SOS is going to be awful considering how many good teams we'll face in conference play and OOC is about padding the W column and starting with weak teams helps to integrate the guys and lets them come along at a good pace.

I get we've beaten no one, but at the same time, when is the last time a NC State team averaged 100pg over the first 3 games of the year? Or how about a 3-game stretch at any point where we averaged winning by 49 ppg. We're winning, but we're also playing hard and playing a lot of guys, this is only a positive thing.

You think Kentucky and Michigan State wish they had easier opening games? Bet those guys would love to be 3-0 right now, regardless of competition.

11/14/2018 9:10:47 AM

I don't remember if they are still using the quadrant system this year, but if they are these aren't "padded Ws" that might as well be glorified exhibition games. Home wins against teams outside the top 160 really don't even count in the calculation.

It's also silly to take complaints about playing the worst teams in the country and imply that I'm asking to instead play the BEST teams in the country.

Gottfried scheduled plenty of beatable teams that weren't in the bottom 100 in the country

The 4 years before Keatts we played teams outside the rpi top 250 3, 3, 0 and 3 times.

Last year we played 7

[Edited on November 14, 2018 at 9:36 AM. Reason : E]

11/14/2018 9:16:49 AM

I'm trying to familiarize myself with the new team.

It's my understanding that the only players that will be exhausting their eligibility after this season are Dorn and Lockett (Senior and Grad Student)... Walker is a grad student too, but he has two years of eligibility....

Is that right?

11/14/2018 10:01:10 AM

And another thing, for 50 pt wins:

Quote :

"The NET will include a margin of victory component but it will be capped at 10 points “to prevent rankings from encouraging unsportsmanlike play, such as needlessly running up the score in a game where the outcome was certain,” according to the NCAA release."

http://amp.newsobserver.com/sports/article217149525.html

11/14/2018 10:02:08 AM

You can't compare State to Kentucky or Michigan scheduling at this time. The schedule gets tougher and the ACC will be absolutely brutal this year so I get the scheduling.

11/14/2018 10:31:14 AM

Yes they still use quadrants. No more RPI though.

11/14/2018 10:31:26 AM

^^Luda did but I cartainly didn't

11/14/2018 11:35:11 AM

10 points seems like a dumb barrier tbh

its not high enough for the kenpom stats to really measure anything but also still low enough that teams could try to "run up" a 6 point win into a 10 win which is a point spread a LOT of conference games end up in

11/14/2018 7:24:00 PM

If a team only has a 6 point lead at the end of the game they're likely being fouled down the stretch, which will extend a 6 point lead to low double digits naturally.

11/14/2018 7:36:53 PM

Yeah 10 points isn’t “blow out” territory. I’d extend it to maybe 16 or something. I get the idea of not wanting teams to run up the score. But a 10 Point win can be a very close 39 minute game until fouling at the end.

11/15/2018 7:35:43 AM

^

11/15/2018 9:05:12 AM

I wasn't saying we should schedule top 10 teams, I'm just saying there isn't anything wrong with building up momentum and chemistry before going out and playing top 50 teams. Our schedule is hard by default, so we really only need a few solid OOC games(which we have this year, we just don't have them in the first week or 2), and to be fair UNC-A has been a tournament team the last 2 years, so no clue if that'll hold true this year or not.

With the Quadrant system, there is no difference in playing a team ranked 161 at home or a team ranked 250, its' still a Q4 win, the same way that beating the 160th rank team is the exact same as beating the 76th rank team at home. It's just not as exciting for fans and the problem is no one knows if we're any good or not.

We'll know soon enough when we play @Wisconsin which would be a Q1 win.

11/15/2018 9:19:58 AM

50+ point win or bust

11/17/2018 2:54:35 PM

daniels is picking the right games to suck in, i guess

11/17/2018 3:07:17 PM

Where da game thread at

11/17/2018 3:21:02 PM

Tony and Gary credibility watch? Not even commentating both games at once.

11/17/2018 3:30:50 PM

really bad game for the people who care about the kenpoms

11/17/2018 3:48:44 PM

game day

11/20/2018 10:05:10 AM

Looks like St Peters is slightly better than the other 4 teams we’ve played but also they’re still pretty terrible. I hope we score 100!

11/20/2018 10:27:16 AM

polls at this point obviously mean nothing and the coaches poll is always kinda dumb anyways....but it is kinda interesting (and completely inconsequential) that we have 0 votes in the AP but 24 in the coaches. so we'd be 30th in the coaches and lower than 52 in the AP. i'm sure it was a mistake and they meant to vote for Loyola Chicago, but Loyola MD (1-4) received 2 AP votes. i'm not arguing that we deserve to be ranked...our resume is unimpressive and it's so early that it doesn't matter anyways. i just found it interesting that we were getting a pretty significant number of votes in one poll and 0 in another.

11/20/2018 10:48:08 AM

^interesting

11/20/2018 11:44:31 AM

I feel like the ACC is gonna be so strong this year that that will provide a considerable bump but yeah this is the one area where we should still be taking over cues from the Gott era, man knew how to schedule to make things look good. If we are middling this year won't have a strong argument for inclusion.

That said if the quadrant system really is the end all beat all, then a win over a ~330 team is the same as a win over a ~250 are still the same Quadrant 4 wins. But I would hope that the committee looks deeper than that in general.

11/20/2018 12:34:17 PM