So what does this mean – is UNC overrated? Probably not in the sense that they’re definitely one of the top five teams in America. But the ridiculous talk about undefeated seasons and ‘best team ever’ was egregious and irresponsible. Carolina is an experienced, talented team, but they’re essentially the same team as last year. Their offense remains spectacular, especially when Lawson can get them running up and down the court, but their defense is almost completely predicated on getting on-the-fly turnovers to fuel that attack. When they don’t get takeaways where they can run, they have to rely solely on their halfcourt defense, and as we saw tonight, it can be broken down and exposed by dribble penetration and ball movement. What about Wake Forest – are the Deacs underrated? As John Stevens’ showed in his column last week, there are dozens of teams ahead of Wake on the Vegas odds list, so it’s clear that the national consciousness hasn’t caught up with them yet. But we’re looking at a team with two NBA lottery picks in the starting lineup (Teague/Aminu), the possibility of a third (Johnson), a few other nice parts (McFarland, Williams, Hale, Woods) and we’re wondering if any other team in America, Carolina included, has more talent? Furthermore, the core of Wake’s team are sophomores and freshmen, which means this team could be markedly better by March (cf. with UNC, where we pretty much know what we’re going to get) – how good could this Wake Forest team ultimately become? From the looks of it now, this team is clearly one of the top four in America, and probably has more upside than anybody. The only real question is how the Deacs will perform now that the national spotlight will begin to squarely focus on their program. This isn’t a program that has traditionally reveled in that role.
Sunday’s Other Games.
- UCLA 64, USC 60. This USC team is not good – they’ve lost to every halfway-decent team they’ve played (and Oregon St.) – ugh. We’d rather have Jrue Holiday on our team than Demar DeRozan, though.
- Alabama 65, LSU 59. We do not want to hear about LSU again until they win a game away from Baton Rouge – the Tigers are now 0-3 away from home.
- Purdue 65, Wisconsin 52. Robbie Hummell came back from his back injury and hit four threes in a 16/5 performance.
- St. Mary’s 66, San Francisco 54. SMC continues to roll. Nobody seemed to see the dagger three that Patty Mills hit to win Friday night’s ESPNU game against Santa Clara at home, so we’re providing it here (start watching at 7:30).
View Comments (7)
"ignorant, innappropriate RTC?"
Please. Go through three years of hell like we did and you'd be doing the same thing.
I watched the Mills link... He's a nice player, but he nearly shot his team out of it before he shot them back into it. And his 2 tech free throws were terrible.
Man, I ought to roll your ass off this porch for talking like that.
@ WonderD:
Banned for foul language.
You sorry, rtmsf. You can't be bannimafying me.
Wake's Rush the Court = FAIL
was that image you included the only one you could find, or the last still from the broadcast? the students were being funneled by about 50 cops through 4 small openings. yeah, it took about 30 seconds for the 2500 students in attendance to get onto the court, but i'm not exactly sad they didn't trample the security guards to get out there and celebrate.
It was a still frame from the broadcast.
The fact that it was delayed by the cops makes the whole sorry RTC even worse. We thought that there was some hesitation among the Wake students, but your account suggests otherwise.