It was great to see Hansbrough get involved early. Carolina did a great job with their spacing on offense and as a result Psycho-T had lots of room to maneuver and get open down low. Then my man Danny Green led a one-man spurt to put the game away early in the second half. Other than Ellington, who missed all three of his three-pointers, the offense really flowed yesterday.
Finally, odd as it may sound for someone who did not make a field goal, Lawson dominated the offense side of the ball and set the tone for the game despite hitting only four free throws. Carolina passed the ball very well the entire game. Some games, like against Duke, Lawson needs to take over. In others, he needs to feed the post. I think he is starting to figure that out.
- Paul Hewitt reminds me of the rental-car agent in a Seinfeld episode, the one who gives away Jerry's car even though he had a reservation. To paraphrase, "Hewitt knows how to get talent, he just doesn't know how to hold it." Chris Bosh, Thaddeus Young, Javaris Crittendon, Ishmael Mohammed are all Tech guys who left early and play in the NBA.
- I like Crittendon, who is getting some decent minutes for our hometown Wizards in what should be his junior year in Atlanta.
- Bobby Frasor had a nice game, hitting three two-point shots including one nifty drive with a ball fake. I think he needs to do that more rather than exclusively settling for jacking up threes.
- Carolina's bench scored 25 points (29 if you count the deep bench players/walk ons). Zeller seemed much more comfortable and finished with 8 points. And Ed Davis continued to be Ed Davis. I loved his Olajuwon-esque turn around in the first half.
- In addition to watching the Heels win by 30 is was great to listen to Gus Johnson and Greg Anthony work the game. Johnson loves calling games; check out his greatest hits on YouTube. And Anthony, though he's a high-profile Republican, is insightful and precise with his language. They make a nice team.
- The Post has set it's sights on the Maryland mens basketball. Two weeks after a three-part series on Gary Williams, today's paper has a long piece on the interaction between Under Armour, the Baltimore-based apparel company founded by a Terp grad, and potential recruits. The relationship is dicey since the founder of the company is also a member of the Maryland Board of Trustees.
- I'm obviously very biased, but for my money the only conference worth watching is the ACC. Everyone knows Big 10 games are brutal contests that lack any kind of offensive flow. The Big East is not much better; no one in that conference seems to know how to get up and down the floor and most Beast games seem to be in the 60s (though Pitt did score 89 yesterday at Seton Hall). It's a Herb Sendek league.
- And speaking of Sendek, his Arizona State team needed overtime to score 49 points yesterday. They lost, 49-51 to Washington State. I have a morbid fascination with these low scoring games. ASU and WSU only turned the ball over 16 times - combined - and took a combined 21 free throws for the game. That means not many drives to the basket or bad passes but LOTS of missed and probably open shots; they likely didn't drive because they were getting open looks. Both teams milked the shot clock and missed lots of shots, and played bad non-ACC basketball. ASU will probably make the tournament but will stink it up once they do.
- Big win for Boston College at home earlier in the week against FSU, and then a big win by FSU over Clemson (who has lost two in a row) yesterday. It looks like right now the ACC has six locks for the NCAA tournament: Carolina, Duke, Wake, Clemson, Florida State and Boston College. Miami, which has a very favorable schedule, should get in if the U win their last two games and finishes at 8-8.
- The ACC has on outside shot at 9 bids, and deserves the most. At 6-7 Maryland needs at least two wins in their last three games, no small task. The Terps go to NC State tonight followed by a home game against Wake then another road game at Virginia. All three will be tough. The Terps really needed to beat Duke in College Park on Wednesday, but as is often the case suffered a bit of an emotional let down after their big win over the Heels.
- Virginia Tech is 7-7 and is still not dead yet. They host Carolina on Wednesday in a must win game, similar to the Maryland game for the Tar Heels. A win gives the Hokies a 500 record in conference and another marquee win. They close the season at FSU, so neither game will be easy.
- Finally, I got a chance to watch 'Battle for Tobacco Road" the other day on HBO. It's worth watching for a number of reasons: Dean, Worthy, and Jordan get plenty of screen time, and it's a nice reminder that historically Carolina leads the series by more than 30 wins, that Krzyzewski has a lifetime losing record against Carolina (despite the Gut and DOH years) and that Roy will make that record even worse. I'm surprised that the series did not put more emphasis on how each school graduates its players and doesn't cheat, but in general they did a nice job.
Nats Note
Jim Bowden finally fell on his sword today and resigned as the Nationals' General Manager. We should be happy that he didn't miss the sword or screw that up, too. Though his scrap heap line up led to an unexpected 81 win season three years ago, the bottom line is his moves led to a102-loss season to debut a new taxpayer funded stadium (with another retread, Odalis Perez, throwing the first pitch!).
Bowden was finally undone by the signing and tawdry and shallow mea culpas surrounding the signing of one-time teenager "Smiley" Gonzalez. Ironically, he resigned as some of his moves may be poised to pay off. Bowden did bring Lastings Milledge, Adam Dunn, Josh Willingham, Jesus Flores and Elijah Dukes to DC, and he did draft Ryan Zimmerman, Jordan Zimmerman, and other prospects. That's a decent amount of talent, talent he won't be around to see develop thanks to his inept handling of the Gonzalez signing.
Despite those moves, he will not be missed.
PS - Congrats to Fire Jim Bowden blogger Steven Biel.
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