Chalk Talk Article by Jim Sumner

[oldnavy]

Thanks for that article Jim, as always very insightful and very well written.

As I have said ad nauseam, I believe Ol Roy is overrated as a coach. Good to great recruiter, but mediocre at best in developing and coaching non-elite players and below average at game manangement.

This year he has a chance to prove himself. If he can adapt this team to a outside - in style, and get his players to play their roles, there is no reason they cannot be a top ten team in March. If he does this I will reconsider my opinion of him as a coach.

If he doesn't do these things the wheels could come off the bus and it could be as bad if not worse than the 2010 NIT runner ups.

I still have a hard time processing the fact that ECU dropped 61 points on them in CH in one-half of play. THAT just does not happen to good teams.

Like Jim's article says, they have talent and time. My question is do they have a coach that knows what to do with the type of talent he has....

[OldPhiKap]

Agree, excellent article by Jim.

Is Roy a one-trick pony? We shall see. Of course, they looked bad a few years ago until Roy finally gave up on LD II and put in Marshall -- changed the whole ballgame. So I wouldn't put a fork in them yet (although stewed goat is yummy).

[oldnavy]

Agree, excellent article by Jim.

Is Roy a one-trick pony? We shall see. Of course, they looked bad a few years ago until Roy finally gave up on LD II and put in Marshall -- changed the whole ballgame. So I wouldn't put a fork in them yet (although stewed goat is yummy).

Yea, but Kendall Marshall is not walking through that door.:p

I agree, that was a good move by Roy, but essentially he just switched from a bad point guard to a really, really good point guard.

I'll give him credit for making the change as I am sure he took a lot of flack from LDII's mother.

I just think that this year he will have to do more than tinker with the line up. I think he will have to modify his style of play, and I am not sure he is willing to do that. I think he probably is capable of changing things up, but will he??

It seems that the offense is doing ok, not great, but ok. The defense that allowed the 61 points is what would be worrying me if I were a UNC fan.

[cptnflash]

I just think that this year he will have to do more than tinker with the line up. I think he will have to modify his style of play, and I am not sure he is willing to do that. I think he probably is capable of changing things up, but will he??

It seems that the offense is doing ok, not great, but ok. The defense that allowed the 61 points is what would be worrying me if I were a UNC fan.

Seemed like every time the camera cut to Roy last night (usually after a made basket by Texas), he was screaming at his players to bring the ball up the court faster. That seems to be his solution to everything - just play faster! Like the point of the game is to see how many possessions you can burn through, rather than how to use your possessions most efficiently. And his refusal to use timeouts is baffling. So I'm going to have to disagree with you - I don't think Roy is actually capable of changing his style. He knows one way to play - the Carolina way. It works great when you have Felton/May or Lawson/Hansbrough. Not so much with Drew/Davis or Paige/McAdoo.


Also disagree about their offense. By Carolina standards, this year's version is God-awful. Not even top 50 nationally in efficiency terms, despite the fact that they are a great offensive rebounding team. The real problem is that, other than Reggie Bullock, they just... can't... shoot. They're going to need a lot of orange paint this year to cover up all the dings in the hoops down at the Dean Dome.

[oldnavy]

Seemed like every time the camera cut to Roy last night (usually after a made basket by Texas), he was screaming at his players to bring the ball up the court faster. That seems to be his solution to everything - just play faster! Like the point of the game is to see how many possessions you can burn through, rather than how to use your possessions most efficiently. And his refusal to use timeouts is baffling. So I'm going to have to disagree with you - I don't think Roy is actually capable of changing his style. He knows one way to play - the Carolina way. It works great when you have Felton/May or Lawson/Hansbrough. Not so much with Drew/Davis or Paige/McAdoo.


Also disagree about their offense. By Carolina standards, this year's version is God-awful. Not even top 50 nationally in efficiency terms, despite the fact that they are a great offensive rebounding team. The real problem is that, other than Reggie Bullock, they just... can't... shoot. They're going to need a lot of orange paint this year to cover up all the dings in the hoops down at the Dean Dome.

I was trying to be kind in keeping with the season. ;)

I will agree to disagree with your second paragraph. I do think Roy could change, I just don't think he will.

He appears to be stubborn and very prideful. He probably thinks that it isn't his system failing, it is just that the kids are not doing what he tells them to do.

That may well be the case, but maybe they can't do what he wants them to do, at least they can't do it well enough.

Someone more flexible would see this. Roy probably can't see it...

So in fact I think I just talked myself into agreeing with you!!

How did you do that???

[OldPhiKap]

OldNavy, are you saying that Roy may actually need to coach this team?

You're a mad man, I seyz.

[oldnavy]

OldNavy, are you saying that Roy may actually need to coach this team?

You're a mad man, I seyz.

Well, he does coach them in a sense. He flails his arms around and screams for them to run faster up the court. I guess you could classify that as coaching.

He really needs to put that Top Hat back on, and get the wand out of the closet. He's going to need a little magic this year I do believe.

[davekay1971]

Noticed also that Ol Roy did a lot of instructing his team to bring it up faster, go faster. And that is his solution. He wants the get the ball upcourt and into the offense quickly, so the defense isn't set. He loves that "secondary break", trying to score against a transitioning defense after a made basket. Roy's probably smart enough to know that pounding it into the paint in the halfcourt isn't an option with this team, so all the more reason for him to want to try to score against an unset defense.

But...Roy made the mistake in 2010 with LD The Second to try to push the pace on offense with a PG who wasn't capable of doing that efficiently. That worked great with Lawson, was a disaster with Drew. Worked great again with Marshall. How's it going to work with Strickland/Paige? Yesterday, not well.

Roy isn't good, at all, at refiguring his offense around the strengths and weaknesses of the players on hand. When he has a big like Hansbrough and a PG like Lawson and good wing players, well, he wins a natty. When he's got a suspect PG and interior players who aren't good half-court offensive options, he's not quite so successful.

Add to that, Roy doesn't teach defense well. He's had some very good defensive teams, of course, but it always seems like defense is a secondary consideration for him, and he mostly talks about effort and desire when it comes to defense. Those are essential ingredients, but technique and scheme are also essential (which is why it frequently takes Duke players a year or two to really learn how to play defense to K's standards). If Roy has a guy like Henson in the middle, his defense is good. But we haven't really seen him TEACH defense, and his teams somehow seem to only intermittently buy into it. That tells me that he doesn't focus on defense much in practice...time is probably spent working on the break, the secondary break, and the halfcourt.

I think Carolina answered some questions last night, but the answers were pretty ugly. Against a potentially great team (Indiana), Carolina got destroyed. Against a very good team (Butler), Carolina got destroyed, but managed to make a game out of it. Against a very mediocre (being polite) team (Texas), Carolina got beaten soundly. Against lousy teams, Carolina does ok. With the ever increasing sample size we see that Carolina is a mediocre team, because:

1) Carolina's not very good on defense
2) Their offense is only decent if their 3 point shooting is on.
3) They have no go-to player
4) Their PGs are, at this moment, not capable of breaking down a defense and getting the ball to scorers in high probability positions (like Marshall did for Barnes for 2 and 1/2 years).
5) Carolina is very weak on the boards.

Carolina, right now, looks like a team that absolutely has to be hitting from 3 to win against any kind of decent competition. That may change, but Roy's going to have to figure it out.

Hee hee hee...

[sagegrouse]

FWIW (which I freely acknowledge is "not much") Carolina under Roy (and Dean?) uses a lot of players in a helter-skelter fashion. This practice can have deleterious consequences, especially early in the season. This year, it shows up in a lack of cohesiveness and teamwork. Last night, however, went far beyond these.

K and Duke, on the other hand, work very intensively at getting a few sets of five players to play together under the Duke offense and defense systems; consequently, the complaint we hear is that the rotation is too small, and we don't use enough players (or, at least, all the ones I want to see on the court). If Duke went to the helter-skelter substitution pattern, our brains might explode.

At the same time, sometimes the Carolina teams look very shaky early and then seem to "get it." Anyway, the stake has not been driven through the heart of the Vampire-Heel, and I fully expect UNC to be a formidable opponent before the end of the season.

And, this time, I am happy to be proved wrong.

sagegrouse

[Kedsy]

(like Marshall did for Barnes for 2 and 1/2 years)

Unless Marshall was doing this for Barnes while they were both in high school, it was only 1 and 1/2 years. Perhaps it seemed like two and a half.

[MChambers]

We're all drooling over the surfeit of wings Duke will have next season, but Roy doesn't seem to be able to use all of his wings very effectively. Of course, Duke will have a very good point guard and a center who is more qualified, on paper, than any of UNC's centers this year.

Still, I'm wondering if it really is true that Roy needs a good, fast point guard and a low post scorer to be effective. OTOH, he had a pretty good year with Frasor at point, but he did have a pretty effective low post game that yar.

[NSDukeFan]

We're all drooling over the surfeit of wings Duke will have next season, but Roy doesn't seem to be able to use all of his wings very effectively. Of course, Duke will have a very good point guard and a center who is more qualified, on paper, than any of UNC's centers this year.

Still, I'm wondering if it really is true that Roy needs a good, fast point guard and a low post scorer to be effective. OTOH, he had a pretty good year with Frasor at point, but he did have a pretty effective low post game that yar.

I expect coach K and the staff would and will be able to better use an excess of talented wings. I think Roy is an excellent recruiter and is good at teaching a certain style of basketball, which encourages more possessions as he usually has the more talented teams that can better take advantage of that talent gap with more possessions. I think we may be spoiled in that coach K is constantly looking to change and find the best way to use the players he has, but I think a lot of coaches coach their style and try to get players to fit that style. I don't know that Roy needs particular types of players that much, more that he has greater success when he has a lot more talent and isn't able to adjust particularly well to hide deficiencies his teams may have.

[oldnavy]

Talking about UNC scoring from the outside, I find it amusing that for years UNC fans bashed Duke and the 3 point shot. Now how the worm has turned. If UNC isn't dropping the 3 ball they are anemic.

I am cautiously optomistic that UNC will be a train wreck by the end of the season.

Besides the tangible things we have discussed, they are searching for a leader and chemistry issues have already been brought up.

All we need now is for Ol Roy to go ballistic.

What's the over/under for Roy going "Mountain Man" on someone? January 15th??? Assuming the world doesn't end tomorrow....