When you lose as often as Miami has lost to Boston College it becomes psychological. However, that is still no excuse to not show up for a game, especially for a league game on the road. In fact if anything, that should force a team to redouble its intensity and focus. But that's not what Miami did tonight. Simply put, the Hurricanes embarrassed themselves and quite frankly I am wondering aloud if the team is even worthy of an NIT bid they way they didn't compete tonight.
Let's start at the top with reference to the game. Boston College wanted to run and in the early minutes Miami ran with them, popping wild shots. Thus the Hurricanes started 1 of 17 from the field. Anthony King whose unwillingness to use his size and strength in the paint is now becoming an overall cancer for the team attempted three long range jump shots in the first four minutes while not posting up even once.
Jack McClinton and James Dews, the two sharpshooting Miami guards we have read so much about made no attempt to move off the ball. Thus the offense broke down and often times wild, crazy shots were attempted. No attempt to push the ball inside was made until Jimmy Graham as he often has had to do in the last month single handily attacked the basket and got no help, even from bulky Dwayne Collins inside. In the second half Miami began by shooting 1 for 12 to go along with the 1 for 17 in the first half. Simply pathetic.
I could go on and on, but for any team in a major conference to lose to an opponent 13 straight times and to give no effort whatsoever from the word go should deem any coach and his team to College Basketball purgatory. That is where Miami is tonight and it is where they belong until the next time they play B.C. in early March.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Embarrassment # 13
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16 comments:
As our 3pt game goes, so goes everything else. Where the hell are Anthony King and Brian Asbury?? These guys are jrs & srs!! They shouldn't be shrinking in big games they've played in the ACC before.
Mark- both those guys are timid and scared. King wants to shoot jump shots so he can impress the NBA scouts and Asbury has been playing scared for weeks with the exception of the Penn game. Collins too is raw and hasn't grown his game at all this year. I do like the intensity that Hicks is playing with tonight though, but he's the only one playing tough and smart. Graham is playing tough and dumb and the rest seemed to have missed the flight.
Agreed. this has been an unacceptable performance. I cant wait to hear haiths reaction. this game has been a complete disaster. horrendous shot selection. nonexistent defense. lets not even mention rebounding. it looks like the canes heard rebounding was banned from basketball. we have no offense at all. it looks like a pick up game offense. just 5 guys running around jacking up threes. MAJOR adjustments need to be made and soon.
Haith should be canned after this performance. This is what happens when you hire a coach on the cheap!
Shot selection is so poor. These guys have no composure.
I have never criticized Haith because I actually like him but this one is on him. If I read correctly in the paper it was understood that the players were not up for the game. How can you not be up to beat a team that has beaten you 12 times in a row? You think they are just going to run and hide because you have a ranking? This is far worse than the Winthrop.
This is not the end of the world but it's not a good thing for sure. This makes NC State, in my mind, a must win.
Far worse than Winthrop is correct, Cardinal. I will give Haith credit for changing his defense midway through the 2nd half and going to a 3/4 court man to man and causing turnovers as BC is not known to have the best ball handlers (much like us and like NC State as well.)
But the bottom line is our guys panicked early and started jacking up 3s. Hicks and Graham were the only two guys irrespective of the many mistakes both made who came to play and that is completely unacceptable.
I'm tired of losing to BC. If this team since 2001 can win as it did at the Den Dome, win at Maryland, beat UConn several times, win at the Carrier Dome, win at Villanova twice, win at the O'Dome, etc why can't we beat BC even once be it at home, up there or on a neutral court? Why is this team so scared of BC? I happen to think Al Skinner despite getting little press is one of the top 10 coaches in America. Look at the way even guys with little talent like that Oates kid play for him. But still to lose 13 straight times to anyone is not acceptable!
yes jimmy played great against GT but you are wrong about yesterday. Heck, james dews played great saturday. both deserve praise for their play on saturday. however, that does not earn them a pass for the rest of their lives. come the next game, everyone is on a clean slate. and performances like grahams on saturday only raise the bar on his expectations. asbury's game against penn was fantastic yet he has once again disappeared since then.
Haith's biggest mistake is his mis-management of timeouts. This has gone on since his very first game at UM against Wofford when he bungled the clock.
However, unlike the Football coach at the "U" he knows how to make adjustments. He clearly made two at halftime- wanting to go right at BC's interior guys and get them in foul trouble and then adjusting a 3/4 court defense which required 3 guards play the entire time. (which meant Hurdle played more than it seems like he had the entire season to this point!) This meant essentially Asbury and King sat the entire second half. (except when they spelled Graham, Collins or Hicks).
So while Haith still has some issues, he's a whole lot better of a gameday coach than ANYONE on the football staff.
I ditstinctly remember some of the people around town talking about being ten deep and being a top tier ACC team.
How humbling a conference road loss is.
They went with eight players over 15 minutes. In a game that BC's lead ballooned to over twenty.
The G. Tech game was a great win, and NC State is reeling from their loss to Clemson. Now Miami has to go to NC State where they play extremely well.
Miami's bigs better step-up from this poor showing if they have any expectation of winning.
We're not as bad as we played yesterday but seeing as we have UNC after NC State, we need to beat the Wolfpack. I really didn't think we had a very good shot to beat BC at BC (thought it would be closer....) but NC State isn't very good. They're performance against UNC was pathethic, and not just the margin but their effort and now they got blownout by Clemson tonight.
We need this game and Haith has to get the team ready to play.
If we're going to beat NC State we have to go inside and play smarter in the first ten minutes. We need to show more patience with our shot selection. Last night was a complete embarrassment. Now if we lose to NC State we're in trouble with UNC, Clemson and Duke coming soon after on the schedule.
King is having problems against a shot blocker but lets be honest. Our entire team has problems against a shot block.
We play below the rim.
King lacks athleticism
Asbury is scared and doesn't have the physical ability to be consistent going to the bucket
Collins gets up there, sometimes. And it takes him a while to get there
McClinton is a joke going to the basket. Incredible shooter, terrible slasher
Dews is a scoring machine but thats because of his touch.
Jack shot 23% and the rest of the team as abysmally as they played shot 36%. Its not totally Jack's fault. A real point guard can create easy shots for other players.
BC also played very smart, they figured that Blair could outrebound all of our big guys, so after every shot we took hit or miss, they sent 3 guys running down court figuring if we missed or it got blocked then they'd have numbers. If we got the rebound, they knew that Blair could hold down the fort until they recovered defensively. They got as many as 10 cheap points this way. A dunk following a block is pretty demoralizing. I can remember 3 times that happening
He will make the necessary adjustments for our next opponent. King needs to get tougher. I love Dews, he will get better as the season goes on. We need McClinton to get hot as well. I still think we are one of the top 5 teams in the ACC and I strongly believe that we will win 8 games in the conference.
BC is a good team, in-conference games on the road are very difficult to win. As long as we take a couple of them and win the home games that we are expected to win then we will be okay. We are not a top 15 team, we are more like a top 22 - 35 team.
I still like our make up and the coach is teaching these kids. Lets be happy we are 14-2 & 1-1 in the ACC. Not bad!
Have Faith in Haith.
If I were Haith I would bench Asbury and start Hurdle at PG against NC St. and see how it goes. I don't honestly think Asbury will toughen up or become more aggressive. He's a junior and it hasn't happened yet, so what makes you think he'll all the sudden change? He's one of the most inconsistent players we've had, more so than Anthony Harris. He can put up 20 pts/8 boards and then the next game have 2/1. But the main reason I would make this lineup change is to help the flow of our offense.
Having Jack run the point is really starting to not only hurt him, but the whole team. Good defenses are forcing him to throw up well defended, ill-advised shots. With Hurdle at the point, it would really help Jack's scoring capabilities and provide more for our inside game, too. Plus I think Hurdle has really settled down and he deserves a chance to start.
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