Miami thoughts

As we watched the game back tonight after dinner, my wife kept asking: “were you worried here?” or “did you give up after that?” I kept answering honestly, “nah, I knew we still had time…” Now, I am not suddenly Joe Cool, but there was something about the way the game was playing out that had me frustrated but not really worried. Maybe because I had work to distract me. Maybe because I knew that season did not rest on the results of this game. In the end my faith was rewarded. My eyes were not rewarded as it was an ugly game and BC was lucky to win. Here are my thoughts:

Likes
-- The Tyrese Rice show. As stated by everyone, Rice carried this team. The good news is that he was able to create his own shot and his own points. He even grabbed a few of his own misses. Get used to this, because unless the Freshman step up next year, I think we’ll be seeing a lot of 30 point games from Rice in 2007.
-- Oates and Blair on the floor together. Oates is everyone’s whipping boy, but he played really well today. He hit his 3s. He finished close to the basket. His defense was better than his usual crap improved and he boxed out for the first time this season. Things also worked well the last ten minutes of regulation and then in OT when Blair was on the floor at the same time. BC’s defensive rebounding and defense around the baseline and basket showed signs of life. We should probably have them on the floor together against UNC.
-- Dudley’s second half and OT. The goose egg in the first half didn’t bother me. The lack of rebounds did. I don’t know if he flipped a switch at half or it was just a bad 20 minutes, but he was a different man in the second half. Yes, he got his points, but his defense was much better. He got some assists and most importantly controlled the baseline. Four separate times, Dudley closed off a Cane driving with a smart play (the two big ones were when Dudley slammed the ball off of an out of bounds Graham and his forcing Miami into a fling for their last shot in regulation).

Dislikes
-- Spears' 9 minutes. I hate killing the kid but he played like a Freshman Friday. He should spend his whole summer working on catching passes in traffic because he has real problems now. Against GT he played with purpose and went towards passes. Against Miami he was flat footed and was lucky he didn’t turn the ball over more.
-- Sean Marshall. He made a huge 3 but that was it. The guy was a non-factor. Typical of his problems: if he is not getting his points his defense suffers and his rebounding is non existent. He had 4 rebounds but none of them on the offensive end.
-- The final minute before halftime. I’ve been beating this point home since the first Clemson game. And again it became an issue against the ‘Canes. Down five with a minute left, two really bad possessions left us down 10 at the break. It comes down to sloppy basketball and bad defense. For such an experienced team this is unacceptable.

One other thing
Because I was at work, I listened to Ted and Bill in the pregrame, halftime and postgame, watched Vitale and Patrick on ESPN360 live and watched the game again at home with the Lincoln Financial team of Brandt and Mike Gminski. Ted and Bill did their usual solid job. The ESPN crew was terrible. All the usual hype and BS with very little substance or even paying attention to replays. The Lincoln Financial team was excellent. They didn’t bury BC nearly as much as ESPN. Their observations were fair. Even though he is a Dukie, Gminski might now be my favorite college color guy. He always picks up little things and doesn’t get caught up in the storyline nonsense.


This is one of those strange results. If we won with ease, no one would care. If we lost, we’d all be deflated. Instead we got a memorable comeback and win that leaves hope for UNC and hope for next week.