Congrats, guys - we'll really miss you.  Actually, we won't miss the fact that on this list are some of the biggest assholes I've ever seen suit up in college football - we'll just miss whipping that ass.

Continue reading this post »

(Yeah, I know you're doing your write-up now, Steven - just getting a jump on it since I went to sleep early due to the beer & so woke up early, too...)

 

Overall, a solid if not spectacular effort by the Pack yesterday.  I still feel like we're going to be very fortunate to hit 5 wins, but we are starting to show the typical mid-year improvement we've come to expect from TOB teams.  Particularly with the team getting healthy over the next few weeks, we have a realistic chance to win a few games - but TOB talking bowls when we were 0-3 against FBS opponents was, quite honestly, disappointing and absurd.

With that, the rundown... and I'll start with positives for a change...

• The run game.  While I HATE our playcalling (I would bet that we ran on 1st down 90% of the time, and we don't have a toss/sweep in the playbook), we were able to run it effectively again.  The line didn't open many holes, and against CMU that's clearly a continuing concern, but Washington in particular did a good job of finding the gaps he had, and making the most of it.  We never gave up on making the run our primary focus, and over time, it started to work the way it should.
• The secondary - well, at least in the second half.  To open up, we made their receivers look like Randy Moss and their QB look like Tom Brady.  Guys running loose in gaps in the zone, and the QB had nary a whiff of pressure on him.  Once we made some halftime adjustments, we got just enough pressure on him to force throws he didn't want to make, and our DB's were ready and waiting.  While it's easy to call them easy picks, we'd have dropped them a few years ago... so it's truly progress when we pick the balls that really need to be picked.  And it's a damn good thing - the (+4) turnover margin was the ballgame... we don't win without it... which of course should scare the shit out of all of us.
• Glennon's arm.  He is indeed highly accurate, with some "oomph" on the ball.  Give him time and an open receiver, and he'll complete 90% of his passes.  He still does not read a defense all THAT well... but there were two times yesterday where he clearly checked to his 2nd receiver... and then to his 3rd option at least once.  That's progress.  His disadvantage vs RW is his mobility, not his arm... and with our O-line's inability to protect him early in the season, that was a big deal.  As the O-line gels, it's getting to be less of an issue.  He remains far from our biggest concern.

And then, of course, the concerns...

• Coaching.  We shouldn't need half a season to figure out how to play ball.  And we shouldn't have to play the first half of a game against CMU to figure out how to effectively defend them.  It's called summer workouts and game film.  Use them.  Develop game plans.  Go kick someone in the teeth from the first kickoff on Labor Day weekend.  Have some FIRE!!!!  The next time I watch TOB actually coach a player in the middle of the game will be the first time... I saw him pluck grass more often yesterday (once) that I saw him coach a player (zero).
• Inability to put any pressure on any QB with just the front four.  If this doesn't change, we are screwed for the balance of the season.  Our DB's aren't honestly good enough to get stuck in man coverage, and if we have to bring six guys to get pressure, we're going to have a problem.
• #4 on CMU, whatever the hell that punk-ass's name was.  Between the two head shots he took on receivers that didn't draw flags and his continual whooping despite taking an ass-whipping, I'm glad he wasn't on our team.  He didn't do them proud.
• TJ's judgement on the fumbled punt return.  I mean, come on, TJ... this is your Achilles heel.  You know it.  Don't try to field the damn thing on a dead run in the middle of traffic... use your damn head.
• The lack of any significant deep threat.  Possibly the biggest issue we have offensively right now, since defenses can just stack the first 10-15 yards off the line... we are not even trying to go deep, despite having at least one guy (TJ) who can beat his defender.  This one may go as much to coaching as anything, but if you have only one guy that's gotta get covered deep, it makes it easy to defend.

Overall, a truly beautiful day at Carter-Finley... the crowd was good (not great, particularly the student section had some visibly empty seats - fall break?), and the black unis... well, I have to say I liked them.  I REALLY like the Ted Brown-era red helmets... wish we'd keep 'em.  Between black unis and having a live wolf on the sidelines, people are really gonna stop having non-football stuff to whine about on gameday.

Since Steven is likely severely hung over from a wedding he was fortunate enough to have to attend yesterday, thereby sparing him the gore... and then temporary false hopes... of our debacle, I'll give a few thoughts to kick it off... nothing statistical or based on replays - I was at the game & haven't looked up box scores, stories, etc...

• This was one of the most bizarrely-coached games... on both sidelines... I've ever seen.  TOB kicks a 51-yard field goal into a stiff breeze on a 4th & about 4... but later GOES FOR IT on 4th and 9 when we're down 14, with a chip-shot 26-yarder being an option to cut it to 10.  Johnson tries to one-up him later... up 7 and facing 4th-and-2 inside the 10, HE goes for it, eschewing a chip-shot to take a 2-score lead.  Of course, it worked out for Johnson, but if it hadn't, and if we'd somehow marched to tie it, the two stops inside the 10 would've been huge for us & inexplicable for him.
• To hell with depth & injuries - this team has about the same level of discipline as Amato's bunch.  If you'd dropped me in the stadium yesterday and told me to pick what year it was, I'd have gone the 2000-2005 era.  Who the hell jumps offsides on THREE CONSECUTIVE 4th downs where the other teams only intention is to get you to jump offsides?  And it's not like we were getting better at it - we had TWO guys jump off on the last one.  Ballgame.
• OK - for the positives... we owned the middle two quarters - period.  Our defense did everything it needed to do - and did a truly amazing job of getting the defensive end in the backfield to blow up the triple option.  Having the QB duck it out of necessity & pick up 5 yards is a win for us.  Having Sweezy back helped - he's simply a monster - and yes, I'll admit that, if we had our top guys available on the DL, we're not likely to be sitting at 0-3 against 1-A competition right now.
• Glennon was good - and tough, after hurting what looked to be a knee.  He was a freakin' statue - and yep, the O-line generally gave him time to throw.
• For the first time this season, we had a legit running game.  Washington looked great - just needs to work on strength so he can break the first tackle in the hole.  His 50-yarder was beautiful - big hole, he spotted it, and no one could keep up.  Even a nice mini-stiffarm to boot.
• In the end, you can't spot a good team 21 and have a reasonable hope of coming back.  We gave it a damn good shot, and I give the guys credit for not folding - they fought hard and gave us reason to hope, even when we knew better.
• While I wish we'd hired Paul Johnson, he's somewhat of an ass-munch.  The last TD throw?  Really?  And can't you just punt the f'ing thing on your first possession?  Pretty please?
• Oh - speaking of first possessions... the no-call PI on our first play was one of the most inexcusable no-calls I've ever seen.  The defender knew he was beat - he intentionally tackled TJ to just give up 15 yards instead of a deep ball... and the ref somehow called it clean.  This is the kind of thing people get pissed about... it changes momentum and the course of a game.  You can't simply look at total penalties/yardage and get the story of how a game was called... Tech's penalties (including a PI) came late when it was out of reach... ours seemed to always be at the worst possible time, and not calling something like the PI is just not OK.  Once - just once - I want to be the beneficiary of a game called so poorly that refs get reprimanded/suspended... it seems it goes the other way for us every time.

That's it for now... good thing was that I had no hopes of winning, so no disappointment/anger.  It's truly the only game I've ever gone to where the outcome was decided long before kickoff.  That, my friends, is a major problem.  In Year 5, we should be competitive in every game, and win 3/4 of them.

Time to start releasing those "profiles of a savior", boys... 4-8 is looking pretty good at this point... 2-10 looks possible.

Thank God the FCS exists...

OK - sure, Russell is #2... but when you're 0-2 against FBS opponents, and you're looking for where the problem is... a top-25 quarterback is simply not responsible for the state of our team.

Check it out here

I'd kill to have a top-25 offensive line... or running back... or any element of defense, whether it's a top-25 player or a top-25 defense in terms of yardage, points allowed.... anything.

Just helping to keep perspective, and keep Glennon from taking blame he simply does not deserve.  He's an unquestioned bright spot right now.

So through two FBS games, there's a trend... and not a good one.  Well, hell, there's more than one, but this one's curious in its consistency.

 

We beat Wake by 35 last year, lost by 7 this year.... a 42-point swing year-over-year.

 

We beat Cincy by 11 last year, lost by 30 this year... a 41-point swing year-over-year.

 

I was half-joking before the game that, if the Wake game was a sign of things to come, we should lose by 30+... but dammit... it actually happened.  And unfortunately, I really don't think these are the last two data points that will look that way...

 

Congrats, guys - we'll really miss you.  Actually, we won't miss the fact that on this list are some of the biggest assholes I've ever seen suit up in college football - we'll just miss whipping that ass.

Edited to add our newest addition:  The Chief, Butch MF'ing Davis

Marvin Austin

Greg Little

Michael McAdoo

Devon Ramsey

Charles Brown

Jonathan Smith

Ed Barham

Kendric Burney

Bruce Carter

Shaun Draughn

Greg Elleby

Sam Ellis

Anthony Elzy

Mark House

Ryan Houston

Mike Ingersoll

Trase Jones

Mark Merletti

Zack Pianalto

Da'Norris Searcy

Jonathan Smith

Trevor Stuart

Quan Sturdivant

Ryan Taylor

Johnny White

Deunta Williams

TJ Yates

 

Damn - that's almost every skilled player out there.  I was thinking they were a young team, since we've heard that for 4 years now.  That's one senior-dependent squad, and one that's going to be rebuilding next year, regardless of what happens with the NCAA.  New QB, top 3 RB's gone, top DB's gone, top LB's gone... wow.  See ya, guys...

The ACC's been in this boat before, and now it's the Big East's turn.

The problem is that, when you're evaluating teams, over half of the games they're playing are against each other... so the only differentiator between a 10-6 team in the ACC and one in the Big East is how the two conferences fared OOC.  And since the OOC games happened in 3-5 months ago, those games simply do not represent what the teams are like now.

So given that higher Big East seeds are now 24-4 in this tourney, but higher Big East seeds are 6-4... and given that four of the biggest upsets are OVER Big East teams... and given that the only Big East team to make the Sweet 16 yesterday was one that HAD to make it, since they were facing another Big East team... well, I don't want to hear any more bitching from fans of that conference because there are two 2nd-round matchups between two Big East teams.  Without those matchups, the conference might not make the second weekend.

It's so much more fun to lob grenades at another conference than to have them lobbed at us...

Too bad - he was the part of their team that was actually fun to watch - I mean, it's just too much of a coincidence that Quentin Thomas and Larry Drew II wore the same number, played the same, etc... so the nickname Q2 has always just seemed right to me.

Q2 to transfer

I'll miss the kid... his appearances always made me feel like unc-ch might choke... then again, I was losing hope for that as this season went on...

Congrats, guys - we'll really miss you.  Actually, we won't miss the fact that on this list are some of the biggest assholes I've ever seen suit up in college football - we'll just miss whipping that ass.

Marvin Austin

Greg Little

Michael McAdoo

Devon Ramsey

Charles Brown

Jonathan Smith

Ed Barham

Kendric Burney

Bruce Carter

Shaun Draughn

Greg Elleby

Sam Ellis

Anthony Elzy

Mark House

Ryan Houston

Mike Ingersoll

Trase Jones

Mark Merletti

Zack Pianalto

Da'Norris Searcy

Jonathan Smith

Trevor Stuart

Quan Sturdivant

Ryan Taylor

Johnny White

Deunta Williams

TJ Yates

 

Damn - that's almost every skilled player out there.  I was thinking they were a young team, since we've heard that for 4 years now.  That's one senior-dependent squad, and one that's going to be rebuilding next year, regardless of what happens with the NCAA.  New QB, top 3 RB's gone, top DB's gone, top LB's gone... wow.  See ya, guys...

1. You really don't have to run the ball to spank a team's ass up and down the field.  We should learn from that, embrace it, live it.  Every play that we hand the ball off this season is a play where Russell Wilson isn't a factor - and is a play where we did the defense a huge favor.  Drop back, air it out, and score some points.  We don't really have an alternative.
2. I don't miss the lack of discipline that came with Amato-ball.  At all.  Watching Va Tech act like thugs - even while getting their asses kicked - makes me embarrassed for them & the entire ACC.  They are simply not representing us well in any way - there's nothing to be proud of in their play or their behavior.
3. I really like the underdog.  Even if Va Tech is from our conference, I can't help pulling for Boise.  Not sure if it's because I think the BCS is a contrived pile of dung, or just the underdog thing, or my distaste for the Va Tech thug crap I just mentioned... but I'm all over pulling for some Blue tonight.
4. Despite all that, Va Tech's unis are bad-ass.  I'm jealous.

I'm just gonna be sitting here watching it regardless... wondering if anyone else is...

(And it tells me I need 75 words to post this... so I'm going to write about 60 words here about random stuff.... BOOM, Macrowave, Flame Powah, Havi, Milk Dud with lint on the chin, Folwer, ham, Steven and his god-forsaken procrastinations, Chandler whatever-the-hell-his-name-is, Roy copping a squat next to the scorer's table, Roy tossing out a fan for cheering for the opponent, K dropping f-bombs, Roy dropping an f-bomb and "aw-shucks"ing it away, Jimmy Dykes and his amazing ability to speak while simultaneously blowing Psycho T...)

With our tipoff at the sametime as the Duke-uncch game, it will be damn near impossible to find someone the next day who even knows we played Virgiina Tech the night before... I mean, the other game will be broadcast on more channels than Obama's State of the Union address.. so as ugly as our game may be, at least no one will see it.

So it comes back to the old adage about a tree falling in the middle of the woods & whether it made any sound.  If we embarrass ourselves against Virginia Tech tomorrow night, but there's no one who sees it, did we really embarrass ourselves?

Deep thought for the day.

Watching the uncch-UK game, and getting my first look at the kid.

DAMN!  THAT KID'S GOOD!

He's the whole package - in complete control of the court on both ends - shooting 3's, dunking on fast breaks, finding the open man - he's the difference between our team and a top-25 team, all by himself.

And to all those who insist that building a program takes 3 years... or 5 years... or infinite WTNY's... I present UK as Exhibit A to the contrary.  No top 5 appearances in 7 years... no tourney for a couple... and they're #5 in Year 1.

This is really just painful to watch, between Cal & Wall & Cousins.  But I'm a Pack fan, so I'll watch it, just to punish myself.

Just... well... dammit all to hell.

We still have a stout class coming in, but we just can't afford to lose top-notch guard prospects, especially those that have already signed their name on the line.

Between this and reading how marvelously Big Ben is playing for the Lakers on their summer league team, this Sunday has started off quite depressingly when it comes to Wolfpack sports.

Strangely, I can find no link for Lo Brown... but there are references to it on multiple sites.

So thank you for letting me play on your blog for the past week. I'm sure your readers, while they stuck with me for the week, will be happy to see you, your statistical prowess, and your wit return to its rightful place here on this page.

Thanks to those who humored my attempts to provide some sort of insightful analysis to the season and postseason.

So I'll just close out with a final "BOOM, MOTHER*&^KERS!!!"

BC gets exposed as a slow, unathletic team in a total dismantling at the hands of USC.

Wake gets absolutely humiliated... I mean, gets their pants pulled down and proven to be eunuchs... by Cleveland State, who dominates every facet of the game. How bad was it? Jeff Teague can't dribble the ball. No shit - he couldn't dribble under even token pressure. So yes, Dorothy, Cleveland State takes down what was at one point, in another time, in another galaxy, in another dimension, the #1 team in the land this season.

And FSU loses in overtime on a 3-point play with 2 seconds to go. They had a chance to win, but Douglas missed a 3 on their last possession that would've put them up 4. Instead, Wisconsin... YES, WISCONSIN.. takes down a team that just beat unc-ch a week ago.

Way to represent the league, ass-clowns.

***

I woke up to the realization that the way the first round scheduling worked, Day One and Day Two ended up being (1) ACC teams the Pack didn't beat this year, and (2) ACC teams the Pack DID beat this year.

Day 1 record (teams we didn't beat): 3-1
Day 2 record (teams we did): 0-3

And unless I'm mistaken, we only played one.... that's it? One other G/D team that's in the field of 65? Yep - and that team (Marquette) played on day one. And yep - they won, too.

So teams we played and didn't beat go 4-1. Teams that were inept enough to let us beat them go 0-3.

Don't tell the selection committee, but we may be a better predictor of who the top 65 should be than anything else. RPI? Sagarin? AP? ESPN? OOC SOS? Record in last 10 games? Screw all that... if a team sucks bad enough to let the Pack beat 'em, they stay home.

Seems fair to me.

***

Props to BJD at SFN who caught that it extends beyond the NCAA's. With Miami's loss last night, there are no teams still left in postseason play whom the Pack beat this year...

So this one will be a bit more limited than yesterday... games start in a few...

Of particular interest today are:

Tennessee-Oklahoma State in the early game... a toss-up if I've ever seen one. Tennessee has enough talent to be much better than they are, but they simply haven't gotten it done. Is the SEC really going to be gone this weekend? I think so.

Temple-Arizona State in the next set... even without HWSNBN on the sidelines, this one's a test of exactly how crappy the Pac-10 really was this year. An ASU win doesn't say the Pac-10 didn't suck... but a loss is a severe blow. They were the new golden children this year. I'm thinking they get through round one, simply based on superior talent.

Southern Cal-Boston College in the 7pm... again, the Pac-10 gets a test, and I think they fail this one. Unless BC pulls a Clemson (aka a random white kid goes all Private Pyle & loses his f'ing sensibilities), they win this game.

Wisconsin-Florida State in the late games... the ACC's chance to go 6-1 through the first round, and they should do so. I mean, if the Pac-10 sucks, the Big-10 spews violently. Wisconsin is a slow, unathletic team that FSU should take behind the woodshed tonight. For some reason, though, I fear a cold night from Douglas and a monumental struggle. Hope I'm wrong.

I'll throw this out there in case anyone wants to brag about incredibly insightful picks, or whine about how their bracket's already blown.

I'm taking a pretty high amount of satisfaction out of Memphis trailing CS-Northridge in the second half. If that were to hold........
***
.... and within minutes of typing that, it goes from a 6-point deficit to a 10-point lead for Memphis. Oh, to see Calipari lose in the first round... ah well...
***
Three games down, and I'm 2-1 since Butler laid an egg against LSU. My twin 7-year-olds are 3-0 so far. Ah, the wisdom of NOT over-thinking...
***
Seven games down. As expected, top seeds roll, including Psycho "oh-my-god-he's-so-great-he-broke-another-record-today" T and the holes.

I'm 6-1... twins are now 7-0. We both took Mississippi State, which is the first game that should weed quite a few people down a bit. I just don't buy the Pac-10 or Big-10, and I picked for them to go down quickly...
***
Clemson looks horrid so far, trailing Michigan by 3 midway through the first half. They've missed their last 10 shots, half of which are piss-poor 3-point guns by Oglesby. I'm actually glad that kid doesn't play for us - he'd drive me f'ing crazy. I mean, he's ice-cold, and he's still firing contested 23-footers... wtf?
***
Oglesby gets tossed for throwing a weak elbow... awfully strong punishment for no contact... but the only chance Clemson had was to get him out of the game... he was shooting them out of it. 2 to go, Clemson down 6. Thanks for nothing, guys...
***
Clemson indeed goes down, playing an abysmal game and losing to a team that would've had a losing record in the ACC. Dook up big on Binghamton. And VCU's not helping me out so far... they look overmatched against UCLA. Thankfully, at least WKU's looking strong so far against Illinois.

More tomorrow...

As promised yesterday, I've taken a crack at estimating 1st half and 2nd half tempo-adjusted defensive efficiency for the Pack by game, and for the season as a whole. Note that I don't have possessions broken down by half (I assumed the pace was constant over the course of the game), so if the number of possessions was dramatically different from one half to the next, the below numbers will be off. (Halves at or below 0.8 are green, at or above 1.2 are red)

Opponent1st half
2nd half

Clemson0.741.21
FSU1.051.29
Ga Tech1.030.94
Duke0.721.68
BC1.311.16
Miami0.801.44
unc-ch1.201.40
VT0.820.96
Wake0.921.14
Ga Tech0.880.85
unc-ch1.131.45
UVa0.881.16
Wake1.221.19
UMd1.071.16
BC1.141.17
Miami0.681.64
Overall0.971.23

Particularly shocking are the Dook fiasco and the season-ending Miami debacle, a 1.64 points-per-possession raping that triggered this whole line of thinking and analysis... "Could they REALLY have been as shitty as I just imagined?". The numbers back up the fact that, yes, they were. And they were on a very regular basis, as highlighted by the red second-half pointsplosions that happened about half the time we took the court.

The thing is - it's not as if the team is INCAPABLE of playing good defense, as the first-half numbers show. They either were out of shape, stopped caring, or were too mentally fragile to handle the pressure when the game was on the line. This really seems fixable. If only we had someone who knew how to fix it.

Side note...
Quick quiz: How many times this season did the Pack force 20 or more turnovers in a game?
Answer: One... and they failed to force even ten in a game over the last four.

Fix it, Sid. Or hire someone who can.

Due to feedback from an oh-so-inquisitive reader, I've run the numbers on the first 18 minutes of the second half vs the last 2 minutes, to see if there's an anomaly due to a losing team (that would be us) fouling the other team & artificially inflating their second-half scoring.

Raw numbers first (on a points-per-minute basis):

First Half1.65Second Half2.08Second Half (1st 18)1.99Second Half (Last 2)2.84

Even looking at all 16 games, the defense is worse in the second half, no matter how you look at it. But at first blush, the last two minutes are clearly abysmal, potentially driven by the fact that we... well... weren't good and were putting the other team on the line.

Problem is - when looking at the games where the last two minutes were exceptionally poor, more of them were Pack wins than losses. So I took out the games that the Pack won or blew a late lead in (meaning we weren't fouling). Below are the same numbers with those stats taken out:

First Half1.64Second Half2.17Second Half (1st 18)2.10Second Half (Last 2)2.80

The numbers are startlingly similar and show the same basic pattern... given that we've taken out wins, you'd expect the "Last 2" number to get worse if free throws were really a significant factor. Instead, the last 2 minutes get marginally better.

Bottom line - we sucked defensively in all phases of the second half.... win or loss, first 18 minutes or last two... we just couldn't stop a soul. I mean, 2+ points a minute, with a 35-second shot clock, means we gave up somewhere near 2 points per possession. I'll try to get a tempo-adjusted number later in the week.

-- wolfonthehill

***

So I alluded to it a week ago in the Comments section of the Maryland postgame debacle... it seemed like yet another game where we were in decent shape until we chose not to give a damn about anything on the defensive end of the court in the second half. A cursory glance at that point showed that, sure enough, we'd laid our fair share of second-half defensive eggs in our losses this year. To take it a bit further now that the season's in the books, I've done the detailed numbers on all of the Big Four schools.

(And I apologize for the lack of pretty graphics - Steven didn't teach me that before he headed to Hawai'i.)

First off, if you look at all 64 games by the Big Four in conference play, the average defensive effort in wins held their opponents to 36 second-half points, while they laid down like schoolgirls and gave up 44 in the second half of their losses. I won't go into the statistical details to avoid outing myself as an uber-geek, but we'll just leave it at the p-value being 0.000, meaning an extremely high level of statistical correlation between second-half defense and the outcome of the game (W/L).

An arbitrary but severe case of a defensive meltdown is giving up 50 in a half. Between the four schools, there were 8 games where the defense coughed up 50 in the second half. (The Pack led the way with four of these, while unc-ch didn't give up that many a single time.) The teams' collective records in those 8 games? 1-7. The lone exception was Duke's effort against Wake in their re-match... in that one, Wake merely out-sucked Duke on the defensive end, giving up 50 or more in both the first AND the second half. So taking that game out, when one crappy defensive effort HAD to win, the Big Four went 0-6 in games where they gave up 50 or more in the second half. Unfortunately, the Pack accounted for 2/3 of those. And without those "I don't give a shit, and I have no pride" efforts, the Pack is .500 in the league.

So finally a rundown of the rest of the league, showing both league finish and second-half no-shows.

TeamACC Finish2nd Half Defensive Collapsesunc-ch
10Wake22 (0-2)Duke32 (1-1)FSU41 (0-1)Clemson51 (0-1)BC61 (0-1)Maryland71 (0-1)Va Tech80Miami91 (0-1)NC State104 (0-4)UVa110Ga Tech121 (0-1)
Quite honestly, I was expecting to see something resembling a correlation between league finish and defensive collapses... from the above, there's nothing of the sort. All you get is that (1) the Pack by FAR led the league in not-giving-a-shit in the second half of games, and (2) Duke's and Wake's efforts can honestly be seen as much as an absurd offensive pace as defensive lapses. That being said, the numbers show that no team wins if they can't get second-half stops... period.

The league as a whole? Teams went 1-13 in games where they gave up 50+... with that lone win being a game where the opponent gave up 50 in both halves... so excluding that outlier, it's an 0-12 mark. Not sure you're going to find many stats with a predictive value quite that high.

And yep - getting back to where it all started, the Pack accounted for 1/3 of those twelve, putting them near the bottom of the league instead of squarely in the thick of things in the middle... instead of potentially being a bubble team. I'm not sure if anything else is nearly that big a factor... and it all comes down to heart and effort.

That's Sid's problem to fix... either get your guys to give a damn, or find someone else who will.

But hey - think of it this way - only 129 teams make one of the four postseason tournaments. Gunning to be in the top 129 is pretty lofty... baby steps, people. Baby steps.

Sorry we won't have the opportunity to liveblog one more time. Think about it...

No more "BOOM MOTHER&*^KERS!!!"

No more "Bourtney!!!"

No more encouraging one another to have another beer to make the pain a little easier to take.

And finally... No more talking ham.

Just when things were looking up, with the re-opening of CJ Leslie's recruitment...

Ridiculous first-half three-point shooting by the Devils, coupled with a Pack-esque cold streak by the Noles late in the first half and into the second half, determined the outcome of this one long before the final buzzer. But like most Dook games, they got VERY three-happy, refusing to do anything but stand outside and jack up jumpers... and when they stopped going down (no, Skeletor, your team won't hit 70% from out there for the game), FSU had a chance to cut into the lead. Fortunately for Dook, FSU's 2-for-20'something stretch kept it from mattering.

Dook finished the game with... let's see here, 1, 2, 3, 4... that's it? Four G/D turnovers? For an entire game??? And two of those were in garbage time when it no longer mattered. Couple that with pretty stout offensive rebounding, particularly in the first thirty minutes, and you get an old-fashioned ass-whipping. Don't let the final score fool you - it wasn't that close.


Dook
Four Factors
eFG%51.7
Turnover Rate6.4
Off Reb Rate31.6
FTA/FGA44.8
F$U
Four Factors
eFG%56.1
Turnover Rate20.0
Off Reb Rate22.2
FTA/FGA38.8












Toney Douglas had a pretty forgettable day, after starting off strong. He never seemed to be able to get into the flow of the offense, alternating between forcing bad shots and not getting touches on some possessions because, quite honestly, his teammates looked tired of watching him gun it up.

At the end of the day, the better team won. But if Dook goes into the NCAA's (as they normally do) thinking they're going to win a title by standing outside and firing 3's, they'll be out (as they normally are) by the second weekend.

Tyler's watching with an open mouth

Senior Night '09... A Blessing in Disguise?