The play of our team really not acceptable

HeadsCarolina said:

This program's annual ceiling is hosting + sweet 16 right now. Currently, 9 of the top 12 ranked teams are SEC/BIG10. The biggest thing holding this program back is money, and playing in the ACC offers a competitive disadvantage. Until that's corrected, our ceiling most years will be hosting + sweet 16.

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3397char said:

Thomas had by far the best game of any big last night. It may have not looked pretty. But go look at the box score. No, it was not on par with UofSC by any means. But way better than Akot, Burrows, Quieroz and Bofia. Those 4 combined for 1-12 (3 pts), 4 reb, 10 fouls, 11 turnovers in 49 min. Thomas was 3-6 (6 pts), 4 reb, 2 fouls and 1 turnover. no one had a block in this game.

While I agree that she looked gassed at times, she logged 31 minutes. Only Harpring played more at 32.

She is by no means a rim runner; that will never be her game. And as a consequence she is a tough fit at UNC who like to run and switch on defense, whereas she would be a much more central part of some other teams that walk the ball up the court and play zone more. There will be games like Oklahoma that will play small and run where her minutes will be limited. I expect Toomey will also limit her minutes eventually.

But she has good footwork, plays defense, alters shots. She appears to have much better touch around the rim this year (very small sample size) than she did as a freshman. That was always her issue. But as a freshman lead the team in blocks per minute and rebounds per minute. And that was with Gakdeng and Ustby on the team. There is still potential there. I bet she will break out at some point in her career. I have no idea if this is the year.

She was never 100% last year. Played with an undisclosed -injury that affected both her fitness and her play. I do not know when that cleared up, as in when she could really get back to building cardio. But it looks like a work in progress.

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tmatheny said:

This! Ive been saying for years. It started with D Kelly- one on one stuff trying to do too much. Very little flow to offense year in year out unless an individual has an amazing game or we are hitting tough shots.

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kystroup said:

Wrote this out during my lunch, it's a bit meandering but gets to some of my frustrations as someone who's defended CB frequently:


-We're consistently great defensively (prior two games excluded), but have never had a schematic advantage against elite teams offensively (and definitely haven't had a personnel advantage).

-CB thrives on roster continuity but can't maintain it. We had two guards last year that, if they were on this roster, would be All ACC contenders. Love Reniya, but I don't really think it's arguable that Lanie or Elina would be contributing more for us right now than she is. I don't know what the solution is here, short of more resources, but it's not my job to find it. I also really struggle to believe that Lanie's departure was solely about money.

-Messaging: I tend to think complaints about this are overwrought but it's true that CB is a great interview after a win and a horrible one after a loss. Even just saying "SC is great, but this is not up the standard we've set here and not acceptable" last night would have been better than (paraphrasing)"well it's good to get a sense for where you're at against SC, unlike all these teams playing cupcakes and running up the score."

One of my pet peeves is the way she talks about transfer portal additions: always as a corrective to the prior year's roster. This year she says that we needed more guards that could make plays with the ball in their hands (I didn't bring this up at the time, but hard not see this as a dig at Lanie and Elina). Last year, we really only added Elina and it was because "we wanted to trust our development" (which out the window following the season). That makes it look bad when the players you were developing leave the program! When every transfer class is put forward as the solution to our woes, and then we get the same result, it just makes it seem like we're opening one leak to plug another.

-Injuries: at a certain point you have to reevaluate how willing you are to take on players with injury histories. I don't think this is an entirely fair criticism but it's just happened too much not to mention.

-Roster construction: Why did we take two 5 star wings last year? Why are we taking two 5 star shooting guards this year? Sure, we lack resources but it doesn't help when we're committing a portion of them to players that CB won't trust as freshman and will likely transfer after one year.

-Edge, or lack thereof: We are not mentally tough. Reniya was so great as a soph but clearly her injury issues have sapped her confidence. I've said it before but if it's a big game or there's any pressure on, you can forget about Laila hitting an open shot. AA is clearly not confident rn (i do think this will change). It's larger than individual players too. How many times have we blown a lead or almost blown a lead in a big ACC game? We played good defense in the first quarter yesterday but could not hit an open look to save our lives - it could have been a different game if we had. I don't know if y'all have seen Swingers, so forgive the tortured analogy, but there's a line that Vince Vaughn has where he says "You're acting like the nice guy that everyone roots for in a PG13 movie that hopes to get the girl. I need you to act like the guy in an R rated movie who's a bit of a prick and knows he's gonna get the girl". I need CBs team to start acting like the latter.

Finally, the upside case from here is easy to articulate but actually executing it is by no means a guarantee. We need to keep the core of Kate, Nyla, and (in my opinion) Noelle for a couple of years, but can we? and can we add enough around them to be a complete team? We couldn't keep the Deja, KTW, and Utsby core together. We kept the Utsby, Gakdeng, Indya, Donarski core together despite obvious offensive limitations and didn't add enough around them.

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4theHeels19 said:

All reasons why it’s more frustrating that she’s not in shape. She was gassed after 2 trips down the court. You’re getting a free ride to a top school in the country and NIL money, and opening the schedule in Paris against a top 20 team and then a “home” game in CLT, where you’re from, against the top team in the country on ESPN. And you show up out of shape?

And I’m really not trying to go after her, she wasn’t the reason why we got clobbered last night. She does appear to have good footwork and her size should be an advantage most games. She had promise coming in and I would argue that she could have been a rim runner based on her freshman year build and fitness. But 6pts and 4 boards in 31 minutes at her size is not something to celebrate. The announcers talked about her advantage against the South Carolina bigs- couldn’t match her girth. We all heard she was ready to make big leaps, and no injuries this year. So it’s a indictment of the staff and program as much as it is on a Blanca that she’s gassed and not strong enough (still falling in the post with any contact). Especially when she’s the most experienced in progrm Big we have. I think it shows there’s something wrong here…I said last year I thought she was mobile, she just has shown up in worse shape each season.

It’s on the staff that they haven’t figured out how to get Akot working in our system these first couple games, especially since they were relying on her to be our interior production. She’s proven herself against top teams. Bofia has all the tools and should be more game ready after coming in early. I think she’ll get there but only if we give her the minutes. Taissa can’t play the 4 against top teams…not big enough, and not fast or dynamic enough to be a super effective wing against top teams. Same with Burrows.

The common denominator is that we aren’t prepared…whether it’s fitness, scout, new combinations not knowing how to play with each other, and our inability to get the most out of our talent so far. We didn’t put any stress on Oklahoma or SC.

I do believe Banghart will get this group together and we’ll finish 4-5 in the ACC with a round of 32 or *maybe* Sweet 16 finish. My problem is that she didn’t have them ready to compete the first two games on the national stage that she was responsible for scheduling. All she can do now is get back to work.

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kystroup said:

Wrote this out during my lunch, it's a bit meandering but gets to some of my frustrations as someone who's defended CB frequently:


-We're consistently great defensively (prior two games excluded), but have never had a schematic advantage against elite teams offensively (and definitely haven't had a personnel advantage).

-CB thrives on roster continuity but can't maintain it. We had two guards last year that, if they were on this roster, would be All ACC contenders. Love Reniya, but I don't really think it's arguable that Lanie or Elina would be contributing more for us right now than she is. I don't know what the solution is here, short of more resources, but it's not my job to find it. I also really struggle to believe that Lanie's departure was solely about money.

-Messaging: I tend to think complaints about this are overwrought but it's true that CB is a great interview after a win and a horrible one after a loss. Even just saying "SC is great, but this is not up the standard we've set here and not acceptable" last night would have been better than (paraphrasing)"well it's good to get a sense for where you're at against SC, unlike all these teams playing cupcakes and running up the score."

One of my pet peeves is the way she talks about transfer portal additions: always as a corrective to the prior year's roster. This year she says that we needed more guards that could make plays with the ball in their hands (I didn't bring this up at the time, but hard not see this as a dig at Lanie and Elina). Last year, we really only added Elina and it was because "we wanted to trust our development" (which out the window following the season). That makes it look bad when the players you were developing leave the program! When every transfer class is put forward as the solution to our woes, and then we get the same result, it just makes it seem like we're opening one leak to plug another.

-Injuries: at a certain point you have to reevaluate how willing you are to take on players with injury histories. I don't think this is an entirely fair criticism but it's just happened too much not to mention.

-Roster construction: Why did we take two 5 star wings last year? Why are we taking two 5 star shooting guards this year? Sure, we lack resources but it doesn't help when we're committing a portion of them to players that CB won't trust as freshman and will likely transfer after one year.

-Edge, or lack thereof: We are not mentally tough. Reniya was so great as a soph but clearly her injury issues have sapped her confidence. I've said it before but if it's a big game or there's any pressure on, you can forget about Laila hitting an open shot. AA is clearly not confident rn (i do think this will change). It's larger than individual players too. How many times have we blown a lead or almost blown a lead in a big ACC game? We played good defense in the first quarter yesterday but could not hit an open look to save our lives - it could have been a different game if we had. I don't know if y'all have seen Swingers, so forgive the tortured analogy, but there's a line that Vince Vaughn has where he says "You're acting like the nice guy that everyone roots for in a PG13 movie that hopes to get the girl. I need you to act like the guy in an R rated movie who's a bit of a prick and knows he's gonna get the girl". I need CBs team to start acting like the latter.

Finally, the upside case from here is easy to articulate but actually executing it is by no means a guarantee. We need to keep the core of Kate, Nyla, and (in my opinion) Noelle for a couple of years, but can we? and can we add enough around them to be a complete team? We couldn't keep the Deja, KTW, and Utsby core together. We kept the Utsby, Gakdeng, Indya, Donarski core together despite obvious offensive limitations and didn't add enough around them.

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4theHeels19 said:

There is some truth to some of that but that doesn’t excuse not showing up prepared and ready to compete. Especially with our talent. And we belong in the top 12 in the country with Duke and Louisville among the ACC’s best.

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kystroup said:

I think Duke gets overhyped sometimes because Kara has the same issue with Courtney where she thinks that prioritizing defense 2means its ok to have a subpar offense, but they have come closer than anyone in that second tier of WBB (1st tier is SC, Uconn, and the depending on the year the Texas, the cali schools, and LSU)to looking like they belong on the court with an elite team.

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3ptthreat said:

As someone who genuinely roots for CB as painful as it is at times, the issues the poster mentioned above, especially the first few are spot on why it’s very warranted to question her ability to compete in the top 15.

The overarching theme has also been that there’s an excuse. Everyone is hurt, so many new players, everyone is young. But look around other coaches get more out of their young, new, hobbled players by end of November some seasons than we do by end of March.

Until there’s acknowledgement and accountability in the AD’s office, we’ll likely hear more of the same.

Coming out saying that SC was miles better than everyone else is not the messaging that gets a team to actually get better. While it may be true, it gives them an excuse. A ceiling.

When in reality it was an embarrassment for the program and school, SC’s largest margin of victory over a ranked team.

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3ptthreat said:

As someone who genuinely roots for CB as painful as it is at times, the issues the poster mentioned above, especially the first few are spot on why it’s very warranted to question her ability to compete in the top 15.

The overarching theme has also been that there’s an excuse. Everyone is hurt, so many new players, everyone is young. But look around other coaches get more out of their young, new, hobbled players by end of November some seasons than we do by end of March.

Until there’s acknowledgement and accountability in the AD’s office, we’ll likely hear more of the same.

Coming out saying that SC was miles better than everyone else is not the messaging that gets a team to actually get better. While it may be true, it gives them an excuse. A ceiling.

When in reality it was an embarrassment for the program and school, SC’s largest margin of victory over a ranked team.

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Jriv23 said:

I agree that BT had a pretty good game; however, 3397Char Noelle only played 8 minutes which is hard to compare with BT's numbers who played 31 minutes. I agree with the other ones that you listed. Noelle has playing roughing around 7.5 minutes a game. It is hard to get in a rhythm when you are playing less minutes and those minutes are coming after halftime, 3rd quarter only.

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Jriv23 said:

tmatheny in DK's defense, the year that she had to do that was when all of our guards were hurt and CB had to put DK at PG. DK was always better when she played at the 2. I think you have forgotten that when KTW was here for two years, DK did not do all of the one on one crap; therefore, please get all of your facts straight before you start degrading DK. CB could have reeled that in that you but CB allowed that to happened. So CB is the blame for that year and not DK.

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