LAMPLIGHTER GAME OF THE WEEK
Tuesday February 9th, 2010
#6 Purdue 76
#10 Michigan State 64
Not much to say here. Purdue’s Big 3 in E’Twaun Moore, Robbie Hummel and JaJuan Johnson had a disappointing effort in that they lost to the Spartans 64-59…….but the rest of Purdue chipped in their 17 points to squeak by Michigan State 76-64 this past Tuesday. Bottom line and yes folks, cliché-time, Purdue’s best players were their best players tonight. Michigan State’s best player, Kalin Lucas, showed a pair by playing one week post-ankle injury, but it was apparent that he wasn’t 100% and it hurt the Spartans at various points of the game.
Purdue has some funky looks on their half-court offense with a spazzy screen and curl to the weak side look and then they go old-school with some Eddie Fogler weave-offense. Either way it got Purdue’s Big 3 some open jumpers and/or good looks to create.
Michigan State, again, as in previous reports, do not have the traditional Tom “to the” Izzo tenacious rebounding he’s had in years past. They’re leading rebounder comes off of the friggin bench. Yo, Raymar Mogan and Delvin Roe, crash the boards!!! The Spartans are a good team, and right now, it’s tough to say if they can get to “great team status” as they’re in the dog days of conference play, now with a 3 game losing streak.
NORTH CAROLINA and GONZAGA: A TALE OF TWO TEAMS
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times……and if Charles Dickens was writing his novel based on this year’s North Carolina Tar Heels Freshmen Class, he’d open his novel with, “Yo Roy, where’d you get these morons!?!?!?”
Wednesday’s game of Duke @ UNC solidified a lot of takes I didn’t want to face all season. And that is that North Carolina has the worst transition D this side of a pick-up game at the SRC!!!! But bad transition D these days in college basketball is almost as rampant as a bad pun from Marc Paulsen, so this horrible transition D is not the reason for UNC being in dead friggin last in the ACC!!!!
This is all on North Carolina’s Top 3 rated recruiting class of 4 McDonald’s High School All-Americans who have a collective Basketball IQ of Forest Gump!!!!! This recruiting class was like the acclaimed hype of “Joey”. Both had talent going into their first seasons with an apparent one-and-done player, that was to rival Kentucky’s John Wall in John Henson and “Joey” had Adriana La Cerva from The Soprano’s. Very nice!! But it was found out very quickly that neither could deliver.
What they got from UNC was a bunch of lazy, dumb, deer-in-the-headlights froshies!!! One can’t question their heart, as they gave a great effort vs. Duke yesterday, but I can give a great effort trying to get Tina Fey’s phone number, but neither those digits nor UNC’s rotations on the defensive help side are going to happen. Carolina’s lack of IQ might as well have them playing handball ala Coach’s (Even Pellerud) comments on previous Insanity Reports. They’d have more success at handball then they’re horrible decisions on both sides of the ball such as brutal shots early in the shot clock leading to more turnovers than Dave Adolph in his KBL game. Henson seems to be rivaling John Wall with his inspiring 8 minutes of playing time each game!! His minutes per game to weight ratio is at a staggering 1.00. Eat some Big Macs John!!!
Gonzaga, on the other hand, also lost 4 great players from last year to Div II. They were seen as having to start from scratch just like Carolina. But none of their 9 recruits was in the Top 100 high school player rankings, let alone Top 200. Unlike UNC, they have had an immediate impact from 5 of those players with one of them, Elias Harris getting into the starting line up and tearing s^^^ up tonight vs. St. Mary’s. Not only are they great recruits, a lot of them are from Canada. Two of those Canuck recruits are fan favorite Bol “Ball” Kong and Basketball IQ Grandmaster, Kelly Olynyk. Olynyk has forgotten more about the game of basketball then all 5 UNC Freshmen have learned in they’re short time on this earth.
Gonzaga is an immediate Final 4 threat right now, where UNC have 5 freshmen that won’t get them to the NIT, let alone are they able to spell NIT!!! Gonzaga showed some versatile looks tonight vs. WCC rival St. Mary’s. Those versatile looks fit the versatile talents of Can-zaga’s deep bench. One player in particular was Vancouver product, Robert Sacre who was down right dyslexic tonight, as he was Robert SCAREY in the paint. He had great moves on the blocks and a jumper from the short corner and elbow reminiscent of a young Letah Beck. The inside/outside combo of Sacre and point wing, Matt Bouldin will get the Zag’s deep into the Madness come March.
UNC will improve next year, if all this years froshie class wake the F up, and they recruit a point guard, anybody that shoot a consistent jump shot and John Henson gains 80 pounds!!!
QUICK TAKE ON DUKE:
Good team. As was said before, Coach Krew-za-toupee-ski gets the absolute most out of his players. They’re Top 3 players in Jon Scheyer, Kyle Singler and Nolan Smith have the highest combined scoring average of any 3 players in the nation. Even higher than Purdue’s big 3. But, Duke’s lack of depth on the bench and their reliance on these 3 players spell upset in the 1st round ala they’re buzzer beater loss to VCU in ’07.
Scheyer is down-right overachieving, and hence peaking too soon, and Kyle Singler gets his 17 ppg off of 30 shots per game it seems like. Too streaky. The thing about Duke is they under-use the brothers Plumlee, with Miles being a huge x-factor. But when he plays only 17 minutes a game, Coach Sha-watched-too-much-Star-Trek-ski will be seen in the Final 4 on another American Express commercial rather than on the sidelines at Indianapolis. If Miles and Mason Plumlee get more minutes, then Duke has a chance for a deep run. But Coach K is a guy who is set in his ways and changing the minute rotations this late in the season is highly unlikely.
That’s it for the Lamplighter games for the next 2 weeks, due to some local conference going on in Vancouver….the Olympics or something like that. After the 2 weeks festivities, we’ll be in the final run towards Spring Christmas on March 18th with the First Round of the NCAA Tourney. March Madness baby!!!!!
See you at the Lamp!!!
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