***Official ACC basketball thread***

[tarheeljks]

Paulus may be as good as our 3rd best pg. OH NOES!!

also, lol @ singler being your post presence. you guys can't rebound for [censored]. i'll be surprised if you beat marquette.

[MuresanForMVP]

[ QUOTE ]
Maryland just hasn't been the same since winning the national title, what, six years ago? Not sure what it is ... I do think winning that title changed Gary Williams, though, I just don't get the sense he's as motivated or driven now as he was before. But I could be way off.

[/ QUOTE ]

No.you're not way off at all. I love Gary, as he pulled this program from NCAA sanctions and the absolute dumps, got mediocre recruits, and turned them into national champions. But it's widely known around this area that Keith Booth and Chuck Driesell do most of the recruiting visits, rather than Gary. He's just not an X's and O's coach, which has been killing us with these lackluster recruits.

I'm not going to completely bag on him for recruiting, as he did pick up some solid ones (going into college) like Mike Jones, Ekene Ibekwe, etc but he has yet to really land a huge recruit which is an ABOMINATION considering the talent that grows up in-county. In last years McD AA game alone there were 4 players that grew up in this county ALONE. Austin Freeman (now at Gtown), went to school less than 10 minutes down the road from UMD, Chris Wright (Gtown) and Nolan Smith (Duke) played together for a year at St. John's which is in DC before switching schools. Beasley went to Riverdale Baptist for several years (teamed up with Nolan Smith for a year too). Add on the fact that Donte Green (Syracuse) is from right up the road in Baltimore and you have 5 impact recruits from the immediate area.

Looking at 2006, you have another 2 IMPACT players from the same county: Ty Lawson and KEVIN DURANT, who both played right in the area (though Lawson went to Oak Hill later in his HS career). For 2005 graduates, there are a number of players dotting starting lineups all over the ACC that are from either in-county or otherwise extremely close: Marcus Ginyard (UNC), Mamadi Diane (UVA), Nigel Munson (Va Tech,etc. From 2004, UMD thought it had Rudy Gay signed sealed and delivered, but then he went to UConn and starred for them. Who else did they miss out from the 2004 class? Oh thats right Roy Hibbert AND Jeff Green.

Do I expect them to pick up every premier player from this area? No of course not, not even close to that. But that's a HUGE number of OUTSTANDING talents to completely swing and miss on. And the fact that so many of em grew up in the same county, where UMD is the biggest college bball program around, is inexcusable. They were known commodities way before their late years in HS, Gary should have been on em hard. I've heard other reports that Durant wanted to come to UMD but for whatever reason received not much interest from the staff. Maybe Gary doesn't like the idea of recruiting one and dones, which I can understand, but at some point you have to take a look around at the changing landscape of college basketball and get with the times, man.


Ok,so here's the final tally of players from 2004 and later that grew up and lived in Prince George's County:

-Austin Freeman
-Nolan Smith
-Chris Wright
-Mike Beasley
-Ty Lawson
-Kevin Durant
-Roy Hibbert
-Jeff Green

And other players who are either not as huge recruits, or are from Baltimore or NoVa:

-Mamadi Diane
-Nigel Munson
-Marcus Ginyard
-Rudy Gay
-Carmelo Anthony

There are plenty other not as huge recruits, but very solid ones, it's just that Diane and Munson came to mind immediately because they also went to HS with Freeman

This is so frustrating. Instead of Rudy Gay we get Will Bowers (both from Archbishop Spaulding) and instead of Kevin Durant we get Greivis Vasquez (both from Montrose Christian)

[MuresanForMVP]

[ QUOTE ]
Paulus may be as good as our 3rd best pg. OH NOES!!

also, lol @ singler being your post presence. you guys can't rebound for [censored]. i'll be surprised if you beat marquette.

[/ QUOTE ]

when is Duke going to learn to stop recruiting big white losers like Shavlik Randolph? That guy averaged more fouls per game than points. Zoubek is butt pathetic too, just like Paulus. LOLZ he's a winnar and has a hudge heart!

[NajdorfDefense]

Duke sucks and will likely be 1 and done yet again under Ultimate Leader K this year, altho since he started recruiting thugs like Henderson I thought maybe they'd be a threat this year...but no, back to white stiffs who 'play hard' and slap the court loudly. As long as Paulus is there they will keep getting slapped around by UNC.

Miami will surprise a lot of people, they lost their starting C, both Fs and backup C to injury last year, all are back and healthy, deepest frontline in ACC, probably toughest team overall physically, 2 solid frosh coming in, PG is weakness but with McClinton and solid D/Rbs they will be a lot more competitive than people think with 4 starters back. They won't finish 4th but higher than 10-11 imho. Haith is a solid coach.

[tarheeljks]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Paulus may be as good as our 3rd best pg. OH NOES!!

also, lol @ singler being your post presence. you guys can't rebound for [censored]. i'll be surprised if you beat marquette.

[/ QUOTE ]

when is Duke going to learn to stop recruiting big white losers like Shavlik Randolph? That guy averaged more fouls per game than points. Zoubek is butt pathetic too, just like Paulus. LOLZ he's a winnar and has a hudge heart!

[/ QUOTE ]

fwiw, randolph's failure as a college player falls 100% on their rat of a coach. randolph was supposed to be a wing player who happened to be 6'10, but krzyzewski made him put on a ton of weight and play down on the block b/c he knows you need strong post play to win in the tourney. randolph is in the nba now after sucking badly at duke b/c he shed some of the weight and is actually halfway decent

[Assani Fisher]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
maryland just lost to my tigers....trying to be nonbiased they looked pretty sloppy to me , lots of turnovers and poor shooting imo

[/ QUOTE ]

Good lord: Maryland 1-for-17 from deep after going 1-for-11 last night. Vasquez and Hayes combined for 0-for-14 tonight.

-McGee

[/ QUOTE ]

On the bright side, they've now hit at least one 3 pointer in 290 straight games!

89,981 and counting

[Mr November]

Osby needs to learn to hold onto the ball/finish and the Terps will be a lot better.

[jthegreat]

Paulus wasn't very good last year. He also was playing on a very young, shallow team with a broken foot. However, he ended up shooting over 40% from 3-point range by the end of the season IIRC. He's played very well and very consistently this season so far.

Lawson is unquestionably a very good point guard. He's much faster than Paulus. But he's not the 3-point threat that Paulus is. They're two different kinds of PG's.

The Duke/UNC matchups this year should be great. Hansbrough is obviously a really tough matchup for Duke, since Duke doesn't have that much talent in the post. But Duke has more talent at the guard/wing positions, so it'll be interesting to see how it evens out.

[tarheeljks]

[ QUOTE ]
But Duke has more talent at the guard/wing positions, so it'll be interesting to see how it evens out.

[/ QUOTE ]

no they don't.

lawson, ellington, ginyard > paulus, henderson, nelson.


edit: basically on paper i don't think duke matches up w/unc very well at all, but krzyzewski is too good of a coach for them to just get run over.

[jthegreat]

"lawson, ellington, ginyard > paulus, henderson, nelson."

We'll have to agree to disagree. Besides, you're forgetting Scheyer (one of Duke's top scorers), Nolan Smith, and to some extent, Pocius (who is streaky as hell). Duke has a ton of depth at guard and wing.