The Eagles went 0-1 this week, inexplicably losing an OT heartbreaker at UNC despite leading by 4 with 26 seconds left in regulation. As the losing streak hits six with matchups against a 13-7 FSU squad and a ranked Louisville team, things are looking bleak for Earl Grant and the Eagles. Let’s get into it:
- Who does Earl Grant trust? The lineup combinations throughout the course of the entire season have been pretty confusing. Outside of the starting group, which has remained relatively secure since Beadle’s introduction, the minutes allocation has been all over the place. Freshmen — most notably Luka Toews but Kane Tchanda as well — receive a lot of minutes in some games and don’t see the floor in others. Grant has thrown the twin bigs lineup out there at times; he’s gone with 4-guard sets and he’s gone small with Strong at the 5 (when he was healthy). But the question remains: who does he trust? Luka Toews is averaging close to 10 minutes a game, but he didn’t see the floor until the Duke game was out of hand and he wouldn’t have seen the floor at all against UNC until Beadle and Brown were forced out of the game. Yet against Georgia Tech and UVA, he’s out there for double digit minutes while the game is close. Toews is talented; he will develop. But sometimes Grant plays the guy like he’s an answer now, while other times it seems like Grant knows he’s not ready. The same goes for Chas Kelley. Against Syracuse, Grant left him out there to struggle through the second half while watching the lead dissipate. Then he barely sees the floor in the second half of the UNC game. The list goes on and on. Outside of Hand and Venning, I’d argue that pretty much every other guy on the team has seen their minutes and role fluctuate on an almost game-to-game basis.
2. Offensive explosion. UNC is a bad defensive team. Let’s get that out of the way first. But dropping 96 points — 89 in regulation — is a bright spot for this team. They shot an excellent 54.5% from the floor, buoyed by a lights-out 58.3% from beyond the arc. I though UNC would start to run away with the game at a couple different points, but the Eagles were able to respond and put themselves in position to win the game in regulation (more on that later). Donald Hand deserves recognition, as does Dion Brown. The former was simply feeling it — he was pulling some crazy 3s in the second half without hesitation and with defenders in his face and it didn’t matter. He was 5-8 from downtown and finished with 26 points overall. Brown had probably his best game in an Eagles jersey, with 20 points, 3 boards and 3 assists. The Eagles lost a lot of momentum after he fouled out. What excited me most about Brown’s performance was not so much the counting stats as much as how repeatable it was. Putting up 20 is great for Brown, don’t get me wrong, but most of his points came from beyond the arc — he was 4/5 from 3-point land. Each of those 4 makes was as a floor spacer, in which he was able to catch and shoot. He’s proven he can make that shot; the ball just happened to be finding him well that day. What was really different was his confidence attacking the basket. Twice in the first half he was aggressive attacking the basket. The first time he simply bullied an overmatched RJ Davis, missing the first layup but getting his own easy putback. The second time he utilized a nasty spin move into a scoop layup for a clean finish. Even when he wasn’t directly scoring himself, having the ball in his hands led to offense; he found Venning for an easy two after pulling back from a drive and found Hastings with a beatiful over-the-top entry feed as well. He’s talented enough to benefit this team’s offense when he has the ball in his hands. He shouldn’t be running the 1, but the more aggressive he is the more this offense opens up. The second-half lineup of Beadle, Payne, Brown, Hand and Venning/Hastings was small but found success largely because all 5 guys were contributing on offense. Beadle had a phenomenal game, with a couple elite skip passes and 8/8 shooting from the floor. Payne continues to be scorching hot from downtown, Hand is our best offensive player, and Venning has had success in 1-on-1 matchups in the paint all season long. When Brown is able to be a threat with more aggression, it makes for a dangerous unit. It is small, so I don’t think we’ll see it as much as we did against UNC (who is undersized and terrible defensively) but let’s hope this offense has turned a corner.
3. Grant disasterclass. The elephant in the room. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Grant cost his team a win against UNC. Chas Kelley deserves some blame for his dumbfounding turnover with 12 seconds left and a TO still in hand, but let’s be brutally honest here. Grant put him in that position three (3) times, and not once did Kelley get a successful inbound. What’s more is that the sets Grant drew up were just abysmal. On the fatal turnover that gave UNC the ball to tie the game in regulation, no one — at all — came to the ball. Instead Grant had 3 games wandering aimlessly all the way diagonally on the other side of the court. Grant’s in-game shortcomings are well known by now, but this was the worst we’ve seen from him in a long time. His postgame presser was uninspiring, as well. No one really knows his job status apart from Blake James, but the pressure is certainly ratcheting up.