Terps' zone dooms Deacons

by WakeJake on Mar 13, 2009 11:18 PM EDT

Wake Forest left it's offense in Winston-Salem and Maryland took advantage of it to pull off the upset, 75-64. Click through for a brief recap of tonight's action.

It looked bad from the beginning for the Deacs as James Johnson got into foul trouble in the first three minutes. He was able to rebound and finish with 20 points and 12 rebounds, but Wake Forest was not.

The zone defense employed by the Terps forced Wake into numerous bad shots and Maryland never lost control of their lead, hitting several timely threes whenever Wake looked like they would make a push. Greivis Vasquez backed up his pregame talk with 22 points, 9 assists and 8 rebounds while Mosley and Hayes chipped in 12 and 11, respectively. This win likely locks up a tournament spot for the Terps, who will face off with the winner of the BC/Duke game tomorrow.

For the game, the Demon Deacons shot a horrid 29.7%, including 3-25 from beyond the arc. Instead of attacking the zone, they decided to try to shoot over it. This was clearly an error in judgment for this poor shooting Wake Forest team. While the shooting numbers were alarming, the most frightening stat from the game was the final rebounding tally. The Terps, who play no player larger than 6'7", out-rebounded the Deacs by nine. This is just inexcusable for one of the biggest teams in the nation.

From here, the Deacs look to take out their early exit frustration on the rest of the nation. Wake will likely be a 3 or 4 seed in the NCAA tournament and will definitely not be playing locally (I would guess Miami or Philly). Here's hoping we show up next Thursday/Friday.

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Comments

i should have been commenting in game thread

but by the time i got around to it i figured i would only have ugly things to say.

the pain isn’t gone so:
1. McFarland just looked out of it and that was a weird/wrong mentality he had going. Like he got kicked in the head before the game.
2. Teague passing up easy threes and then somehow either taking a contested 17 footer or taking the 3 later yet more pressured.
3. Against a collapsed zone we need two guys who if left open will hit three. Harvey and Teague. Everyone else continue doing your thing – it will open up after we hit a couple threes.

That never happened, but we need to learn it soon.

I still love this team.

Crystal Balls

by MMHorns on Mar 14, 2009 4:52 AM EDT reply actions

I still think and know this team is capable of beating anybody, but they need to get it together. They need to play to their strengths and not let the other team dictate what they are going to do.

Bah da da da da da da da, Go Deacs.

Blogger So Dear

by Martin Rickman on Mar 14, 2009 1:10 PM EDT reply actions

Dino continues not to adjust to the zone. When will he station somebody on at the free throw line. It makes the zone (2/3 or 3/2 which MD played last night) collapse on that person and free up the baselines for dumps or if no collapse attack the tin. Elemenary zone busting textbook stuff.

by askmikeandscott on Mar 14, 2009 1:54 PM EDT reply actions

What frustrates me the most is when we take it down the floor slowly, let the zone set up and the guy with the ball stands at the key AND EVERYONE ELSE JUST STANDS AROUND TOO! I saw this happen at least five possession during the game. There were literally spans of 4 or 5 seconds without a single Demon Deacon moving a single foot, IT’S RIDICULOUS YOU CAN’T WIN A BASKETBALL GAME LIKE THAT. I’m still ticked about this game. Also I saw that Dino TOLD the team at halftime to stop shooting threes, but they continued to do so in the 2nd half anyway. Is there a split between the team and Dino? Also I thought that every time Johnson scored he looked a little disgusted that he was the only one doing the extra work to get the points. Rightly so in my opinion, he was the only one busting his butt to try to get something going. Teague was being his normal bitchy little frustrated self when everything wasn’t going smoothly from the get go. Ish was trying hard but with the way we were running the “offense” he was having to try to dribble into 3-4 defenders. Mc had his worst game all season. Aminu played OK when he got around the ball but with everything else going so poorly he couldn’t do much. L.D. I though played well but he was playing way too hard for the highlight and not the points and the win. I feel like half the team is playing for the highlights that get their dick sucked after the game and not for the win for Wake Forest.

Getcha some.

by Deaconator on Mar 14, 2009 4:01 PM EDT reply actions