UNC Game Efficiency

Player	Off. Poss.	Off. PPP	Def. Poss.	Def. PPP
Paulus-on	58	.86	57	1.02
Paulus-off	24	1.08	25	1.00
Redick-on	80	.95	79	1.11
Redick-off	2	.00	3	1.00
Dockery-on	51	.86	52.5	1.01
Dockery-off	31	1.03	29.5	1.02
McRoberts-on	42	.60	42.5	.94
McRoberts-off	40	1.28	39.5	1.09
Williams-on	69.5	.96	68	1.06
Williams-off	12.5	.72	14	.79
Melchionni-on	55	1.05	52.5	1.03
Melchionni-off	27	.67	29.5	.98
Nelson-on	55	1.05	56.5	.99
Nelson-off	27	.67	25.5	1.06
Boykin-on	0	.00	1	.00
Boykin-off	82	.93	81	1.02
Johnson-on	1.5	1.33	1	2.00
Johnson-off	80.5	.92	81	1.00
Team Totals	82	.927	82	1.012

I had to double check the numbers on Josh, because I didn't remember there being that drastic a difference between when he was on and off, but those are the right numbers. I think this was less attributable to any poor play by him, and more attributable to good play on offense by Lee and DeMarcus, both of whom played a lot of their minutes with McRoberts on the floor. Also, taking out our first 5 possessions (10 points), the team scored 66 in 77, for a .857 ppp (this makes Nelson's contributions even more remarkable - outside of those 5 possessions, the team scored only 8 points in the 22 other possessions he was on the bench).

As for general observations - as the on-the-ball pressure has increased on our guards, the offense has struggled. Paulus in particular has trouble with aggressive defense - it gets him going a little too fast, and he tends to make mistakes. The Carolina game was played at a frenetic pace - each team had the ball for just under 15 seconds on the average possession. This year, our offense has been better playing at a little bit of a slower pace, and Carolina won this one by speeding it up. Finally though, this game didn't look too terribly different from any of our other close games, except that shots that Redick made earlier, he missed last night. I'm certainly not putting the responsibility for the loss on his shoulders - plenty of people didn't play too well yesterday. But if he hits just 44%, we win both games this week. I think what this reveals most is how razor-thin the margin for error is for this team, and how much trouble we'll be in if no one can step up to fill the void if Redick continues to be off.

I'm headed down to Richmond today to watch the CAA semis, so I'll miss the MVC and Southern championship games today. Arch Madness at the Savvis Center featured several upsets, and completely realigned the bubble for the Valley - Bradley and SIU probably played themselves in (one definitely will be after today), and Creighton and Northern Iowa are now probably pretty nervous. Wichita State should still be safely in, even with the loss yesterday. Missouri State probably wishes it could play that Arkansas game again. In the Southern, the upstarts (Georgia Southern, Elon) who led the conference in the regular season couldn't get the job done in the tournament, and traditional powers Davidson and UT-Chattanooga will play for the automatic bid today. Shocking as it is to say for the SoCon, the winner is probably a 16-seed.