(originally posted
here∞)
Sean May has a deceptive stat line. Most of his points came on passes off penetration in the second half, when Shelden had to come over to help on the dribbler. He was neutralized as an actual post presence. It's clear that everytime their coaches talk to him (i.e. before the game, at halftime) they have a one-on-one pep talk with him and tell him to take it straight at Shelden. It's also clear that he can't. He was blocked several times at the start of the 1st half and again at the start of the second half. He doesn't have much lift, and Shelden is too strong for May to create the kind of space he can with some of the other ACC post defenders he faces. I'll give May credit. He rebounded very well (Duke 20-56 FG shooting gave him lots of opportunities,) continued to look to score off dribble-drives, and played a smarter game than most of his teammates. He did what he could do, and did it well.
Frankly, it's better (worse) than that. May doesn't have the wide-ranging effect that Shelden does, but from my angle it looked like he completely shut down Shelden in the second half. Much of the time Shelden couldn't get either position or the ball, and the 4 or 5 times he did try to drive the baseline he got 2 steps and had to pick up his dribble. With Jackie playing Redick extremely tightly and UNC having plenty of bodies to throw in there if fouls became an issue, I was really worried about our offense until Markie started demanding the rock and Ewing hit those ice-cold 3's.
In other news, Dock had an awful, awful game. I don't know how many turnovers ended up in the box score, but even if it's 5+ it won't count the many times it took him until 15 on the shot clock to distribute the ball to the first man. He also made some very poor defensive switches. (To be fair this is an area that fellow veteran Shav also continues to struggle with...most of the time he AND Shel come to help stop the ball and leave the weak side of the hoop completely unboxed, despite the fact Shel has proven superhuman at handling such things himself.)
Meanwhile: Duke won, it was loud enough I could barely hear my own tuba blasting, and I threw several articles of clothing into a blazin' bonfire before the rain hit. GTHCGTH!!!
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