UNC Second Viewing

I took a few days off of BC talk/thoughts/worry, to let myself simmer a bit, and then last night watched the Saturday night debacle again. I have a few things I want to point out:

• Tyrese Rice is an all star at filling voids. He is a scorer when we need it, he is a point guard when we need it, he handles the ball pretty well all the time and very well in clutch places.
• We would have had no chance without Sean Marshall, which indicates to me that we need him to remain in the ON position if we are to make a run in the NCAAs. He is a great player most of the time, but he really excels at coming from outside and cutting in. He needs to try this more.
  
• Jared Dudley played 39 minutes of great Basketball. He is still an great player, but it is going to be VERY hard for voters to name him POY after that game. He outplayed Tyler Hansbrough and has twice owned Al Thornton, as for Sean Singletary, there really is no comparison, BUT the voters are going to look to both Wednesday and Saturday night, when he was at home, against top opponents, during an emotionally charged week, and he couldn't come through in the end, and they aren't going to be able to cast that vote.
  
• John Oates had a good game, a very very rare occurrence, in fact I think I have seen more solar eclipses than good games by Oates.
  
• Our "Ghost Players" need to step it up, Spears is good, but he is clumsy and needs to really take some charge. Blair has had 2 great games for us, and Saturday wasn't bad, but he needs to be a bit more consistent.
  
• Skinner, even the old dog that he is, learned from his mistakes of Wednesday. Our clock management was better, our substitutions were better, we just needed some players to step up to really get to the next level.

So I feel kinda bad about my post-game posting. Not really, but kinda. I know that Jared Dudley is a fantastic player, and a great contributor, but the last minute failure in a HUGE game is really a tough pill to swallow. He will always be one of, if not the, Smartest player to ever don the Maroon and Gold, and he has been a great leader for our team, but I just can't see him taking us to that next level with big mistakes in big games.