Brian Geisinger, BuzzBeat Podcast, on college hoops

All good. What did you see that's going well for NC State so far? They're tied 25 all against Kansas.

What's working for the pack? I mean, Casey Morsell's gotten off to a really good start. He scored in transition a couple of times. Had some nice stops defensively. I think for them to be tied up with Kansas and, you know, Terquavion Smith's had a really tough shooting start to this game despite having a couple blocks defensively and Grady Dick making, you know, 12 three-pointers already.

It's not a bad, it's really not a bad start for Frency State. I do think Dusan Mysorecic, the starting center for them, like, I just think he's been really solid for them all season defensively. You know, he gives them some size, some foot speed at the center position, a little bit of scheme versatility, guarding pick and roll because he can switch, he can ice, he can, you know, play at the level or drop. So, I think that's done a nice job, you know, chipping away at Kansas' half-court offense and they could just close out a little bit better on Grady Dick. Then they could get even more sort of like half-court kills against the Jayhawks. And then, yeah, you just hope eventually Terquavion, you know, keeps, gets hot at some point. And no matter what, even if that dude doesn't start making shots, Kansas at least has to guard him. And I've seen Terquavion have a couple of nice pick and roll passes.

He actually hit Mysorecic for a two, not too long ago. So, yeah, I don't know. Stay, stay hanging tough, at least the first 15 minutes of the half here. Let's go ahead and keep going with the report cards. You hit on a couple things, not only for this game, but that have worked well for NC State early. What, what's your early season four-game report card for the Duke Blue Devils right now? What's working, let's go with what's working well, then I'm going to come back and ask you what's a concern for, for each of these teams. But what's going well for Duke through first couple games, including a loss to Kansas, but a good showing? Yeah, they, that was the one game this season, the offense really didn't fire on all cylinders and, but they still had a good stretch, especially early in the second half. I think one of the things that would be most encouraging if I were John Shire, anyone else on that staff would be, I don't know how much of Duke you've seen this season, maybe outside of the Kansas game per Mar, but like the, the ball moves for them offensively.

Like they get it side to side, it pops around. I think, I just think like the half court and like, like the connectivity they have in the half court offense is pretty good, given how much roster turnover that was. And yeah, they've got a lot of good players, but I think that's been impressive.

I also just, I am struck by their versatility that they have, because this is a team with Kyle Filipowski, who's had an incredible start to his freshmen season, who can play the four or the five and can do basically everything offensively. I mean, can run, pick and roll. He can screen and dive.

He can spot up. You can run them off screens. You can isolate them in the post or out on the wing. And then with guys like Mark Mitchell, Jacob Grandison, who's popped up and had a couple of nice shooting performances for Duke, including against Bellarmine the other night. And then now with Derek Whitehead, you're working him into the rotation. You've got a bunch of wings that you can mix and match.

And so you can go small. You can go big. They've got two guys that can kind of run the show as point guards right now with Jeremy Roach and Tyrese Proctor, who's been a little up and down, but certainly had some nice flashes. And the more you bring Whitehead into the mix, just the higher the ceiling goes for this team. And really the best part for them, if you had to isolate one thing, it's probably been the second chance offense, their top five nationally in offensive rebound rate. And they're 90 plus percentile and put back attempts and put back points for 40 minutes too. I appreciate you not calling me out and going with the, I'm not sure how much Duke you've watched outside of the Kansas game instead of, I know you haven't watched Duke outside of the Kansas game.

I appreciate that, my friend, settle there. And let's complete the triangle. I know we've got Wake over there in North Carolina as well, but let's stick to the triangle for today's show. What's gone well for the Heels for the first couple games and what a lot of people have termed is kind of a struggle to start. I don't know if folks expect them to come out blowing out everyone by 20 because of the way they finished last season, but it has not been a well-oiled machine, but what has gone well for UNC so far through a few games? Yeah, I think there was a period like this that should have been expected because I know they bring back mostly everyone and Pete Nance is good enough to just plug and play, but we've permed, you and I have talked about this before, like the combination of Brady Manik and Armando Baycott, it was that inside out, the high-low duo, the movement shooting of Manik with the low post power of Baycott, like that was the nexus of UNC's offense in the half court last season.

Caleb Love is good and RJ Davis makes good decisions with the basketball and he can shoot too, but that was it. Nance has had a nice start to the season. He's been arguably the team's best player, I think in some regards, and he can shoot not as well as Manik, but they're going to have to replace that and kind of figure out what the flow looks like for them in the half court. I think they'll find it to be clear because they're experienced and really talented.

You can usually bank on those two things. I know Baycott maybe hasn't been amazing to start the season, but I think he's been pretty awesome. I mean, he's drawing fouls at a crazy rate. He's blocking shots. He's been a monster on the glass for them. And look, Caleb Love's not going to shoot below 19% on threes for the whole season. He'll start making some threes and I think RJ Davis will start to shoot better too. So I think offensively, things have looked pretty good despite the fact that the flow I don't think is quite there for them.

Defensively, it's just figuring out what your coverages are going to look like and can that no middle defense force some more turnovers from opposing offenses. Brian Geisker joining us. You can check out his work at the Buzzfeed podcast where he talks horn and stuff, but he also writes about some of the local teams at Pack Pride and Devil's Den.

Does some great breakdown work, especially on some of these NBA-bound players on local rosters. If I had to ask you one concern for each team, your biggest concern for State, Duke, and UNC at this point in the season. Let's start with the Pack who, I was going to give you a score update, but I'll do it in a second when they cut away from Seth Greenberg.

The Pack who trails by six here. What's your biggest concern for them this season? Yeah, I think it's, I just think it's defense, you know, which has kind of been, that's been, when they've struggled underneath Kevin Keats, like that's been the issue. Offensively, they've been reliably pretty good, even during some of the more lean seasons. You know, I do think you got to figure out what does the cover, what do the coverages look like when DJ Burns is in at center and Horchich is on the bench. You know, Ken Turquavian Smith, who's again, I think he had a nice defensive first half against Kansas here, but he's had some issues guarding the ball at the point of attack and he can space out off the ball. Turquavian's awesome and he's carrying a huge load for them offensively.

So you're going to expect some of that. But I think for the most part, State has the ability to be a pretty good offense. They're playing with pace. They've shot a good number.

They're targeting the right spots on the floor generally. I would just like to figure out where does the defense stabilize at? Can this be a top 75 defense? If so, State could be pretty good this year. If this ends up being, you know, an outside the top 100 defense, then, you know, it maybe becomes a little bit more problematic. Biggest concern for Duke? I think right now it's just like making sure they can get to the free throw line a little bit more offensively.

Like it would kind of surprise you. I know it's just a five game sample and I do think with Whitehead coming back at, you know, six, seven projected top 10 pick wing that can get downhill, draw contact. I think he'll help out a lot in that regard. But right now, Philip Housley is really the only guy that's drawing fouls for them. So I would be trying to figure out ways to get Derrick Lively involved a little bit more. Like he's at 10% usage rate right now.

And like he's a defender, like that's his thing. But I'd like to find the way to get him involved in some more roles, get him going downhill a little bit more. And then just kind of figuring out who's going to be the guy for them to create rim pressure in late games. They've got lots of good options. So maybe it's a bi-committee approach, but I'll be kind of curious to figure out.

Like by the end of last season, it was Palo, right? And so where do things settle in this season with a, you know, it's a good problem to have, but a pretty crowded kind of like playmaking room with Duke. And what about UNC? Biggest concern there is not Armando Baker, like some of the fans, but what's your biggest concern? Yeah, I'm not worried about Armando. Man, the guy knows, that guy knows what he's about. He's like one of the most self-aware players I think in the country.

And also he's incredibly good at basketball. But yeah, I just think it's like some of the last year, it's just like solidifying the defense. I think ultimately that was the thing that kind of triggered for them last season was they figured out their coverages with Manic and Baycott that allowed the defense to sort of like Geico asks, how would you love a chance to save some money on insurance?

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Simply go to Geico.com or contact your local agent today. Develop its floor. And then the offense was already pretty good. And you know, you saw the team kind of take off. So I would say nailing similar state. It's just like nailing down the defense, making sure that's good. And I think a lot of that is on the coverages with the big guys and also making sure someone like Caleb Love like actually stays locked in all season.

Cause if he has the tools to be a good defender, just throughout most of his career at UNC, we haven't really seen it. Brian Geisiger again, check out his work, Pack Pride, Devil's Den, and the Buzzfeed podcast where he does a hornet stuff. Brian Geisiger is also one of my millennial friends. I call him my millennial expert. He lets me know about how millennials roll, what they're into. He's the first person who taught me what cuffing season was.

And had I known all these years that there was actual, there was a schedule to this type of thing, maybe I could have handled it better. But one of the things he's also been my insider on is friends givings. He's been to many, he's brought items for them. He has prepared them. So I asked you, Brian Geisiger, who are the three or more, I don't know how many you got there, who are the people that you definitely find at a friends giving? Yeah.

So the first one of these is a classic one. And it's, I think a role that I played at one point, but I've grown out of thankfully as I've become a slightly more functional adult, but that is guy who, it's a potluck dinner, right? But the guy who shows up with the drinks or something that's not prepaid, like a bag of chips or something like that. And it feels like their contribution is on par with everyone else who actually took time out of their day to buy ingredients and bake something.

So that is a go-to. There's going to be, as long as you have enough people, one person there is definitely gonna be playing that role. Okay.

The next one, and this is a newer one per Mar. Okay. I like it. But as you've maybe seen sports gambling becoming quasi-legal here in the United States of America, there is going to be someone there. It used to be guy talking about his fantasy football team. Now it's guy talking about bets that he has on the game that night.

Like is there someone that's got some app up on their phone and is talking about, you know, and is talking about, you know, how up or how down they are or some dumb bet they lost the other day. So like those two are given, one of those is an old timey classic. The other one is a little more, a little more modern. Yep. Absolutely.

Absolutely. And then the main thing though, the main thing is you got to have the, like the person that literally holds the entire thing together is you got to have one friend that's willing to host the thing. And per Mar, my friends who used to host Friendsgiving, they all have, they, a lot of them have young kids now.

Uh, so we don't have, we don't do Friendsgiving. Yeah. And like you probably, when you had Friendsgiving, like you texted your other friends about like, God, like, why are these guys bringing this up three months early or whatever? Like, why are they, why are they being so precise?

Like you complained about them and now you're like, now look at this. So you don't have the, I like to call that person, the program director. In my, in my life, I try not to, in my friend group, be seen as the program director. There are times where I will like, if I'm going to go all in and seize the program director role, it'd be like, this is what's going on, right? I will do it, but I try and avoid being labeled the program director in my friend group for fear of feeling the burden of having to do that all the time. But I, I totally feel you. So to all the program directors out there in your friend group who hold the Friendsgiving, we, yes, you're, there is some sub Friendsgiving text group that is complaining about you being kind of anal and starting the, you know, the planning thread too early or having some dietary need, but ultimately you are appreciated.

The Friendsgiving literally would not happen without you. Exactly. Yes. Salute. The real MVP. Thanks.

Brian Geisinger, you don't have to tell me where you're headed. I'll text you later, but have a great Thanksgiving wherever you go. I know you'll be spending with family and, and probably friends as well. We'll talk to you after Thanksgiving, my man. Yeah. Same to both. Same to you, Perm, same to you, Victoria, and to all everyone out there who does celebrate.

Yeah. Have a good holiday. Cool, man.

Talk to you soon. Geico asks, how would you love a chance to save some money on insurance? Of course you would. And when it comes to great rates on insurance, Geico can help like with insurance for your car, truck, motorcycle, boat, and RV, even help with homeowners or renters coverage. Plus add an easy to use mobile app, available 24 hour roadside assistance and more, and Geico is an easy choice. Switch today and see all the ways you could save. It's easy. Simply go to Geico.com or contact your local agent today.