How can UNC basketball and Duke basketball turn around early season struggles

This is the Adam Gold Show. Back in 2017, but it's been a minute since the ACC has come out of this on top. And if the ACC is to come out on top, they will likely need contributions from their two bellwether programs, Duke and North Carolina. We'll talk about them a little bit. We'll talk about NC State with my man, Brian Geisinger.

Pac Pride, Devil's Den, everywhere. He knows as much about basketball as any human being I know. All right, sir.

I appreciate your time. I want to start with the Wolfpack last night against William & Mary. They're not in the ACC Big Ten Challenge this year because when you finish 14th or 15th, rather, you don't get to get a chance to do this. So they missed out the last one and that's fine.

But I've seen them now a few times. I loved watching the game against Kansas. I thought that was as fun a basketball game as I had seen. And I like the fact that they have multiple guys that can beat you off the bounce.

They can create their own shot. I don't know what else they've got in terms of, I don't think they're going to be good enough defensively, but now that we've seen them against a few good teams, what are your thoughts on the Wolfpack? I mean, almost, you know, entirely positive across the board. I know it's been just eight games, but they've been pretty awesome to start the season, you know, in going toe-to-toe with Kansas like that, and Kansas is one of the best teams in the country and State was right in that and easily could have come away with a win. But, you know, beating Dayton is a great win. Butler is a good win. I even think a win over Campbell, you know, a few weeks back was pretty solid too.

Campbell's tough to prepare for and to defend with their sort of like Princeton offense that they run. Having Jaquavion Smith on this roster is just such a game changer. Like, I know he hasn't even shot the ball that well to start the season. I know he's also dealing with some injuries, but, or an injury, but man, he's like, what he's able to do, the attention he's able to draw is setting stuff up for everyone else. He's making life easier for Jarkel Joiner. He's making life easier for Jack Clark, for Mihorčić, for Casey Morsell. For DJ Burns because teams are having to put two on the ball when he runs pick and roll. And I think while his passing hasn't been necessarily like clean this season, he takes some chances and occasionally he'll throw, you know, more of a careless pass. Overall, I think the passing has been pretty impressive. He takes, you know, he sees guys, he sees, sometimes he sees the action to step ahead of the defense and he's able to get the ball there as the team is maybe still rotating around, but you do see, like when William & Mary did this last night as well, like they had to put two on the ball against Teravian because he can turn the corner and get downhill and get to the rim, or he can shoot a pull up three from outer space.

Like, you know, he's got that kind of range and Jarkel Joiner has been awesome too. I mean, I think at some point he'll probably cool off from the mid range. He's shooting around 55% on mid range jumpers right now. Like he's not Kevin Durant or Chris Paul, like that number will probably come down some, but he's had an awesome season. He's getting to the rim. He's drawing fouls, like both he and Terquavion are both drawing over four fouls for 40 minutes this season, which is huge. And that has replaced to an extent the rim pressure lost by Darion Seabron, right? But while Joiner is not the same sort of like long, lanky, downhill, physical feel, he's not the same sort of long, lanky, downhill, physical freak that Darion was, he has the ability to shoot off the dribble.

So he can actually get it going for more levels of the court. And I just, what those two guys are doing with the basketball, being able to get off the ball and spot up and work and attack closeouts, all of that stuff is making it, I think, really easy for guys like Clark, Morsell, and Mihoricich, who are having awesome seasons shooting the basketball. 53% from downtown, Jack Clark, 64% on twos, Mihoricich, 65% on twos, all of those guys super efficient this season. You touched on the defense too.

Like I do sort of worry about that long term a little bit, but they're trending in the right direction. Like right now, they're probably top 75, top 80 in terms of defense. And if you pair that with the top 30 offense, now you've got something. I mean, obviously you'd like the defense to continue to get better, but unsurprisingly for Kevin Keats' team, they're pressing a lot, almost 60% of their possessions or so. It helps that they're scoring a lot. So they're making teams take the ball and now they can set up the press and they're forcing turnovers on that. Their top 50, give or take, in opponent turnover rate, right around 22% of opponent possessions have ended in a turnover. But I think the huge thing for them is right now, NC State, the defensive rebound rate. Opponents are getting, I mean, they're rebounding over 77% of available defensive rebounds, which would far and away be the best defensive rebound rate ever for Kevin Keats' team, even going back to his time at Wilmington. NC State switches a lot, so that can often leave you in a bad spot to gain defensive rebounds if you have a small on a post guy after a switch, but that's huge. So if you're forcing turnovers, you're running teams off the line, teams aren't attempting a ton of threes against State, and you're closing off possessions with defensive rebounds, there's a roadmap to being a competent, if not elite, but competent defense.

Yeah, look, finishing off possessions is important. All right, let me get to, I love the fact that Casey Morsell, who had a rough year last year, is off to a good start, because I actually think they could challenge for the best of the schools that aren't necessarily in the top echelon of the ACC this year, however deep that is. I don't think it's all that deep, but I think State's as good as anybody in the middle of the pack, and they've got, Mandy, you've got an elite player in Smith and other players who can create their own offense. I, and that leads me to Duke, because watching their games in Portland, it struck me as they don't have a lot of creators, guys who can individually break down a defense, or at least they haven't shown that. Tyrese Proctor, I'm not sure, can get around his, the defender.

I'm not sure about why, we haven't seen a lot of Whitehead yet. What are your thoughts on Duke's offense, and does John Shire have to kind of script something to create it? Yeah, I mean, this is sort of one of the big mysteries with this roster right now, because Jeremy Roach can take guys off the dribble, but he's not always big enough to finish in the paint, right? And Tyrese Proctor is big enough to finish in the paint, and he's a really good passer, and, but he doesn't reliably turn the corner, even before Duke, I saw him play this past summer for Australia in Viva competition, it was the same thing out there.

Derek Whitehead, so Derek Whitehead becomes the what if, right? You know, they list him at 6'7 on the roster, I don't think he's quite that tall, but he is like a, he's built like a powerful wing, and he can slash. We need to see, probably need to see more of him. I know he's coming off a surgery three, three and a half months ago, he's had only very limited practice time, I think Shire actually mentioned this when they were out in Portland, so he doesn't look like he has his rhythm or his conditioning up, he's looked a little rusty running pick and roll, he's looked more comfortable when they just like isolate him on the wing or in the corner, but that hasn't really gotten them all that much just yet. He's gonna start playing better, like this guy is really, really talented, Duke's gonna have to give him more playing time, they're gonna have to give him the ball more, and they're also gonna have to scheme him some stuff up, and I think for the most part, John Shire has done a nice job like scheming half court offense, but if you need to get this guy going, which I think you and I agree that Duke does, then you probably need to do more than just play him more and get him the ball more, you probably need to be thinking a little more creative, like how do we make it easy for this guy, at least to get him going.

Part of that, Kyle Filipowski's been awesome, what's not to like, he's been outstanding on both sides of the floor, this guy's been one of the best players in college basketball so far this season, his playmaking from all over the court, he's obviously not anywhere near the same tier of prospect as Paulo Vancaro, so I hesitate to draw that comp, but Duke can use him in a similar way, they can isolate him at the elbow, they can run pick and pop with him, they can run screen and roll with him and let him get into space, and then he can put it on the deck a couple of times and get to the rim, or he can kick out, he can hit the skip pass, so he's a walking mismatch, and a guy that has really just done an excellent job creating offense for himself or playing within the flow of Duke's half court offense, the thing that I will be curious to see as well is if Duke does try to maybe downsize a little bit, it really has been mostly two big guys this season, they've played some of Filipowski at center with four guards and wings, or they've played Lively at center with Filipowski off and four guards and wings, or Ryan Young for that matter, but for the most part it's been some combination of Filipowski with either Young or Lively at five, and I do think you're probably going to see more of Derek Whitehead at the four, or Mark Mitchell at the four, and see if they can get a little bit more spacing in the half court. Yeah, I mean, it just looks like everything has been a slog offensively for them, and it comes down to Proctor as a point guard, and he hasn't been able to turn his man and get into the lane and create, and it's just made everything more difficult, but look, John Shire won a national championship with basically nobody that could get in the lane on their own, and that was a weird year, I get whatever you want to say, and Shire was a special college basketball player, I mean super special, and Nolan Smith was on that team and Kyle Singler was really good, but ultimately it was a team that could not beat their man. Similar to that team though, like that 2010 title team, they mashed teams on the offensive glass. Crushed them. That's what Duke is doing, which they literally lead the nation in offensive rebound rate, and their put-back efficiency numbers have been good this season, so that is slightly positive.

They do have enough self-awareness. I will also say too, Gold, they're shooting 29% on threes this season. They're not going to shoot below 30%, like Tyrese Proctor has gotten a ton of good looks and they just haven't gone down, he's shooting 15% on threes this year. That is on some volume, that's going to improve, I don't think they're a great three-point shooting team, but they're better than how they've shot it so far, so I think you can expect some regression in the right direction for them in terms of three-point percentage too. Maybe shoot should play more, and shoot. All right, Brian Geisinger, first of all, do you like Duke or Ohio State tonight?

Oh my God, I don't like making predictions. I'll say Duke, but it's close. Ohio State, have you seen Ohio State play at all this season? I've barely seen Duke play.

I've seen about three Duke games. Ohio State has some, there's a guy, Bryce Sensabaugh, who you'll see tonight, who's built like Zion minus 30 pounds, he's like a power wing, he doesn't like to pass, but he can really shoot. They've got another guy, Bruce Thornton, who's another possible one-and-done freshman that can also really shoot and score. His team is, they're good. They've got a nice mix of veterans and young, sort of like upside talent with Sensabaugh and Thornton.

All right, I look forward to that. All right, now, real quick about North Carolina. I mean, they scored four overtimes, still scored 103 points, 102 points, whatever it was, and lost the game. They've managed to win most of these games, but they've also struggled in all of these games.

They've run nobody off the court. What do you think has been their biggest issue, and again, they've won most of these games, so it's not that big a deal, I guess, but what has gotten in their way, at least in the first two-thirds of most of these games? Yeah, I do think it's the, ultimately, I think it's like the defense, kind of similar to last year, just figuring out what their coverages are going to be and nailing those down. I mean, you could see in the four-overtime game against Alabama, how many different pick and roll coverages they tried throughout that game. I mean, they're going to try to pin the ball on the side when it's a side screen, but they also switched a lot in that game, even including some small ball lineups with Leakey or Puff Johnson as the de facto four, but they switched with Pete Nance, they switched with Armando Bacott. Ultimately, I think this team's talent is too good and the pieces fit together too well, so I'm not too, too worried about it, but the defense is going to have to get better, and I think it is important. I do think it's important with UNC that for them, when they found their groove last season, it was the blend offensively.

It wasn't just one guy going crazy. This team doesn't have a Terquavian Smith, like Caleb Love is really good. He's not Terquavian Smith, man. He doesn't get his own shot like that, and so they've got to have everyone rowing in the same direction, and I mean, they've got awesome guards, like Caleb Love and RJ Davis are awesome guards. They're proven really, really good guards. Pete Nance is an NBA player, he's a draft pick. He's probably one of the top, probably a top 40, 45 pick, you know, if the draft were tonight.

Baikai, what else is there to say? An incredible post-up target, an incredible put-back guy. You can run offense through him, he can pass. Leaky Black is showing incredible confidence shooting off the catch and on the pull-up, but it's like none of those guys are like pure, just like breakdown guys. You need the scheme, you need the ball movement, and you need those guys to pass it and to make shots, but ultimately, I think they're going to be there at the end of the season.

They're going to find it. I think this part of the year is important for them to have those learning experiences. I think you'd like for it to be better, you'd like to win these games for sure, but like they easily could have won the Alabama game. I mean, to say that was a coin flip would be like trite, you know, like it was a four overtime game, you know, anyone could have won it 12 different times. They overturned the game-winning basket.

Yeah, exactly. I do think though, if I had to sort of like nitpick a little bit, I did think down the stretch of that game, like you saw Alabama put Charles Bidiaco, their center on Leaky Black and UNC went pretty matchup heavy, like late in that game where they took either RJ Davis or Caleb Love, had them handle the ball, and then whomever Bidiaco was guarding, it was usually Leaky Black. That person would go set a screen and they were trying to force Bidiaco to maybe switch and guard one of their guards, or if there was some space, those guys could get to a jumper, but Bidiaco did a great job and Javon Quinterly was really good at the point of attack. And I just kind of wish UNC hadn't gone from, like I thought their offensive flow was doing good work already. And they went, but look, man, it was, everyone was tired.

Everyone had played 60 minutes. I get why you want to simplify it, but I did think they went like a little matchup heavy down the stretch against Bama. I'm not worried at all about any of the teams we've talked about, actually think State's going to be a fun team to watch.

I'm going to enjoy watching them and progress all year long. Ryan Geisinger, MPGeist underscore bird from Pac Pride, Devil's Den, and a thousand other places to read and listen to his work. Appreciate your time, my friend.

I'll talk to you soon. Wingstop's doing what they do best, taking flavor to the next level. So when chicken sandwiches only came in spicy and plain, Wingstop said, nah, make it 12 flavors. Lemon pepper chicken sandwich, OG hot, mango habanero. You get the picture. Every famous Wingstop flavor now on the new Wingstop chicken sandwich.

Try all 12 to find your favorite at Wingstop where flavor gets its wings. Did I just see what I saw that I, did, did, did, did the Lionel Messi not earn a questionable penalty in the box and failed to convert? Oh, he missed the PK.

Sorry. Is that what happened? I was talking to somebody.

Because I thought it was a questionable penalty about as questionable as the one Ronaldo earned in Portugal's first match. I think it was, it was that, who was that against? I'm trying to remember Senegal, I think.

Sounds right. Yeah. Very questionable penalty, but holy cow. Think about this, Messi and the world cup and the fact that they lost their first match to Saudi Arabia and they need a result to have a chance to go through today. A win would get them through a draw.

I think they can still make it, but, and he had a chance to put Argentina ahead of Poland in the first half and Lionel Messi stopped. It's a heck of a save. Heck of a save.

Not close enough to the post, but that was a bullet and a tremendous save by the Poland keeper. So, there you go. All right, before we get to the rewind, Tiger Woods tournament is coming up in a couple of weeks. It's actually, I think it's next, was it this weekend? It might be this weekend.

I don't know. Yeah, no, it's this weekend. The Hero World Challenge is this weekend and then next week he's playing in that tournament with his son, Charlie, right? So Tiger is at the podium and he's coming back.

He's going to come, he wants to come back and play. Now, I've always thought that Tiger was going to play basically just the majors and he might play another tournament here or there, but basically just for the majors. So let's ask Tiger, or let Tiger answer the question, why are you still trying to do this? Uh-oh, we'll get Tiger in a second. A couple of weeks ago, Rory McIlroy, I think they were at the European tour, it's called the DP World Tour now, Championship in Dubai, and he had mentioned that if the PGA Tour and Live Golf ever have some sort of a meeting of the minds, it will only be when Greg Norman steps away. Tiger said the same thing.

We'll hear that in a minute, but first from Tiger, why are you still trying to do this? I love competing. You know, I love this sport. I've been playing it for most, well, basically all my life and, you know, actually I've been a pro for more than half my life. And so if you look at those terms, you know, I've been a part of this sport and I've loved it. It's just unfortunate I'm not able to do the things that I feel mentally I can do.

The body just kind of rejects it. Yeah, look, Woods would probably were it not for his body breaking down. Think about Tiger Woods won the Masters in twenty nineteen. The last major championship he won before then was two thousand and eight.

Think about how dominant he was from two thousand through two thousand and eight. And he stopped winning. Yes, I know he had the personal things and that had something to do with it, I believe.

But it was really a back that would not allow him to play. And he won. He still won some tournaments. He had a year was I think it was either twenty fourteen or twenty fifteen where he won five times, including the players championship. But he was not he didn't really contend in any majors from two thousand nine, where he could have won three and won none. That was also the first time he ever lost a major with the lead heading to Sunday when he lost to Y Yang in the PGA Championship in two thousand nine. And he didn't contend again until he came back in twenty eighteen and he was in contention in two of the four majors. He was in contention at the Open Championship won by Francesco Molinari and he was in contention at the PGA Championship later that summer. The one won by one one of them won by Brooks Koepke. But he didn't win him, but he was there.

And then in twenty nineteen, he wins the Masters, which is just it was still one of the most incredible things to watch. But he wants to play. He wants to compete. How much can he still play? Play just the major championships and maybe one or two more. That's it. Physically, that's all I can do.

And I told you that, guys, you know, the beginning of this year, too, I mean, I don't have much left in this leg. So gear up for the biggest ones and hopefully, you know, lightning catches in a bottle and I'm up there in contention with a chance to win. And I mean, hopefully I remember how to do that, but, you know, giving myself a chance to get out there again, I didn't as I said, I didn't expect to play three majors this year. We were hoping for just the British Open, but I was able to get two more in there. So that was a big positive. Look.

Yeah. I mean, the fact that he played the Masters was kind of a surprise. It's also was a very difficult golf tournament for him to play because of the hills of Augusta National.

Same thing at Southern Hills. He probably shouldn't have played the PGA. And he ended up withdrawing from the PGA. But he always wanted to come back to play at the Open at St. Andrews. And I think he's going to try and play all four majors, as he said. And I don't know which of the other events he's going to play, is he going to play his tournament in L.A.? He's going to play that?

I don't know. He's not. Maybe he'll play. No, Bay Hill is too close to the Masters. So I don't know what he's going to play.

I really don't. So there's not a lot of events for him that he will want to play. I think he ends up playing just one other event and then, if he can, the four majors.

Now to the Liv question real quick. So we haven't talked about it in a long time because we talked about it for a long time. If Liv Golf, which is the Saudi-backed rogue tour, if you will, and I should, the only reason it's a rogue, it's not a rogue tour because of Saudi money, by the way. It's a rogue tour because of Greg Norman, because of the guy who's heading it up. And if you have heard me talk about this, you have never heard me complain about the source of the money.

To me, there's bad money everywhere. So I'm not going to denigrate or talk about Liv, and I don't have any problem with Liv Golf existing. They just can't have it both ways. They can't demand that the players be able to play the PGA Tour when they're essentially taking them away from the PGA Tour because you have to play, next year, 14 Liv events. No way you're going to have 14 Liv events, you're going to be able to play that and keep your PGA Tour membership. So they don't want these guys to be PGA Tour members, they just want them to have access to the PGA Tour. And the PGA Tour does not like that. So they are actively working against that. Anyway, here's Tiger, and the reason for that is Greg Norman.

Here's Tiger on Liv and the PGA Tour existing. There's no willingness to negotiate if you have a litigation against you. So if they both have a stay and then have a break and then they can meet and figure something out, then maybe there is something to be had. But I think Greg has to go, first of all, and then obviously the litigation against us and then our counter-sue against them. Those would then have to be at a stay as well.

So then we can talk, we can all talk freely. Here's ultimately the endgame. The endgame is lifting the ban from playing international team events. That's it.

That's it. I don't think they should have to, I don't think the PGA Tour should have to bend their rules to satisfy these guys. And I think the PGA Tour has a right to enforce their own rules, end of story. But for events like the Ryder Cup and the President's Cup, those guys should be allowed to be involved. President's Cup would have been much better if the best players from the international side were available.

And they weren't, because it's a PGA Tour event. Anyway, let's get to the rewind. Wingstop's doing what they do best, taking flavor to the next level. So when chicken sandwiches only came in spicy and plain, Wingstop said, nah, make it 12 flavors. Pick up a chicken sandwich, OG Hot, Mango Habanero, you get the picture? Every famous Wingstop flavor, now on the new Wingstop chicken sandwich.

Try all 12 and find your favorite at Wingstop, where flavor gets its wings. Chip Patterson, my man, CBSSports.com Cover 3 Podcast moderator. I have a question. Who you got, UNC Clemson? I think that to use Mac Brown's own assessment, North Carolina was not that much better than its schedule this year. So North Carolina actually was bigger in those moments than the team was good. Because North Carolina found ways to make plays against Pitt. North Carolina found ways to make plays against Wake Forest. North Carolina found ways to make plays against Duke.

North Carolina finished at the top of the coastal division with, again, background's own assessment of his team when they weren't that much better than anybody else in that coastal division. They just happened to show up and make the winning plays that they needed down the stretch. They did not make those plays against NC State. They did not make those plays against Georgia Tech.

But for a large portion of this schedule, it was a team that was playing with fire that was showing up and making the plays that it needed to down the stretch. I think that North Carolina's coming in as the looser team. I think that it would be hilarious to watch North Carolina bounce back from two losses to win the ACC championship. And I think that you've got the better quarterback and you're playing with a very different set of expectations. I just, I would not be surprised if the Tar Heels claimed their first conference title in 42 years on Saturday night. Very fun to watch. I want to see Drake May play against Clemson's defense, which hasn't been nearly as good as everybody thought Clemson's defense will be.

All right. Ryan O'Hanlon from ESPN. He is a soccer writer, sir. Talk to me about yesterday's win for the United States and creating chances. Like we had this game where Iran is just a very good defensive team.

Yeah. They did give up six goals to England. That did happen, but England finished really well. And also England can just, you know, get on a heater because they have so many good players. But like historically Iran is a great defensive team. Carlos Quiros is an incredibly frustrating manager for people that root for his team, but he builds a great defense and the way the groups they just played out, this wasn't just a normal game, right? This was a game where Iran, they just needed to draw, like it had different incentives and Iran just had everyone behind the ball. So when that's happening, it's very hard to create high quality opportunities, right?

Cause like there's just no space. So a lot of times you'll see, you know, maybe a deflection will lead to a goal. You'll see a set piece that leads to a goal.

Like those are the ways you break these teams down. You get a hand ball in the box or something, right? And then that opens the floodgates, but the U.S. didn't need any of that. They created an incredibly high quality opportunity because the U.S. now has a player like Western McKinney who plays for you, then just in the champions league, we played that perfect ball onto a perfect run from Zadino desk to place for AC salon in the champions league who heads it across the Christian Polisic who makes, hasn't been talked about enough, in my opinion, the run he made was absolutely incredible. He's like 30 yards from the goal when yesterday McKinney plays the ball in the first place and Polisic is, you know, the greatest American attacker of all time.

And he gets on the end of it and it's, you know, essentially a tapping into a near wide open net and being able to create that chance against an around defense like that is something the U.S. would have never been able to do in the past, in my opinion. They did create, it was interesting to watch. That was the best I'd seen the USA attack be really throughout all of qualifying.

I mean, they were, they were creative and dynamic and they just didn't convert enough. They got one in the first half were what? Four inches. How, how much was Tim way offside? Was he like a knee? I think it was literally, it was knee, like his knee was bent knee as easy as he was running only thing that was past the defense.

That was it. Really, and the McKinney pass to desk at the side of the penalty box, which desk headed over to Polisic in the right in front of the goal. That was a great pass by McKinney, but I think the pass I had to way that was ruled offside. That to me was the better pass.

That was a phenomenal through ball. I think there's a lot of things to really like about the way the United States played. And I didn't understand at all the, uh, the angst from like, if you start and you know me, I will tweet while I'm watching something. If you start tweeting about the men's national team, you get thousands of response. I don't get thousands. It's over. What an exaggeration.

Uh, you get dozens of responses from people who think you don't know what you're talking about, which I'm not arguing. Um, like, why didn't they do this? Why did they sit back? I'm like, the game changed once Iran needed to score the game changed when the U S didn't have to score anymore.

Yeah. You would have liked to have gotten the second goal. I wanted the second goal to feel better about it, but this team is not allowed a goal through the run of play in the world cup zero. The only goal was a stunt, a dumb challenge by Walker Zimmerman, which led to the Gareth bail penalty.

I liked the U S has chances against the Netherlands on Saturday. I do hit him up on titter, excuse me, on Twitter. Bye. This is the Adam gold show wing stops doing what they do best taking flavor to the next level. So when chicken sandwiches only came in spicy and plain wing stop said, nah, make it 12 flavors. Lemon pepper chicken sandwich, O G hot mango habanero. You get the picture. Every famous wing stop flavor now on the new wing stop chicken sandwich, try all 12 and find your favorite at wing stop where flavor gets its wings.