NCCU basketball and the man behind making this team successful

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For the ones who get it done. Coming up on Saturday at the Smith Center, not sure people have heard about it. Duke, good basketball team, playing at North Carolina, also a good basketball team. It's a rivalry game. And I believe College Game Day has been in town for the last, oh, 8,000 of them. Seth Greenberg on set. Oh, by the way, I'm so excited the band is getting back together because Seth will be there, Jay Williams will be there, and Jay Billis will be there. It is amazing. We'll talk to Jay tomorrow.

Seth Greenberg joins us on the Adam Gold show. My friend, you gotta be excited. The whole band is back together. It's like the Beatles reunion.

No, I gotta be honest with you. I miss my man, Fonz. Fonz and I, we're connected at the hip. Love him to death like a brother, but I also love Jay Wilder like a brother.

So, I mean, you know, to me, I can't lose. I'm working with really, really great people that are passionate about the game. Obviously, Jay and Jay have experience in playing in the game, which brings some context to what this thing is all about. But great to have Jay Will back with us. He's the little brother I never wanted, and we're going to have a good time. You guys always do, man.

That's what translates through the TV. And again, College Game Day is always going to be at this game. Until Tuesday, I couldn't close my eyes and see, other than it's a rivalry, I couldn't see a path for Duke. But I thought Tuesday, maybe North Carolina showed some offensive cracks that we hadn't seen. I think their defense was, for the most part, pretty good, except maybe Georgia Tech's last possession. But I thought their defense was fine. It was the first time we had seen their offense look a little bit, I don't know, ordinary, unsure.

What have you seen from the Torrios? Actually, I thought their defense was poor. I thought their ball screen defense was very poor. Too many times in drop coverage, they got attacked. They gave up too many rim runs off high spread ball screen. Late game, they switched the high ball screen and attacked. Now, you gotta admit, Nathan George made a crazy shot. And offensively, they didn't take care of the ball.

I mean, he turned it over 10 times in the first half. I just thought they were off. And is it the game before the game? Is Georgia Tech has something to do with it? Is everything that's going on in college basketball with teams winning games, at home, beating ranked teams at home?

I think it's a little bit of everything. Is it, quite honestly, all the static that's around these players today, whether it's NIL, collectives, workout guys, grassroots coaches, parents expecting to monetize their kids. There's so much going on right now for a young person playing college basketball.

Where does school fit in? Where does winning fit in? They had one of those games where they didn't play well. They were loose with the ball.

The ball didn't have energy. Their transition game didn't get going like it had the last three games. And Georgia Tech had some guys make some plays. Yeah, Georgia Tech's a, I've literally, I've seen just four Georgia Tech games this year.

I kid you not. I saw both Duke games, the Carolina game and the Clemson game, where they won at Littlejohn. To me, Georgia Tech's a five seed and they're under 500.

Can't figure it out. I think, I mean, I think they've got players, but they certainly have shown what they're capable of in the four games that I've seen. I'm sure Damon Stoudemire would want me to watch more games. Yeah, I mean that they're a young team. I mean, Ndogo and Ndogo and Nathan Georgia, they're two of the best players. Then those other guys, when they're making shots and attacking the basket, they do some really good things offensively. A lot of spread, a lot of step-up ball screens, a lot of really good spacing stuff.

Don't always guard. They guarded really well the other night. Like you just said, they got good wins, man.

They got really, really good wins. But they haven't been consistent. It's hard to be consistent.

Anyone can do something one night, but you can do it every single night. And that's what Carolina found out the other day. That's what other teams all season long have found out. There's a very small margin of error across college basketball. There's a small margin between the best team in the country and the 75th team in the country. There's parity because it's COVID, because it's Portal, because it's fifth and six-year guys. Everyone's older. You look at Ole Miss, you look at Mississippi State. I mean, across the college, look at the Big 12, across the college basketball landscape, everyone is older. That's just the way it is.

Older guys have been there, done that. They're tougher. They expect to win. So, tough loss to Carolina, but I think Duke's playing pretty well. Duke is playing pretty well. And it's funny because they've also, at times, even in wins, kind of struggled to defend the ball. They struggled to defend Georgia Tech when Tech was here. They struggled late in the game to defend Clemson.

They got away with a lot of these. They won these games. They've won 11 of 12.

And I know people will look at the net and the top 50. They'll say, well, Duke's not beaten anybody other than Baylor in the top 50 in this 11 of 12 stretch. But I also think we have seen a lot of great signs from the Blue Devils, probably more on offense than we have seen on defense.

When you look at Duke, what are you seeing? Well, first of all, I think the injuries have helped them. You say, well, Greenberg, he's nuts again. The injuries have helped him because when Proctor went out, Roche all of a sudden became more aggressive. Rather than just playing off the ball, he was on the ball. He was playing downhill. He was making plays.

Jared McCain happened. I mean, I think that's a really big thing. He got aggressive, and now all of a sudden he's playing. He's a threat. A number of guys that can make plays and score the ball in their spacing. Mark Mitchell figured it out and started playing to his strengths, which is run the floor, rebound, defend, get to the offense of glass, be active, be a good cutter, all the things that really play to his strengths as opposed to him stepping out and shooting threes.

And now, you know, the versatility of Philip asking has been good. You know, Caleb, Houston's been good. So you know, I looked at this new team. I think they're continuing to get better, especially offensively. I think they their lack of room protection impacts him a little bit defensively, but I love what they're doing offensively.

I'm gonna do with a tape on him on a Saturday showing the aggressiveness of Proctor, the spacing. And when you have a big that can short roll, shoot the three and roll down to the post, that becomes a hard matchup. So I think they're playing well. I mean, you know, they're not dominating, but no one's dominating. So I mean, it's just it's just the way it is.

Yeah. I mean, you mentioned older players, and I'm not saying it's rare in this rivalry to have older players who are big contributors because we've had it. But I mean, even sophomores, especially if you were an impact freshman, if you have a sophomore who was an impact freshman in today's game, he's an older player. Duke is going to play other than with Jared McCain and Caleb Foster. They're going to put a lot of experienced players on the court. Roach has been here for this is what year four and R.J. Davis, Saint Armando Baker and Carolina's two transfers while they're not experienced here. I mean, Cormac Ryan and Harrison Ingram have played for a long time. So there's going to be a lot more experience on the court than we're normally seeing at this level of basketball.

There's no doubt about it. It's a reflection of college basketball. Big stick around because they can't make money because they're not as valuable. R.J. Davis made a great decision coming back. I mean, they have very, very good players that were not NBA players a year ago. Harrison Ingram, Cormac Ryan, older guys, mature guys. We haven't seen this old Duke Carolina matchup in years, in years. This is back to the future.

That would be nice. Back when Duke stormed the court after a win over Virginia Tech. The lowest point in Duke history. I mean, the lowest point in Coach K's history. He shushed those students back into the stands. He was so embarrassed.

It's unbelievable. I mean, that's when I knew we arrived. We forced the court storming. We became a rival. So what's the key? What's the key Saturday night for, let's start with the home team for North Carolina?

What's the key Saturday night for North Carolina? Take care of the basketball and then figure out how you're going to guard all those Philip house, the dribble handoff some ball screens. Because so past he's going to be in a time dribble handoff some ball screens. And here's the deal with it comes off that ball screen. If you hard hedge it. If you don't hard hedge it and you basically play flat, Proctor gets in lane, which forces your weak side to help, which now he's kicking it out, spraying it out the three point shooters.

So figuring that out is really, really important. You know, keeping keeping I think Proctor out of the lane and then keeping Mitchell off the glass. The other side is Carolina. You got, you got, you know, you got to do a good job in your, in your ball screen defense. You've got to kind of take care of the ball. You got to take care of the ball. You can't pitch it away all over the place. Get clean stops.

Get out in transition. Try to get some early post-ups for Armando. Armando, you've got to work harder in low post. Look, everyone's perception of Armando. Oh, Armando's good. Armando's bad. Armando's this. Armando's that.

People stop. He is who he is. He's, he's not extremely athletic.

He needs an angle. He rebounds his area. Uh, he's, you know, he's a, he's, he's a pretty good pass right at doubles. Uh, he's not scoring over people. He's not driving the middle spinning and, and, and making a play. That's not who he is. So like people say, well, they, you know, I'm on, no, he is who he is. He's going to rebound balls in his area.

You noticed that way in Harrison, Ingram, he's not rebounding as much cause Ingram. Yeah. It's a machine.

All right. Uh, and then I think that the ball's got to have energy. Can't get stuck. Uh, I thought they did a really good job prior to the game the other night, pushing the ball. Why, why do you get out and transition?

Get the collections, get turnovers, get stops. Now you can get out and transition. If you're taking the ball out of the net, it's hard to get out and transition, but get out and transition.

Then in the half court, don't get stuck so much. The ball's got to have a little bit better energy and probably Cormac Ryan making a couple shots would be a nice thing. Yeah.

They, they certainly need it. It can't just be all RJ Davis from three-point range who between Davis and Kyle Philipowski. I think you've got your top two in that order right now. ACC player of the year candidate.

They might both end up being all-American Seth Greenberg. You're my all-American, sir. You'll be here with college game day on Saturday. It's good to have you on the program and we'll talk again very soon. My friend. You got about it. Appreciate you, man. Seth Greenberg's always cool to catch up with college game day will be over in Chapel Hill. Of course, the whole crew will talk to Jay Billis tomorrow on the show in advance of Duke Carolina part, whatever this is.