Also this:"Final thought: Larry Drew became North Carolina's starting point guard by default two years ago. He never seemed worthy of the position, was finally demoted last month, and he quit the team last Friday even though his team was playing better than it had played in two years. In other words, he was fine when things were going OK for him even when the Tar Heels struggled, and not fine when things weren't going OK for him even when the Tar Heels flourished.
That tells me all I need to know about Larry Drew.
It's also why North Carolina is going to be better off without him.
"I think this team chemistry is at an all-time high," North Carolina sophomore Dexter Strickland said after Sunday's 89-69 win over Florida State, and Drew would be wise to read that quote again and again because it's a quote from one of his former teammates saying that things are better now that he's no longer around.
While he's at it, Drew should also understand that the Tar Heels are 5-0 since demoting him, and that his replacement, Kendall Marshall, dropped 16 assists Sunday, which begs the question: Why did Roy Williams take so long to demote Drew in favor of Marshall?
Answer: I have no idea.
But UNC is lucky he finally did.
As for Drew, his legacy is cemented.
He's the UNC point guard who wasn't good enough to play there or tough enough to face adversity.
That's a helluva way to be described or remembered.
But Larry Drew did this to himself."
What you might notice here was that Marshall was actually on the floor for crunch time for one of the first times in his Carolina career. He had to be. He had nine assists and zero turnovers--zero turnovers in a game when the ball seemed greased with WD-40--in his second conference game.ZERO turnovers?!?! That's very un-Tar Heel like.
It was a very beautiful thing. If only I could find a video!Roy Williams doesn't teach what happened next. No one could. It doesn't even make sense that it happens, because you can run the tape back as many times as you want, and there's no way Marshall ever even looks at John Henson. But as the pass from Barnes is in the air, Marshall goes to meet it. Two Hokies converge on him when he leaps in the air to receive the pass.
Here's the thing: he never catches it. Not in the true sense of the word. He just redirects it, off his fingertips, to a wide-open Henson on the baseline.
goin' nowhere, fool!How It Was Lost: Terrible jumpshooting and the complete absence of an offensive threat on the post. Duke shot 35 3-pointers, or a ridiculous 57 percent of their total field goal attempts. But what choice did Duke have? FSU's defense bottled up Smith, who looked exactly like a scoring guard filling in for the point guard, rather than the team's point, and the Brothers Plumlee gave Duke no contribution in the paint. The two brothers combined to go 1-of-4 from the floor. With injured point guard Kyrie Irving on the floor, the two are more valuable, but will have to develop some level of back-to-the-basket competency if Irving doesn't return. [via]
