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Friedlander: Sights and sounds from Day 2 of the ACC’s Basketball Tipoff Event
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CHARLOTTE, N.C. – For better or for worse, RJ Davis and Caleb Love will forever be linked in their college basketball legacies.
Even though they’ve gone their separate ways to schools 2,000 miles apart. Davis at North Carolina. Love at Arizona.
So it’s not surprising that the former teammates reached out to one another almost immediately after suffering through identical 0-for-9 shooting performances from 3-point range in upset Sweet 16 losses on the same floor in Los Angeles last March.
“We exchanged texts after our games,” Davis said Thursday at the ACC’s Basketball Tipoff media event. “He played Clemson, we played Alabama. We kind of just made sure we were uplifting and supporting each other, even though we’re at different schools.”
Davis didn’t go into the specifics of the call. But there’s a good chance that at some point the high-scoring guards – who each won their respective conference’s Player of the Year awards last season – discussed their upcoming decisions to enter the NBA Draft or use the extra year of college eligibility they were granted during the COVID pandemic.
Both opted to return, a decision Davis attributed to “unfinished business.”
But it’s not one he made while the sting of the Tar Heels’ 89-87 loss and the way it ended – with his potential tying layup getting blocked by the Crimson Tide’s Grant Nelson – was still fresh.
“It definitely wasn’t right after Alabama,” Davis said. “I took a lot of time off to just kind of sit with my thoughts and emotions to make sure I was making the best decision for me. It was a hard decision because of the team we had, the year I had and the ultimate goal. There were definitely a lot of mixed emotions and thoughts.”
Among those Davis leaned on for advice was teammate Armando Bacot, who also delayed a professional career by playing a 5th college season, along with other former Tar Heels including Theo Pinson and Joel Berry.
Davis has already earned the right to have his jersey hung in the Smith Center rafters as a consensus 1st-team All-American. He’s 784 points away from surpassing Tyler Hansbrough as UNC’s all-time leading scorer.
Individual honors, however, aren’t what he considers his “ultimate goal.”
“My goal when I came to college was to win a national championship,” he said. “That’s still on the table for me.”
Here are some other random sights and sounds from Day 2 of the ACC’s preseason media event:
Isaac McKneely’s recurring nightmare
Maybe it was by accident. Maybe it was someone’s idea of a cruel joke. Either way, the irony was unmistakable when McKneely sat down at the same table in the interview room that NC State’s Michael O’Connell occupied the day before.
The 2 players will be forever linked in ACC history because of their roles in the play that changed the course of last season for both their teams.
McKneely is the Virginia player whose missed free throw set the stage for O’Connell’s desperation 3-pointer that sent their ACC Tournament semifinal game into overtime and jump-started the Wolfpack’s miracle run to the Final Four. If that wasn’t enough, the 6-foot-4 junior is also the Cavalier defending O’Connell when he let the shot go.
https://twitter.com/wolfpackstation/status/1768852540794311002
It’s a sequence McKneely said he’s watched nearly as many times as O’Connell. But unlike the Wolfpack star, his viewing of the replay hasn’t been by choice.
“Unfortunately, I’ll be on social media and it will just come up,” he said. “I try not to watch it. But it’s everywhere. Looking back, there’s nothing I can do about it now.”
McKneely, an 85% free throw shooter who averaged 12.3 points per game last season, admitted that he was “pretty bummed” about the game, which UVa lost in overtime. But he said that he’s learned to embrace the experience, going as far as calling it “A cool memory.
“I should be thanked by NC State for helping them make that run,” he said with a smile.
Embracing a faster pace?
There isn’t a whole lot of major breaking news that comes out of these preseason media scrum events. But in talking with Virginia shooting guard Taine Murray, it sounded as though I’d stumbled onto an absolute bombshell.
“We’ve changed some things up in terms of pushing in transition a little faster,” the native of New Zealand said. “We’re still trying to take good shots, the right shots we want. Defense will always stay the same. But we’re trying to get a little faster. It’s been exciting for us so far.”
Wait. What?
Is Tony Bennett no longer embracing the pace and dramatically changing his philosophy after another early NCAA exit last season?
Not really.
His interpretation of “pushing in transition a little faster” is still a lot different from that of the rest of the basketball world.
“We’ll make some adjustments to our offense. But not throwing everything away,” Bennett said, adding that the idea behind the changes is to open up more space on the floor for the Cavaliers’ shooters. “If there is an opportunity to get it and push multiple players and we can get something, great. But the majority of your offense is going to be in the halfcourt whether you’re a running team or not. You have to be effective at that.
“Absolutely we’ve worked on getting down the floor and if there’s something good, take it. But you’ll see most of the difference is in spacing.”
The ACC’s real expansion team
Cal, Stanford and SMU are the actual newcomers to the newly enlarged ACC this season. But in terms of roster makeup, the team that looks most like an expansion franchise is existing member Louisville.
Only 1 scholarship player, deep reserve guard Aiden McCool, is back from the team that lost 24 games and went 3-17 in the ACC last season under former coach Kenny Payne.
The rest of the team is made up of freshmen and a group of transfers brought together from literally every corner of the country – and a lot of places in between – by energetic new coach Pat Kelsey. Guard Koren Johnson came from Washington. Wing J’Vonne Hadley from Colorado. Guard Chucky Hepburn from Wisconsin. Wing Terrence Edwards from JMU and center Kasean Pryoer from South Florida.
Putting together a talented roster is the 1st step toward bringing the Cardinals back from the depths of the 2 worst seasons in school history. Blending all those new pieces together into a functioning unit will be much more of a challenge.
“Thirteen is a lot. A whole team is a lot. But from the first time we met with our guys on June 5 I had a great sense that this team has a chance to have a very special connectivity, said Kelsey, a fiery Skip Prosser disciple who put together an impressive mid-major resume at Winthrop and College of Charleston. “They’re about the right things. They’re winners. They come from winning programs. And they’ve done nothing to disappoint me in that regard.”
The process of building chemistry has been accelerated by a summer exhibition trip to The Bahamas that served as a bonding experience both on and off the court.
“We went down to the Bahamas for a great 4-5 days together, played well,” he said. “That helped build our camaraderie and rapport. I really like how the pieces have come together.”
Stanford grad Mark Madsen is a Cal Bear at heart
There’s no love lost between Bay Area neighbors Stanford and Cal. Their annual football rivalry is so intense that it’s known simply as “The Big Game.” With the winner earning possession of an ax rather than a trophy.
So you’d think it might be just a little uncomfortable for a Stanford grad like Mark Madsen to cross enemy lines to become the basketball coach at Cal. But that’s not the case. As it turns out, the former Los Angeles Lakers star is actually a Bear at heart.
“I went to Stanford for undergrad. I went there for my full-time MBA. A lot of my life is at Stanford,” Madsen said. “I love Stanford. Nothing will ever change that. But I’m at Cal now. I’m a Bear now. And I’m all in on Cal. My wife loves the area. My kids come to the games and I’m fired up.”
Truth be told, Madsen’s quirky, free-spirited personality is much more in tune with the vibe of the school that now employs him than that of the school he attended. His awkward dance moves at the Lakers’ 2001 championship celebration – which makes Seinfeld’s Elaine Benes look graceful – are still a popular internet meme.
https://twitter.com/accnetwork/status/1844412918726594742
And when he noticed there was a barber shop in the lobby area being used as radio row during a break in his interview schedule Thursday, of course, he decided it was a good time to pop in for a little trim.
Madsen said the transition from Stanford cardinal to Cal blue was awkward for “maybe the 1st 3 days.” But in retrospect, the transition was easier than it might seem. In fact, he was all set to attend Cal in 1993 until Lou Campanelli was fired as coach and his successor Todd Bozeman stopped recruiting him.
“People forget I grew up 20 minutes from Cal,” Madsen said. “My high school English teacher was a Cal grad who taught me all about the Beatniks and all that stuff. So it’s cool. It’s cool.”
A lot less to love about Steve Forbes
Wake Forest’s outgoing coach has always been able to poke fun at himself. Especially when it comes to his trademark bald head and slightly rotund features. When he was at East Tennessee State, he once led the charge that helped fans get him voted onto a list of the “10 Sexiest Coaches of Mid-Major Basketball.”
But the laughing stopped last spring when he began reviewing the recently completed season by watching replays of all its games. Disappointed by the Deacons’ omission from the NCAA Tournament and worn out from the stress of helping his wife Johnetta recover from a stroke, he realized that it was time to make some changes.
“At the end of the year you go through the season and you look on television and you’re like, holy (crap), look at yourself,” Forbes said. “I just had to take care of myself for a little bit. I feel better. And we’re in a better place family-wise.”
Forbes is looking svelte after losing 50 pounds. He sad he achieved the weight loss “the hard way” through diet and exercise. Not only has his trimmer frame helped him feel better physically. The continued improvement in Johnetta’s condition has put him in a much better place emotionally. That, he said, has already made him a better coach.
“When you have that thing going on in your life, you trick yourself and say ‘I can do both,’” Forbes said. “And I did. I don’t know how. Did 1 do a great job? Probably not. We did win 21 games and 11 ACC games. But maybe we could have won more. And that’s on me.”
Seniority has its privileges
Each of the ACC’s 18 basketball playing schools brought 2-3 players to Charlotte for this week’s event to represent their teams and talk about the upcoming season. Most coaches selected their best or most important players. Noticeably absent from the list of attendees was Notre Dame’s Markus Burton.
The 2024 conference Freshman of the Year and one of its top 3 returning scorers was left home in South Bend in favor of senior guard Julian Roper and senior forward JR Konieczny.
Burton’s omission wasn’t a disciplinary issue or a motivational tool. It was coach Micah Shrewsberry’s way of honoring upperclassmen who have paid their dues, in much the same way North Carolina’s Dean Smith used to do.
“I’m sure a lot of people wanted to talk to Markus and there will be opportunities to do that. But we have a little bit of an older team,” Shrewsberry said. “Getting the opportunity to come down here, be in front of the cameras, I’m trying to reward some of the older guys for their loyalty.”
Award-winning columnist Brett Friedlander has covered the ACC and college basketball since the 1980s.
