Ty Awesome

I think this is my favorite Ty Lawson picture. It's from his freshman year against Duke and it was after an and-1. He's flexing, showing the guns, how tough he is, whatever you want to call it.

I think Ty Lawson has had a sensational year. I am not disappointed by his play at all. It's been a little up and down, but for the most part up. As previously posted, I picked Tyler and Ty to be ACC-player of the year. I did this partly to build-up the legend that is Tyler Hansbrough, but part of it was the fact that he led the best conference in scoring and was a top-10 in rebounding and was very deserving. I think Roy summed up Tyler's season very well:

“I think that’s a great part of it, that the expectations… It’s sort like a guy that makes a 98 on a test. You can only go to 100. You can only improve by two. The guy that makes a 75 on the test can improve by 25. I think Tyler set such a high standard last year. His high level of play and his consistency that he had was just breathtaking.
“The other part of it is that he’s got a little more help this year. Tywon’s been able to score a little more. Danny’s been able to score a little more. Wayne’s numbers may be the same or have gone down a little bit, but I think that’s been part of it, too. And then my own opinion is that defenses have really been aimed at him, and in my own opinion, I think he should have gone to the free throw line more this year. That’s something that I’ve tried to be very careful about, but I just think that the defenses have been aimed at him more this year than it was last year.”

Bottom line is that Roy is correct; Tyler has had more help and more defenses are gunning for him and forcing other Heels to beat them, which they have. Hansbrough set the bar higher and we are judging him for that. Another factor that may play into this is something those dreaded sportsline columnists wrote about, but he does have a valid point: people are tired of Tyler Hansbrough. People are choosing the likes of Hasheem Thabeet and DeJuan Blair to be All-Americans over #50. They are good players, but this is Tyler Hansbrough. We could compare stats, per minutes, etc, but the fact is that Tyler Hansbrough is arguably the Player of the Year in the ACC and an All-American.

But getting back to Ty Lawson (because that's who this post is supposed to be about). Ty Lawson is a career 50% shooter. Bet you didn't know that. He is knocking down a 46% clip from downtown, which is 10 points better than his career. His assist-to-turnover ratio is 3.32, almost a full assist better than last year. Obviously this has been a career year for Ty Lawson and please understand that I am not disappointed that Tyler Hansbrough didn't receive the award. Here's what Danny Green had to say about it:

“Congratulations to Tywon. I’ve got to go speak to him. But that’s great. I’m sure Tyler is happy for him, because Tyler’s not a selfish guy or anything like that. I’m happy for him. I think it’s great that we have somebody different on our team to be able to achieve something like that."

Danny Green is correct. Hansbrough is not selfish and is probably very excited for Ty Lawson and I am too. I think it clicked in my head that Ty Lawson was a player of the year candidate when he hit the game-winner against FSU. I think I knew that Ty Lawson was player of the year after destroying Duke and carrying UNC over Miami. There were many times this year when I saw Lawson do something in a close game and then ran around the room, beating my chest, yelling that he couldn't be stopped, because when he puts his mind to it, he can't be stopped. He's too fast, to strong, and just has that ability to put the ball up through a crowd.

When UNC started out 0-2 in the ACC, people started criticizing and questioning how tough Ty Lawson was. Well I think he answered them. TOUGH

Hopefully by the middle of April, we can say "TOO TOUGH."