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Sign up for E-newsPistons vs. Bobcats Gameday
Last Meeting: Detroit won 103-92 (January 24, 2007)
The skinny: The Bobcats come to The Palace hungry to start a winning streak. Charlotte had lost seven straight, the longest active losing streak in the league, before downing a LeBron-less Cavaliers squad in Charlotte Saturday night, 96-93. The Bobcats allowed 103.6 points per game during the skid, while their own point tally has not reached the century mark in seven games. The Pistons have struggled against teams that aggressively attack the rim but the Bobcats don’t do it very often, contrary to the SportsCenter highlights of Jason Richardson and Gerald Wallace and sturdy post play of forward/center Emeka Okafor.
“We’re playing a team in Charlotte that’s very familiar to Chicago – plays hard, plays small,” Pistons head coach Flip Saunders said Saturday. “[Charlotte’s] four, Wallace, is probably their best scorer, him and Richardson, so it’s a same type thing: [An] isolation-type team as far as a lot of people on the perimeter.”
Wallace (18.6 ppg) and Richardson (16.9 ppg) have consumed Charlotte's scoring chances -- each with a team-high 129 shot attempts through Saturday -- but they have not made opponents pay at the foul line. Wallace (67.6 percent) and Richardson (58.5 percent on only 41 attempts) lead the league's second-worst free-throw shooting team (67.7 percent).
What to watch: One thing that is working for the Bobcats is guard Matt Carroll, who is shooting 47.2 percent from 3-point range, eighth best in the league. Prior to a 1-for-5 off-night Saturday, he had shot better than 50 percent over the previous five games. The fifth-year guard from Notre Dame averaged 13.3 points in four games against Detroit last season, shooting 54.8 percent, including 5-of-9 from downtown.
“We helped him get his contract last year,” Saunders said of Carroll, who signed a six-year, $27 million deal with Charlotte over the summer. “We’ve got to make sure we’re very conscious of him. I mean, he’s one of those guys, he plays off other people. He can really shoot the ball well. There are certain guys against certain teams and they just play well. He’s one of those guys who when he plays us, he seems to have a lot of confidence.”
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