UNC 102, Long Island 87
by T.H. on Mar 18, 2011 11:36 PM EDT
in Basketball
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PrintThere are advantages to being taller and quicker than the other team in basketball. For one, it's very easy to score, as John Henson and Tyler Zeller demonstrated over and over again. Henson had ten straight points at one point for Carolina; he'd eclipse his career high before halftime, and finish with 28 points, 11 rebounds and six blocks. Zeller also scored a personal best, netting 32 points to lead all scorers, and Harrison Barnes added his own 24 and 16 rebounds, a personal best on the boards. Together the three totaled 86 of the Heels' points, providing Kendall Marshall with an Ed Cota-esque 10 assists, and provided sportswriters with enough "most [statistic] since [year]" factoids to fill al the column inches they need.
And yet, if you were watching the game, you were almost certainly screaming at the TV in frustration at some point. Perhaps it was at the 18 turnovers. More likely, it was the 12-0 Blackbird run in the first half that tied the game after UNC was on the verge of blowing their opponent out of the building. Carolina recovered from that one with a 20-6 run of their own, but coughed up a 9-0 run in the second half just to keep things interesting. And although the easy bucket inside kept the Heels from doing too much on the perimeter, Leslie McDonald was still a disappointing 0-7 from the field and the team 3 for 17 from behind the arc.
The game left Roy Williams irritated with his team's lapses in judgement and fans wondering how much of the team that sleepwalked through the ACC tournament is still on the court. Carolina did do a good job defending the three, and drew 28 fouls against one of the least-fouling teams in the country. But this is a small-market automatic qualifier that UNC is supposed to dominate. Defeating the winner of Georgia/Washington is going to take more diligence and less turnovers; until then, however, they can bask in some impressive performances from some very big men.
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Cross-court Turnovers
At least 8 of the turnovers were on ridiculous cross-court passes. I’m just going to hope that they were slinging those out there because they weren’t taking their opponent seriously but you’d have thought they’d stop doing that after the 5th interception. Here’s hoping they can get it together and play like the Regular season champs of 3 weeks ago.
The turnovers were big
but considering the size advantage we had, it was very frustrating to see how competitive LIU was on boards. We seemed to drop a lot of easy rebounds. LIU also deserves a lot of credit for doing an great job at positioning and blocking out on the boards. That was as tough for me as the turnovers.
I guess I’ve come to expect this team to turn the ball over, they’ve done it all year. But LIU’s ability to get rebounds at both ends was hard to take. I think it would still be bothering except T.H.’s excellent pregame analysis said this was a team that liked to crash the boards. Kudos on the great write up on them!
The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. ~ Groucho Marx
Survive, Advance, Cliche.
It is March Madness. We are a young team. The fact that they knew it was a tempo game had them excited. Everyone brings their A-game against name schools. Yadda yadda yadda. It was a recipe for sloppiness but the most important thing was that we aren’t Louisville or Vanderbilt.
Unless you’re the 09 team then you have to have some breaks in order to get far in this thing. Lets hope a competitive, late game worked on Washington’s legs.
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