UNC 77, UConn 70
Fortunately, the UNC guards turned things around in the second half. It didn't start off very well though. McCants actually airballed a 3 and then next time down barely hit the rim on a 3-pointer. I can't recall the last time I've seen him airball a 3, especially an open one. I found out after the game that he started feeling bad before the game. Several people on the team have caught a bug of some sort (including Coach Williams). Jackie looked like he was going to hurl on the sidelines.
Felton picked up his game a notch in the second half and hit a couple of quick 3's that gave us a boost. As soon as the guards starting playing better, we went up by 7. McCants played better in the second half, but not a lot better. He tried to force too much down low. May had another superb game with 16 points and 13 rebounds. If he keeps this up, he should definitely get some all-american attention. Jawad got out of his slump (a little) by going 3-7 from three (though just 7-17 overall).
One embarassing aspect of the game was the stuffs. UConn got an amazing 16 blocks against UNC (they are leading the country in that stat, but still). This was something I noticed several times last year--UNC players get stuffed a lot. I don't know if it is that we are undersized at many positions or if we just try to play over people, but I bet our blocks to being blocked ratio is ugly.
This game was very similar to the Duke game with one exception--our guards finally started playing. With our guards playing poorly, we are an even match against both Duke and UConn (it would be interesting to see them two slug it out), but with both our frontcourt and backcourt playing well, neither one can stand a chance. I really hope that the whole team shows up in Chapel Hill when we play Duke so they can prove my hypothesis.
