UNC 59, USC 74
A combination of our poor shooting and sloppy play along with USC's torrid 3-point shooting ultimately led to our downfall. But there is a lot more to it than that. The refs were horrible, the FSN commentators were unbearable, and our play just stunk. Maybe I'm in a bad mood, but that tends to happen when we lose like we did against USC.
The refs were the worst I've seen in a while. They started off by not calling anything. No travels, no fouls, nothing. We got away with several fouls/walks early so I wasn't too disappointed, just concerned that the refs might not be any good. Then after about 8 minutes or so of play they started calling everything. Every little touch foul, bump, you name it. This at least in part led to our worst foul situation of the season with Hansbrough and Terry both collecting their fourth foul half way through the second half.
Next let me rag on the commentators. I purposely watched the end of broadcast (Fox Sports Network, channel 50) so I could hear their names. One was Marcus Johnson and the other is Steve Iziok (sp?). Fox, please don't punish your viewers anymore by making them sit through a game with those two clowns calling the action. They were so pro-USC it was embarrassing. Not to mention their lack of skill when it comes to calling a game and all the inappropriate comments. At one point they were dissing on the entire east coast because we don't give the west coast enough respect! I'd rather peel off a finger nail than listen to them again.
Ok, back to our tar heels. I could tell early in the first half we weren't sharp. David Noel made a couple of unadvised passes. Quentin Thomas looked lethargic. Byron Sanders missed a dunk to end the half. We had 5 turnovers in the first 6.5 minutes and 10 in the first 16 minutes. However, we still took a 5 point lead into the half.
In the second half, USC started draining 3s. They started off 6-6 from 3 in the second half. They weren't missing. We on the other hand couldn't get going. Bobby Frasor shot 2-11 from the field, Wes Miller went 1-6 from 3, Reyshawn Terry was MIA going 0-4, Byron Sanders went 0-4 from the free throw line, and Marcus Ginyard went 2-9 from the field. USC was up by 11 points with 3 minutes to go and never looked back.
On the positive side, David Noel had 19 points on 6-11 shooting including 3 3-pointers. That's about all of the positives I can think of.
Some key stats from the game:
- UNC FG: 20-54 (37%)
- UNC 3-point FG: 7-23 (30%)
- UNC free throw: 12-23 (52%)
- USC 3-point FG: 12-21 (57%)
- Turnovers: 25 (UNC), 19 (USC)
