UNC 90, Boston College 80
Boxscore |
Recap |
Game FlowThis was one of the most impressive games I've seen all season, and I'm not sure what was more impressive: Tyrese Rice's 34 point performance in the first half on 6-6 shooting from behind the arc, or Carolina's 28 point swing to win the game in the second half. Ok, I'm more impressed by Carolina's come back, but I'm biased. Regardless, it was one heck of a game.
The only other time I can recall watching a player as on fire as Rice goes back to Tayshaun Prince when he was at Kentucky. He had a game (I can't recall which one) where he was shooting from 35 feet out and draining them. He literally couldn't miss. That's how Rice was except even more so. Despite being down 14 at half I thought Rice's performance would prove to be "fools gold" as Coach Williams likes to call it. When a team (or an individual) gets very hot in the first half behind 3 point range it does two things: makes the team think they can rely on 3 pointers to win and doesn't get the rest of the team involved in the offense. And that's exactly what happened to BC. In the second half, Marcus and Ty Lawson shut Tyrese out and the other BC players couldn't contribute enough to offset the loss in production.
Did I say Ty helped shut Tyrese out? Oh yes, for the first time since the FSU game, Ty Lawson saw some PT. He didn't look 100%, but it is amazing the effect he has on the team. Even Marcus said after the game how everyone feels so much more comfortable when he is in the game. And the results show it too. We had only 9 turnovers for the game--
our lowest total since Lawson went down. And Quentin had 3 of the 9 turnovers. In fact this was Q's worst game since he started filling in for Ty.
Hansbrough continues to solidify his resume for the top player in the nation. He led UNC with 25 points and 9 rebounds. But he difference in this game was the play of Wayne Ellington and Danny Green. Wayne scored 20 points on 7-12 shooting and Danny had 18 on 7-11 shooting (including 4-8 from 3 point range). Those two together outscored BC in the second half and were key in the run that got us the lead. If they can play like that against Duke, we shouldn't have any problems. (I should also mention Will Graves scored 5 points in 4 minutes of action.)
While our offense was good in the second half, our defense was better. After Roy removed the starting 5 after BC scored the first 4 points of the second half, the team came out swinging on defense. We got some key stops and converted on the other end. If we could just play like that for 40 minutes (or maybe just 30 minutes), there is not another team in the country that could compete with us (and I've seen everyone in the top 10 play at this point).
Next up is
FSU on Tuesday. If we beat them, it will come down to the final game against Duke to determine the regular season ACC champion. I like our odds.
