UNC 68, Virginia Tech 66
Boxscore |
Recap |
Game FlowInstead of continuing to improve as we did to close out the regular season, we look like the UNC team of earlier in the season. If I had to describe the "typical" competitive game flow for a Carolina game it goes something like this: opponent is the aggressor in the first half. We may go down 4-8 points, but with 2 minutes left to go in the half we pick it up and either tie the game or go into the half with a slight lead. In the second half the other team comes out with more intensity for the first 5-10 minutes before we finally wake up, get stops and close the game on a run.
That describes several of our games this year and it describes our first two games in this year's ACC tourney. Virginia Tech was up for almost the whole game. They played excellent defense against us. They kept making their shots. The refs would make a few terrible calls that stopped us from making a run. All of that led to a tie ball game in the final minute. Ty Lawson attempted to drive and score in the final seconds, but missed. Fortunately Tyler picked up the rebound and scored on a jumper to put us up by 2 with .8 second left to go.
I'm not sure what has gotten into us. Is the team tired? Are they not motivated? What happened to that intensity we saw against Duke? I know it is hard to get up for every game like that, but it is almost like we are daring teams to beat us and we are giving them enough rope to do it.
Ty Lawson continues to be an issue. Despite Coach saying Ty played well at the end of the game, I thought he was a liability at times. That's right, I called Ty a liability (never thought I would). He missed two layups and is not displaying any of the quickness he is known for. To top it off, he's not making good decisions like he usually does. He had 1 assists and 4 turnovers! The injuries are still affecting him--Coach said that Ty feels like an old man right now. He's playing like it too!
Danny Green and Wayne Ellington didn't do much for the team either until the end. Wayne finally started making a few shots in the final minutes of the game. However he and Danny weren't very impactful for much of the game.
Tyler had another Tyler kind of game, but he also forced several up and missed a wide open layup.
But we squeaked it out and I'll take it! In other happy news, Dook lost to Clemson. We beat Clemson twice this year, both games going to overtime. Clemson looked good and if we don't bring our A-game, the game won't be decided on the final play.
PS. Per my previous post, I thought the refs did an absolute horrific job (no comments please that I'm complaining about UNC not getting calls). The refs were bad on both sides.
