UNC 80, Florida State 77
Boxscore |
RecapThis game could be called "Lawson's Revenge!" If you remember from last year, this was the game in which FSU's oaf, Ryan Reid, body slammed Ty Lawson, which caused him to hurt his ankle and subsequently miss several games. This year, Ty filled up the statsheet. Ty had the most points (21), best field goal percentage (85%), most free throws made (9), best free throw percentage (88%), most assists (4) and most rebounds (9). Wow.
This game had all the makings of our typical game. We started off slow, FSU gained the early lead, we finally got our act together mid-way through the first half and and went into half-time with an 11 point lead. FSU looked good early, but started faltering probably due to the fast face. I figured we'd come out in the second half and blow things out. But FSU's
Toney Douglas wouldn't let that happen.
After 10 minutes into the second half, the game started to look like our losses to BC and Wake. Toney went off. he scored a game high 32 points and couldn't miss. FSU had the lead going into the final minutes and only after an excellent steal by Danny Green and tough defense by Tyler Hansbrough did we get the ball with 3 seconds left to go with the game tied 77. Ty took the ball, raced up the court, and shot a running 3 which went in right as the buzzer sounded! It was awesome!
Now for the not so awesome stuff. First, the referees were horrible. I haven't been too critical this season about the refs, but they were noticeably bad tonight. They were calling all sorts of nit fouls. Tyler Hansbrough got in foul trouble early and never recovered. He picked up his second with 14:15 in the first half and his third with 6:29 to go in the first. Then in the second half Tyler made a great play on the ball and was called for his 4th foul. The replay showed it was clearly a clean play, but the refs were out to get Tyler tonight.
Let's look at some of Tyler's averages:
Fouls Per Game: 1.4
Tonight's Game: 4
Free Throw Attempts Per Game: 8.5
Tonight's Game: 0
Of course fans can typically find something to complain about when it comes to the refs, but I hate it when it is so obvious like it was tonight. They impacted the game in a negative way. And don't even get me started about the additional 1 second that should have been put back on the clock after FSU's shot clock violation at the end of the game. The refs didn't even look at the replay! Maybe they thought they were too good to actually mess up??
Everyone's making a big deal about Tyler not scoring in double digits and breaking his 55 game streak. Of course this comes on the heels of my article about Tyler breaking the ACC scoring record :-/ Maybe the refs read my article and decided they wanted to do their part to stop him??
Danny Green had another good game. I won't say "excellent" game because while he had 6 steals he also had 6 turnovers, but he was as important as any player. He was 4-7 from three point range and scored 20 points. He is such a well rounded player.
Wayne Ellington's hot streak ended after going 3-13 from the field tonight. I didn't think he played bad, he just didn't hit his shots.
I was disappointed in Larry Drew. Larry only played 3 minutes and had 1 turnover and 1 foul. He got his pocket picked from Toney Douglas while bringing the ball up the court. Larry is an important part of the team and I hope he bounces back. It will be hard for UNC to play at the level we want if Ty Lawson has to play 37 minutes per game.
The good news is that we won and
Duke lost tonight (yea!). The bad news is Wake beat Duke ;-) and we could have easily lost this game after having a comfortable lead. We could be sitting 3-3 in conference right now instead of 4-2. Let's hope the team learns something from this close game.
Next up is
NC State on Saturday.
