UNC 69, Miami 65
Boxscore |
RecapEarly on it didn't look like this game would result in UNC's lowest point total of the season. It was a frenetic pace, but largely due to Miami's zone defense, we scored 23 points below our average. No one on our team had a great offensive night with one big exception. Mr Ty Lawson came through big for us. Despite battling a cold since Thursday (Roy said at the half that Ty was "sick as a dog"), Ty managed to score a team high 21 points including going 5-8 from the three point land. Ty made a clutch three with 10 seconds left to give us a 4 point lead and secure the victory.
Miami went in with the game plan of shutting down Tyler Hansbrough and they did it for the most part. Tyler scored only 8 points on 8 shots from the field. He went to the free throw line only twice. But the no-calls are really starting to pile up. I wish I would have kept track of the number of times Tyler went flying to the floor. It is amazing to me when Tyler is 2 feet from the basket, goes up strong, gets mauled by 2 or 3 guys and there is no call. One of the replays showed it clear as day. I don't know how the refs could miss it. It seems just like last year, Tyler is starting to get fewer and fewer calls as the season progresses. I know the refs don't like calling so many fouls for Tyler, but he's going to get hurt one of these times if they continue to let other teams take pot shots at him with no whistle. I don't know how Tyler takes all of that abuse without getting upset.
The refs called a combined 20 fouls for the whole game when they normally average 36 per game. Maybe their whistles didn't work so good tonight?? How can there be such a disparity?
Back to the game....Wayne Ellington didn't shoot very well, but got a double-double on 15 points and 10 rebounds. He wore a wrap around his shooting arm stemming from an injury suffered at Duke when Lance Thomas got a little overzealous trying to take the ball away from Wayne. Thanks Lance. Danny Green didn't shoot well either going 3-13 from the field for 8 points. Deon Thompson wasn't much better scoring 9 points on 4-11 shooting.
Of course the big reason Miami was in the game was Jack McClinton. He went off, scoring 35 on 7 of 12 shooting from three point range. And it wasn't like they were open shots. He'd do a turnaround jumper from 3 and swoosh it. He was amazing tonight (good for hims since there were reportedly 15 NBA scouts in attendance). Miami's Jimmy Graham also had career highs in rebounds (15) and blocks (5). This game had all the makings of a UNC upset, but Miami didn't have enough weapons to finish the deal.
We desperately need more teams to play zone against us. It is clear we still aren't comfortable unless we are running and gunning. We need more games like this so our guys can get used to it before the post-season starts.
With Duke losing tonight, we now have a 2 game lead in the ACC with 5 games to go. Next up we have
NC State on Wednesday. State didn't give us much of a game
last time around, but they recently beat Wake and I bet we'll be a better team this time around.
