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.
Tyler will break the ACC Scoring Record
Back on Dec 19th, I made the not so bold prediction that barring injury, Tyler Hansbrough will break the ACC scoring record held by Duke's JJ Redick. This isn't a bold prediction because it is simple math really. Let's see where things stand today. UNC has 11 games remaining in the regular season (including tonight's game against FSU) . Tyler is averaging a career best, 22.7 points per game so far this season. His current point total stands at 2,509 while JJ Redick's is 2,769. That's a difference of 260. If Tyler averages his current PPG for the remainder of the regular season, he'll enter post season play 10 points behind Redick. If UNC had the most disappointing season in recent history, they'd play at least 5 games in the post-season: losing in the semi-finals of the ACC tourney and losing in the sweet 16 of the NCAA tourney. So Tyler would need to get 10 points in 5 games. But let's say Tyler doesn't maintain his current average and dips to a career low 18.3 points per game. 16 games x 18.3 points would give him another 292 points well above the 260 he needs. And you can see compared to last year, Tyler actually averaged more points per game in Feb and March: So it is pretty clear that barring injury or some other catastrophe, Tyler will become the all-time ACC scoring leader. And if you compare Tyler and JJ (using the recently updated Player Comparison feature on StatSheet), you can see he did it averaging significantly fewer minutes per game than JJ. During JJ's senior season, he averaged a career high 37 minutes per game while Tyler is currently averaging a career LOW in minutes per game (28.8). Sure, Tyler's MPG will undoubtedly rise over the next two months, but it will never be close to what JJ averaged.
Clemson 70, UNC 94
Boxscore | RecapIf you would have told me that this game would be statistically over with more than six minutes remaining, I wouldn't have believed it. Last year we played Clemson three times and they were all nail-biters. The first ten minutes of the game Clemson got the better of us. Their pressure got to us, surprisingly. Over the past couple of years, we don't do well in the first 10 minutes of a game. It takes the team a while to get going for some reason. Tonight was no different. But after we turned it on, we REALLY turned it on. Wayne Ellington followed up his 7-3s in the second half against Miami to have an excellent all-around game. I know I've been critical of Wayne over his career, but he has definitely improved his overall game. He's a much more complete player. And when he is hitting his jumper, he is a force. He scored a game high 25 points a made a career high 7 assists! Speaking of complete players, is there any doubt that Danny Green is UNC's most complete player and best NBA prospect? He continues to shine even though he isn't the focus of the offense. He didn't have a great night shooting, but he had 5 rebounds, 3 blocks, 3 steals, 3 assists and 7 points. It annoys me when all the TV commentators talk about how if Marcus Ginyard was back he'd be starting and Danny would be the best 6th man in the country (again). I beg to differ. There is no way Danny would/should not be in the starting lineup. Tyler Hansbrough had a tough night but scored 20 points. He almost had a tooth knocked out and got hit to the floor on several occasions without a foul being called. The refs were pretty bad tonight when it comes to Tyler. Some of the replays were hard to watch. Getting demolished down low and no foul call. You could tell Tyler was getting pissed too. He was showing uncharacteristic hand-clapping and fist pumping when he finally got a call or two. And Tyler is probably the only player in the country that can have a "tough night" and still come away with 20 points and 10 rebounds! Ty Lawson had a really nice game. He scored 16 points, collected 3 steals, and dished out 7 assists on only 2 turnovers. Ty has become a very solid shooter. He can nail a three ball if left open. Overall I'm very happy with this performance. Sure we extended our streak at home against Clemson to 54-0, but more than that, we beat a very good team despite them coming out with a lot of intensity and shooting the ball well. A combination of our solid defense and a cold streak in the second half did Clemson in. We have a week off before our next game against a 15-3 FSU team. They aren't going to be a push over! But then again, who is in the ACC?
Miami 65, UNC 82
Boxscore | RecapThe enigma that is the North Carolina Tar Heels put on another head scratching performance tonight against previously ranked Miami. For the first 15 minutes of the game, it looked like we were going to have another BC or Wake-like game. Miami looked more aggressive and our body language didn't look good. There were two big differences though. Tyler Hansbrough singlehandedly kept us in the game in the first half by scoring 20 of his 24 points, and while Miami was making a lot of shots, we actually had a hand in their face for most of them. They weren't wide open looks. Then around 5 minutes to go in the first half, something clicked. Ty Lawson decided to turn it up a notch. His defense on McClinton was excellent. Ty was playing faster than everyone else on the court. We forced a couple of turnovers and before you knew it, we ended the half on a 13-0 run including a Danny Green 3 pointer in the final seconds. Hubert Davis summed it best before the game: "Why don't they play [aggressive] from the start!?!?!" He's right. This is another example where we came out lethargic and only got it in gear after we were down by 9 points. A good example, Ty Lawson had 0 assists and 2 turnovers when we were down 9 and then got 8 straight assists without a turnover during our comeback. Ty said before the game that he doesn't think it is fair that he gets tagged as the main reason for our losses, but he does accept his responsibility as the catalyst. Sorry to say it Ty, but tonight proved the rule. When he plays well, we will be in the game and when he doesn't, well we know how that goes. I can't believe I haven't mentioned Wayne Ellington yet. In the first half, Wayne was 0-2 and looked like he lacked confidence. He's been playing hard, but his shots have not been going down. Something clicked for him too in the second half. He hit 7 three pointers in a row. He score 11 straight pts for UNC at one point. It was nice to see him finally go off. The UNC record for 3s is 8 in a game so he was close to tying it. Let's hope this confidence booster carries over to the next game! Having him shoot well adds a much needed element to our team. Speaking of next, we have #10 Clemson on Wednesday night at the Dean Dome. Yes, we have the 53-0 winning streak against Clemson at the Dean Dome, but they are coming off a tough loss to Wake Forest and will undoubtedly be hungry. It is going to take our best effort to ensure we go 3-2 in conference play.
UNC 83, Virginia 63
Boxscore | RecapWhere was this team against BC and Wake? The contrast is startling and again, it comes down to how much we run the floor. I don't understand how our running game completely disappeared during our two losses. Tonight against Virginia, even after UVA made a basket we were charging up the floor as fast as possible. So even if a team is packing it in and slowing the clock down, we can still push the ball. But that didn't happen against Wake and BC. Tyler Hansbrough was unstoppable, scoring 28 points and grabbing 12 rebounds. Ty Lawson also had a big night. 9 assists and zero turnovers. However, I remember one turnover at the beginning of the game where Ty threw the ball out of bounds (intended for Danny). He should have been credited with a turnover for that, but I guess not. 9-0 will definitely help his A/T ratio! He also scored 19 points going 3-3 from three point range. Glad to see him return after his mysterious absence during the BC and Wake games. Across the board we played well as a team, although our shooting percentage is still down. I thought Danny Green had another good game, but he only shot 38% from the floor. We shot 42% as a team (our season average is 49%). Wayne Ellington shot 40% including 0-2 from three. Last year our season average was 48% from the floor, so its not like we should expect a big drop off now that we are playing conference games. I thought we were much more aggressive on the defensive end. UVA didn't have nearly as many open shots as some of our previous opponents. Virginia still had 24 offensive rebounds (compared to our 14). They got a lot of second chance looks. Fortunately, they were having an off night shooting (a measly 30% from the floor). So it was a nice bounce back for the Heels, but a much better test will come on Saturday against Miami. Onward and upward!
UNC 89, Wake Forest 92
Boxscore | Recap0-2 in conference play. That's where we sit after another humbling loss. Wake Forest came in ranked #4 in the nation. They matched our aggressiveness and talent level. The big difference in the game was shooting. We shot a season low 35% from the field. We shot 33% in the first half and went 0-9 to start the second half. You aren't going to beat anyone playing like that. No one on our side had a good game except Danny Green who has turned out to be one of our most consistent players. I'm not exactly sure why we kept trying to feed Wayne Ellington at the end of the game when he hadn't hit anything all night. Granted, Wayne knocked down two threes in the final couple of minutes so that helped, but it was too little too late. It is frustrating to see players like Jeff Teague from Wake or Tyrese Rice from BC be so prolific from outside. Wayne Ellington is supposed to be in that same class, but he's been ineffective from outside for much of the year. Wayne better be happy he didn't leave early for the NBA or he'd be sitting the sidelines at NBDL games. If the NBA Draft were today, there is no way he'd go in the first two rounds. Ty Lawson had perhaps his worst game of the year. I know I was lobbying for him early on as the best point guard in the nation, but now that he's been outplayed by 2 ACC point guards, I can't exactly make that claim anymore. Very disappointing. This gamed looked eerily similar to the BC game. You'd hardly think we were a run and gun kind of team. Things got so bad Roy made the team play zone defense toward the end of the game because we couldn't get stops (Roy much prefers to play man). Our free throws hurt us again. Shooting in general just sucked. How many McDonald's All-American's do we have and the best we can do is 35%?? We should do better than that if we did nothing but shoot three pointers all game. This is the exact same issue we had last year. Unless we are running and gunning, we aren't a very good offensive team. We just don't have the shooters. I thought the officiating sucked too. Totally uneven from the first-half to second-half. I thought they called a lot of ticky-tack calls against us. I'm in a bad mood now so I'm going to bed.... Ok, I'm back. I forgot to mention that we had to call 2 timeouts because we couldn't get the stinking ball inbounds! I don't think that's happened all year and it happened twice tonight. I don't know what is going on with the team...
College of Charleston 70, UNC 108
Boxscore | RecapWe returned to our winning ways Wednesday night against the College of Charleston. We ran the floor well. We shot the ball. We were very aggressive. It was not the same team that lost badly to BC on Sunday. Did we just have a brain fart against BC? Let's hope it was just an anomaly. I don't mind losing when we play the way we should, but when you lose after playing unlike you have all season (just like against Kansas last year), it is hard to swallow. Across the board our stats were impressive against CoC. Tyler Hansbrough led all scorers with 24 points. Deon Thompson got out of his recent funk and dominated in the first half. Great to see him back. Wayne Ellington shot well from outside. Ty Lawson played better. Danny Green had his usual solid performance. I thought Larry Drew did a really nice job as well as Ed Davis. The future is bright for UNC. One note, Marcus Ginyard did not play. This is what Roy had to say about it: "I didn't feel like playing him tonight. He's been struggling quite a bit and he's just not where we want him to be at this time, so I decided not to play him." Hmm, doesn't sound good. I wonder what is going on behind the scenes?? Maybe they are still talking about redshirting him this season. (it would be great to have him next year) All-in-all there wasn't much to complain about (other than us allowing CoC to score so many three pointers in the first half). We are going to need every bit of this kind of performance against upstart Wake Forest on Sunday. It should be a good game!
Boston College 85, UNC 78
Boxscore | RecapThere are some positive things to take away from tonight's 7 point defeat by BC. At least we won't have to hear anymore about how we could be the best team since '91 UNLV or how we might go undefeated. Heck, we are 0-1 in conference play right now. Just like last year, it is almost as if we have no home court advantage. Why do we lose games like this at home? Maybe since it is veteran team, we'd lose this game at home or away, it wouldn't matter. To say we had an off night would be an understatement. After a quick run through the boxscore, I tallied 11 categories out of 17 in which we did worse tonight than our season average. And many of our numbers became inflated toward the end of the second half after BC had a 6'8'' guy as their tallest rebounder. BC looked more aggressive than us tonight. They started the game on a 9-3 run. Fortunately, we regained our composure and took the lead. But the combination of Tyrese Rice (I CAN'T WAIT UNTIL HE GRADUATES :-) and Rakim Sanders gave us everything we could handle and then some. Like most games in which we lose, it took career best performance from Sanders and Reggie Jackson. Their shots went in and ours didn't. I thought the game was best summarized in the final minutes when we had 3 open three point shot attempts in a single trip and couldn't hit any of them. Our rebounding was nothing to write home about, but we lost because we couldn't hit friggin shots. 7-22 from beyond the arc (31%). Our season average is 38%. Perhaps worse than that was our FREE THROW shooting. We went 15-27 for a dismal 55%. We missed 12 free throws. We lost the game by 7 so if we would have just hit a few more free throws, it could have been a different story. Everyone was missing them. Nobody was perfect from the line tonight. Deon Thompson did worst of all going 1-6!! Many people have been wanting UNC to play a close game so they can be prepared for the Big Dance. Well here you go. But I saw all this coming as I wrote about after the first 3 games. It takes a combination of the following and we are as vulnerable as any team: - Not playing aggressive and the other team playing very aggressive - Not hitting our outside shots - Very few transition baskets - One or two players from the opposing team have career high games (or we play a team that is Top 10 caliber) I was amazed at half time that BC had 6 transition points to our 2. Watching the game, you would never think Carolina is a running kind of team. We had very few fast break opportunities. A lot of the credit goes to BC. Next up is the College of Charleston on Wednesday before the much anticipated game with #6 Wake Forest next Sunday. Let's just hope we don't start the conference season 0-2! While I've been lobbing for Ty Lawson as the best point guard in the nation, Tyrese Rice once again showed Carolina why he should be at the top of the list ( Lawson vs Rice).
UNC 84, Nevada 61
Boxscore | RecapWe beat a scrappy Nevada team tonight and I thought we played pretty well overall. Our 3-point defense was much better (Nevada shot 1-10 from beyond the arc), but then again, Nevada isn't a good 3-point shooting team (average 4 made on 16 attempts per game). Nevada was successful in slowing the game down, but it didn't effect things much other than UNC scoring 11 points below season average. Tyler Hansbrough got banged around quite a bit down low. He started off a bit slow (which isn't uncommon for him) but ended the game with 22 points. Wayne Ellington has a nice all-around game though he still hasn't had a lights out shooting night. Ty Lawson continues his spectacular Assist/Turnover ratio with 7 assists and 2 turnovers. Danny Green also did a nice job (2-3 from 3-point). Freshman Luke Babbit was impressive for Nevada. He was a McDonald's All-American last year and he has a lot of potential. Kind of reminded me of a Dirk Nowitzki type player. The other thing that stood out about Nevada is how much the coach/crowd/players complained about the calls. Nevada Coach Mark Fox got T'd up because he was complaining so much. Then right after his T, Danny Green made an awesome block on a Nevada player break away and everyone started booing again. The replay made it clear it was a completely clean stuff and yet everyone was complaining. Just one of those nights for Nevada I guess. Perhaps the most painful thing about the game was listening to Steve "Ste Lav" Lavin commentate. Steve is one of those guys, I'm sure you know someone similar, that likes to shorten everyone's name. I get this sometimes (calling me Rob instead of Robbie). For some reason Ste thought it was ok to call Tyler Hansbrough and Tyler Zeller "Ty". He did it throughout the game. I don't typically mind Ste's flowery vocabulary, but he needs to cut out the abbreviations. Next up is Boston College to start ACC Conference play. We went 13-0 in non-conference play with a average scoring margin of 26 points. We didn't get tested much, but it wasn't like we played complete cupcakes. We dominated two AP Top 25 teams (Notre Dame and MSU). It was a good warm-up. We'll really see what this team is made of in the next couple of weeks. I look forward to it!
| 
