North Carolina 77, NC State 63

09-10 Basketball ACC ACC & Other Big Four Rivals Sidney Lowe119
Ethan Hyman/N&O

Ethan Hyman/N&O

Other than that Mrs. Lincoln…

In a game that was there for the taking, NC State couldn’t get it done tonight against the Heels, letting a five-point lead slip away during an eight-minute scoring drought in the second half. The Wolfpack missed 12 straight shots during Carolina’s run.

On the night NC State shot 39 percent from the field and 31 percent from behind the arc. Carolina, conversely, shot 51 percent overall and 46 percent from three point range.  The Tar Heels dominated the Wolfpack on the glass, out rebounding NC State 35-28 in what is becoming an alarming tend for State lately.

If there’s a formula to lose a game, that’s it.

Deon Thompson, Larry Drew II and Ed Davis  (who certainly looked better than ‘very questionable’) led the Tar Heels. Thompson notched 21 points with Drew and Davis scoring 18 and 12, respectively. Davis and Thompson also played relatively good defense on Tracy Smith for most of the night.

Tracy Smith scored a hard-earned 20 points and pulled down six boards despite going against two and sometimes three defenders much of the night. Javi Gonzalez tallied 19, but much of it came in a five-minute stretch at the end of the first half and beginning of the second half.

Here’s the complete box score. Try to ignore Scott Wood’s…umm…below average performance. And Dennis Horner’s. And Richard Howell’s. And Julius Mays’. You get the point.

Here’s the N&O’s take.

Come March, North Carolina might look back on Tuesday’s 77-63 win over N.C. State and pinpoint exactly when its season was saved.

A three-game ACC losing streak was in danger of turning into four when the Tar Heels found new life and their way back into the win column.

Deon Thompson’s dunk at 10:04 left the lone returning starter from last year’s national title team pounding his chest and sent the Heels on their way to a seventh straight win over the Wolfpack.

There isn’t a whole lot more to say really. If NC State doesn’t go cold in the second half, it would have been in the ball game late. Carolina certainly didn’t play great and left the door open for the Wolfpack to make a run. That run just never happened.

09-10 Basketball ACC ACC & Other Big Four Rivals Sidney Lowe

119 Responses to North Carolina 77, NC State 63

  1. Rufftown Wolf 01/27/2010 at 7:11 PM #

    A lot can happen in 10 games. Go to hell carolina.

  2. tuckerdorm1983 01/27/2010 at 8:07 PM #

    we could finish 9th
    Miami and BC and then one other could fill out 10,11 and 12. You know the two fellas out camping when a bear attacks. One fella said to the other “I don’t have to run faster than the bear, only faster than you”. Same logic here. Look MD, UNC, GT and Wake will likely smack us about. Maybe we can beat Miami and BC. Beat VT once and maybe the first game in the Tourney.

  3. Rufftown Wolf 01/27/2010 at 8:27 PM #

    We have already played the best teams we are going to play. We could win all of them and we could lose all of them. With the way the season has gone I see us going 6 and 3 or 5 and 4. I don’t see us losing to UNC or UVA or Wake again.

  4. eas 01/27/2010 at 8:37 PM #

    Javi running the offense equals a VERY slow pace. I agree Mays has no left hand/can’t dribble but he just fits better (no logic here but it just happens). Add in Degand and the offense is much more productive.

    I like when Javi is scoring but I still think the rest of the offense does better running without him.

    Mays….please shoot the dang 3 and stop pump faking! It is like he is scared to shoot.

  5. AveryPage 01/27/2010 at 9:55 PM #

    i would rather choke on a steak knife than lose to the tarholes.
    smh.

  6. Wolfy__79 01/27/2010 at 10:25 PM #

    up to the last two games, we had the best rotation we could ask for concerning the point. javi was starting with degand finally. mays worked into the game as it went along. eventually settling into the offense and degand eased into more aggressive penetration. that to me is where we are at our best. the less i see of javi is a good sign, his streaky shooting is on the bench unless its needed at the end of the game. in a perfect world for me, i’d like to see mays and degand at the 1 & 2! both ways. someone blasted my idea about starting mays over javi b/c of the points he scored. the problem with that is that he is not going to do the same thing day in/out. he has zero pg mentality. not his fault, its just not there.

  7. Wolfy__79 01/27/2010 at 10:29 PM #

    the shame about the situation we are in is that we can win more games than we lose with our upcoming schedule. we just went through a very tough schedule with some of the conferences’ stronger teams and a unc-ch team that clearly just has our number (they are not good). i will be disappointed if we finish worse than 8th. getting one of our last two would have helped that cause, but we still have a pulse. alot of our games remaining are road games, that we will undoubtably make tougher than they really are.

  8. Wolfy__79 01/27/2010 at 10:34 PM #

    tuckerdorm83, even in the event of total meltdown or our current situation. i still look at the remaining games you’ve posted and can’t bring myself to agree that we can only win 2 or 3 conf. games the rest of the year! i really think we are alot better than that, maybe even twice as good..

  9. Wolfy__79 01/27/2010 at 10:56 PM #

    harrow backup(Javi/Mays)
    brown backup (??? anybody that can shoot)
    wood backup (??? anybody that can shoot)
    smith backup (Painter/ Vanderburg)
    howell/leslie (if he commits) backup (cothram)

    i can deal with this lineup, think of how much better we’d be with just lorenzo this year…ntm a pg along with him next year.. with those players, all here at the same time. sid’s rotation will be crazy, he’ll be able to go big and crush then go smaller and still crush. barring none of these kids are complete idiots.

  10. packalum44 01/27/2010 at 10:59 PM #

    We will only win games where we shoot an astounding percentage because we don’t get boards and don’t create turnovers. Its that simple. Same was true of Herb offenses. Different paradigm, similar results.

    Part of the rebounding issues are not b/c our players are retarded, but b/c 4 of 5 are instructed to immediately run back to set up our D. We have 1 player rebounding among an opposing 4 or 5. It should be no surprise that we don’t board on offense. I understand instructing 2 guys to get back on D but let at least 3 go after the boards.

    We just don’t have the athletes to force turnovers nor the shooters to make those countless wide open outside jumpers. This is our only chance to maximize our attempts. Doesn’t take a coach to understand strategy.

  11. Wolfy__79 01/27/2010 at 11:08 PM #

    well, if you can watch a STATE game and see a strategy some might say you were bluffing. its hard to identify that with the level of pg play we have had thus far. sometimes its okay and you see a resemblance of offense… not too often..

  12. ADVENTUROO 01/28/2010 at 7:37 AM #

    This site would be a LOT more interersting if there was less complaining. I can only come here once in a while.

    I was at the game on Tuesday and listened to all the post morteums and read the UNX is great articles in the N&O.

    However, my wife and I concluded the following…which is also based on some astute observations from our SIL, a UNX Grad who was with us at the game and has a good insight into BB.

    First, when you have a big game, there is usually a mental let down…which may be triggered by being tired. Maryland is the example. We won on Wednesday and had to travel and play Maryland on Saturday.

    Second, then we had to play UNX on Tuesday. Roy’s boys had almost a week off. Not that that made them better players, but it allowed Roy to deprive them of certain “perks” and also got them totally mentally prepared to prevent a FOUR game losing streak.

    Finally, when the outside shots don’t fall, a shooter continues to work through it. Horner had some problems, but he hit a few. Wood has had this issue before. His shots (we have club level seats and get a better perspective on where the ball is actually going) were CLOSE…so his routine is off a little. He WILL work through this.

    When we cut into the lead, we played with a level that we physically could NOT support. You could see that we were tiring.

    Why does a loss such as this have to be blamed on the coaches, the recruits that we did NOT get, whatever. We were tired and did not play well.

    THIS IS NOT THE END OF THE SEASON….we will come back. Right now, we are playing at a level that no one expected. If we had lost to FSU and Dook, the comments would have been the same.

    Get a life….cut back on the adult beverages before you post…

  13. tuckerdorm1983 01/28/2010 at 7:40 AM #

    packalum44 is right. we either shoot from the outside and win or lose. Nothing between that. I knew we were hosed in the first 5 mins of the UNX game because nobody could hit a shot. With no rebounding much, that spells disaster. You can’t coach height.

    BTW I was just saying what the minimum was to get in the NIT. I can see us winning 4 more ACC GAMES or even more.

  14. 61Packer 01/28/2010 at 8:36 AM #

    You’re right in that you can’t coach height, but you CAN coach defense.

  15. packplantpath 01/28/2010 at 8:42 AM #

    “This site would be a LOT more interesting if there was less complaining. I can only come here once in a while.”

    That’s funny. A complaint about complaining.

    Some disagree, but to me right now, it seems Wood has more off nights than on. Hopefully that turns around because it could be a game changer.

  16. VaWolf82 01/28/2010 at 10:05 AM #

    Complaining is directly proportional to losing. Anyone that doesn’t already know that should get out more often.

  17. bradleyb123 01/28/2010 at 12:15 PM #

    People that think State was in the game, just because we were up five, are being overly optimistic. Javi got hot and cut into the lead, but hit a ridiculous three off the dribble that he really shouldn’t have taken.

    In other words, we were probably lucky to be that close at halftime. We had a nice little run and pulled ahead, but that was all we had that night. (No thanks to Horner for jacking up terrible three after terrible three!)

    I believe what we saw was a Carolina team playing much better than they have lately. They didn’t commit many turnovers. Where were the 20-some turnovers they’ve average lately? Ed Davis was at 100%, I don’t care what Huckleberry Hound says. Carolina played more like the team that beat Michigan State and made it close against Kentucky. They always play their best when they play us. It’s just a fact.

    I think we’re capable of better than what we saw that night. We’re young and inconsistent. We’re not supposed to be great yet. Many nights we play a good half, or in the case of Duke, two. On a given night, we can hang with about anybody. We just didn’t get it done against Maryland or Carolina. I think we’re going to find Maryland at or near the top of the ACC at season’s end. They’re GREAT! Carolina, who knows. If they continue playing the way they played us, they’ll be in the upper half for sure.

    I just hope we shake off this loss because there are plenty of winnable games on our schedule if we play our best. We just have to do it.

  18. patientwuf 01/28/2010 at 2:46 PM #

    It didn’t take long for Carolina to take advangtage of Horner and Mays. We are not very good at defending quick athletic forwards or guards. End of discussion.

    Oh yeah, not scoring for almost 9 minutes and we were still in the game. How bad is Carolina. Last years Carolina team would have beat us by 50.

    Horner is not good. Until he can defend and score consistently we will not be very good. Playing as a 4- he needs to take some pressure off Smith and that is not happening. Also, PG play is horrible, Javi’s scoring is great but no one can run the team. I say start Howell and take your lumps. Horner will be more valuable coming off the bench.

    Maryland and Carolina took away Smith and Wood- What’s left?

    We looked tired.

  19. rtpack24 01/28/2010 at 3:13 PM #

    Wonder why we did not press a young team that had lost its confidence. Sellout crowd young guards, but no press. Our press against Duke was effective. Just once I wish Sid would put Degand at point and Wood at the shooting guard, bring in Javi off the bench.

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