Frank Heath
It’s a wrap. The 2009-10 UNC men’s basketball team’s long journey into mediocrity and futility was cemented during the latter stages of the first half of Carolina’s 78-61 loss to Georgia Tech Tuesday night.
With the Tar Heels trailing by “only†14 points, 32-18, Tech freshman Derrick Favors thundered in for a dunk off a pass from guard Maurice Miller. Then on the Yellow Jackets’ next possession, following a missed foul shot by Carolina’s John Henson, Miller himself drove for an easy layup against a day-late, dollar-short UNC defensive effort. Two Georgia Tech possessions later – after several more missed shots by the Tar Heels – Favors got free for another dunk and the Tar Heels were, once again, down by 20 points in the first half.
The portion of Tuesday night’s game that began with UNC behind 17-15 at the 10:59 mark of the first half and ended with the Tar Heels trailing 57-29 with 9:43 remaining may have been the worst, least-inspired stretch of basketball that I’ve ever seen a North Carolina team play.
Pick almost any area, and the Tar Heels were awful at it in this game. At one point early in the second half, UNC was nine of 40 from the field with 17 turnovers. The Heels ended the game 19 of 59 (32.2%), three of 15 from three-point range and having made a horrible 10 of 24 free throws.
They also allowed Tech to shoot near 50 percent for most of the game and were out-rebounded by five.
Why is this? Why does a team, with as much on the line as there was for UNC in this game, play poorly and get rolled over? We will probably never know. Suffice it to say that whatever hopes Carolina had for reaching the NCAA Tournament with a late-season surge flew out the window with this loss.
But this should not be so much about how poorly North Carolina is playing basketball at this moment. Everyone, every organization or group, has its bad days, when things just don’t work right, no matter how much effort is given toward making things perfect. Many other perennial winners – UConn, Indiana, Florida and Louisville, to name a few – are also struggling this year. It should be more about how the players and coaches of this Carolina team are going to react to and learn from the experience of being humbled in a way they would have little expected.
Back in 2003, UNC basketball players Jawad Williams, Melvin Scott and Jackie Manuel, then freshmen, struggled through a season similar to this one, where nothing that Carolina did seemed to work. During the darker moments of an 8-20 season, no one could have guessed that three years later Manuel, Scott and Williams would play integral roles for a national championship team.
It will not be long before North Carolina is back in the hunt for ACC and NCAA basketball titles. In the mean time, fans can be thankful for the many, many times the Tar Heels have entertained us and helped us understand how difficult it can be to get things right, and how great it can be when you do.