NORTH CAROLINA STATE/UNC

The Tar Heels and the Wolfpack have met 42 times in their history, and 34 times, UNC has walked away the victors! This year was no different than any other, as Roy William’s boys ended all hope for State at least looking like their program was on a par with UNC’s.

Bringing in a 16-1 record against the Pack, the Heels improved Williams record by one more, extending a winning streak against the Pack to 11 straight games!

Tyler Zeller vs. Lorenzo Brown

State was 8 for 32, and one of those 8 was an 80-foot jump shot at the end of the first half by Lorenzo Brown.

But State was in the Smith Center at Chapel Hill with a mission, to prove to the Tar Heels that they meant business, that their cousins in the west were no longer dominating them; that the times had changed. The only thing to change was the winning streak number by UNC. The Heels played with more intensity, better focused handling of the ball and they were sending the message: “Not this time baby!”

Shooting only 25% in the first half and finishing at about 37% for the game, they were outplayed and out scored by a 48-49% by the Heels, which by the way is the tea average.

7 foot Tyler Zeller led the scoring with a 17-point, 21 rebound effort, and Reggie Bullock in his first start after replacing Dexter Strictland who went down last week against West Virginia added 11 points. That Bullock, a junior could come out and spell Strictland is a statement about the UNC program in itself.

The 74-55 victory by the Heels pretty much toned down the Packs estimation of where they are in the competition with UNC, Duke, Wake Forrest and themselves on Tobacco Road.

Prior to the contest, the Pack’s senior guard C. J. Williams said that the team had always been out of the race early in his career, and now they were winning big games against big opponents, and after their win against Miami, they immediately turned their attention to UNC. Now after the shellacking by UNC, Mark Gottfried, head coach has to take his troops home and try to restore their confidence and salvage a pretty great season.

Now comes some real excitement. After Georgia Tech today, an early February brings us the 8^th ranked Duke vs. the 7^th ranked UNC game, fought to the death and with great intensity and pride by the best two College Basketball traditions and programs in the sport of college basketball.

They say you should wait until the final two minutes of a basketball game, and that may be true, but I always wait until February when the game is in it’s height of intensity and things are playing out, because then they all have an idea of just how good each school really is.

That’s all I wrote, folks!