With spring season upon us, I get to have a lot more fun on Mondays with three sports to look back on instead of just one. Let's start with the one everyone's most pissed off about. On the face of it, I can't find much reason to be too surprised or disappointed or upset or whatever about losing on the road at North Carolina. I mean, that's not exactly a bad team.
This being the ACC, though, you don't come away from a loss at Carolina without having something to say about the refereeing. Which was the usual debacle. I have three instances on the top of my head of obvious bullshit that went UNC's way:
-- Brice Johnson pulling up his dribble at the free-throw line, landing with both feet, long-jumping past a defender, landing again, and ending with an easy dunk.
-- Joe Harris deflecting a pass, running after it, being clipped at the waist by the guy he deflected it from (I think Strickland) and being called for a foul.
-- McAdoo shoving Akil Mitchell halfway out of bounds while jostling for position and somehow getting Mitchell to be called for the foul.
It wasn't caught on TV, but those at the game - and the radio guys - described Tony Bennett's heated confrontation with a ref during a TV timeout. Like, actually heated, with voice raised and everything. I know it's standard to complain about the reffing when playing a team from the state of North Carolina, but Tony thus far has usually limited his expression of distaste for the reffing to subtle body language cues and the occasional glare. This is a guy who's earned the right to be taken seriously when he's pissed about the officiating. Although frankly, Coach K is well-known for being just this side of the line between "proactive" and obnoxious in dealing with the referees; it probably wouldn't hurt if Tony moved his zebra interactions a little closer in that direction.
As usual, UNC fans will say that the gap in fouls and free throws - in this case, 11 to 21 and 30 to 11, respectively - is due to superior athleticism and other teams having to hack to keep up. And as usual, bullshit: Akil Mitchell can match anyone in Heel blue for athleticism. Also as usual, the pinnacle of irony is when a dissatisfied wail goes up in either Cameron or the Dean Dome when the home fans feel hard done by the refs.
As for the non-ref portions of the game, it was an odd one. UVA hit 58.5% percent of its shots and 57.1% of three-pointers. That's pretty awesome. Scoring 1.17 points per possession wins you most games. Unless your point guard turns the ball over 6 times and you give up 1.35 PPP on defense. Both numbers are almost totally foreign to a Bennett-coached UVA team. If UVA hadn't shot so well I'd hate to see what the score would look like, because UNC wasn't exactly cold from the floor and got a 15-point advantage from the stripe besides. (Dammit there I go again with the reffing.)
What we're really starting to see is the effect of a thin lineup. Many times during this game UVA was simply unequipped to play defense against a Carolina team that could not shoot wrong. No Mike Tobey means no center, and eight minutes out of Darion Atkins isn't what we envisioned either. (Atkins is clearly a shell of the player he was at the start of the season, so his eight minutes barely count.) It leaves Evan Nolte to defend players he simply can't defend, especially when our lone actual post player is in foul trouble because the zebras are stupid. (Dammit there I go again with the reffing.)
Not to fear, however. Yes, it would've been nice to have that one to help cement a tourney bid. However, the mainest goal this regular season is to finish no worse than third in the ACC standings and then win a game in the ACC tourney. Our one-game lead on NC State is really a two-game lead because we beat them for the tiebreaker. If we have to tiebreak against UNC - over whom we still have a one-game lead - it'll fall to the how-did-you-do-against-#1 rule. UNC is 0-2 against Miami and has lost to Duke and NC State this year; we'll finish 1-0 against NC State. That means one of the following must happen for UNC to win the tiebreaker over UVA:
-- Beat Duke and hope we lose to both Duke and Miami.
or
-- Hope NC State falls behind FSU and/or Maryland, then polish off a season sweep against whichever one does (they have two left against FSU and one against Maryland, whom they've already beaten) and hope we don't do the same.
In a nutshell, UNC has to work so that the tiebreaker doesn't drop to how we did against NC State because they've already lost that one. So things look good. UVA still has to not screw this up, but the Hoos still sit in the drivers' seat, and ohbytheway can still get in position for 2nd with a win over Duke.
I'm going to wait til tomorrow to post up the season sim results, in conjunction with the Miami preview, instead of tonight. I promise it'll make sense.
