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UNC Sports Notes

Posted on December 10, 2008December 10, 2008 by Staff

Photo courtesy UNC Athletics. Junior Casey Nogueira buried two goals in the second half to send Notre Dame home and deliver UNC’s 19th NCAA championship in 27 years.Frank Heath

This year’s title all the more impressive

This weekend in Cary, the UNC women’s soccer team won the NCAA national championship, beating Notre Dame 2-1 in a Top 5 battle. For me, few things in sports hold quite the same reassurance that the universe may still be in alignment as this news.

UNC soccer is sometimes called a dynasty, but in truth it’s been years since Carolina could routinely breeze through the season, or even through a week, unchallenged. This fall, it had been the Irish who held down the national top spot from the gate, and who looked like the odds-on favorites to steamroll through the tournament.

The fact that the field for women’s soccer has been more or less level for a decade now, makes it all the more impressive that the Tar Heels have maintained the consistent fight that allows them to remain stubbornly among the national Top 5 and reach the late rounds of the tournament each year. Sunday marked UNC’s fourth championship since 2000 – even a billion-dollar enterprise like Carolina basketball has trouble doing that.

Making this year’s title even more impressive is that the Heels had to play from behind in the final, after Notre Dame scored “the fastest goal in school history,” 16 seconds into the match. That’s gotta put a crimp in your style; but Carolina showed its mental toughness and will to win by then shutting down the country’s top-ranked, undefeated team for the next 89-plus minutes.

Junior Casey Nogueira’s two second-half goals — her 24th and 25th of the season — provided the extra punch that delivered Carolina from “just another” second-place finish. It was Carolina’s 19th NCAA championship in 27 years. In Friday’s semis, senior Yael Averbuch, Carolina’s All-American at midfielder, had lifted Carolina to a 1-0 win over UCLA, scoring the game’s only goal on a penalty kick.

Under coach Anson Dorrance, UNC is now 648-32- since 1979, with 20 national titles in 28 years. With Nogueira and a host of other talented juniors, sophs and freshmen returning next season, it shouldn’t surprise anyone if Carolina ends up back in the same place, playing for the national title, a year from now. But as this team is fully aware, it will be hard work and dedication, not inevitability, that will bring them there.

Bowling

Moving to football, Carolina’s spot in the coveted Meineke Car Care Bowl, formerly the Continental Tire Bowl, leaves some UNC fans tepid, as before late-season losses against old-school conference foes Maryland and N.C. State some Tar Heel faithful were reportedly hoarding oranges.

Is it just me, or does the wholesale shift to bowls named for corporate sponsors drain all the mystique away from the process of getting into and playing a bowl? At one time, a bowl game was something you could taste, smell, feel or fear (Sugar, Orange, Rose, Liberty, Gator), with the general rule being that the better it smelled or tasted, the better a bowl it was; and the bowls took place in locations that fans could recognize as a happy destination. This certainly did not include Charlotte, N.C. — especially not back then.

Now, well, anyway, can anyone even remember what the Papajohns.com Bowl was called last year?
Put it this way, there’s something ironic to me in the fact that Carolina, after Butch Davis’ second season, is playing a bowl game against a Big East opponent in Charlotte – the same thing that happened after John Bunting’s fourth season!

The Tar Heels did a great job for most of this season, there’s no doubt, taking out several legit programs including Notre Dame – a thing I thought I’d never see. But based on the Heels’ lackluster 41-10 humbling at the hands of State, all has not been figured out yet. The mid-season loss to injury of Carolina’s incomparable wide receiver/returner Brandon Tate eventually became a crippler.

Basketball in balance

The UNC men’s basketball team, on the other hand, has restored a balance that felt off kilter the afternoon that Carolina played Maryland in football and Penn in basketball. Heels fans were not quite sure which sport was the more important to focus on, and the end result for most was a less-than-satisfying flipping back and forth.

After eight games, this basketball team looks as complete and naturally balanced as any in recent memory.

I like the way Bobby Frasor looks when he plays defense; the way Wayne Ellington appears comfortable and not impatient out there, even though there has been less emphasis on his offense so far; and the way the freshman Ed Davis provides new tenacity and athleticism underneath as a rebounder and on defense. Drew “II” shows some defensive presence out front and a smooth confidence with the ball. And of course one can’t find enough superlatives for the extraordinary play of Lawson and of Tyler, who should at least have a street or something named for him here.

Assuming there are no more major injuries, the only question that is perhaps worth asking is whether Carolina will have what it takes to rise to “that” moment and finally lay to rest the demons from their collapses during two straight NCAA tournaments. The pressure of the moment in NCAA play – which resulted in stretches where the Heels lost their heads and, subsequently, the most important games of their careers (twice) – isn’t practice-able. Carolina may lose a game or two this season, but the biggest, most legit concern for this team is going to be how they will react and perform under that ultimate pressure. That make-or-break moment will come for these Heels, and the challenge of the rest of the year will be doing everything they can to prepare their confidence and mind-set for that moment.

This will be a memorable season, providing fans with the privilege of watching a college team extremely advanced in its understanding of a basketball system, and with a lot of weapons. It already is.

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