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The season’s final stretch

Posted on March 12, 2009 by Staff

By Frank Heath

When the North Carolina men’s basketball team beat fierce rival Duke for the second time this season on Sunday, the Tar Heels completed the first phase of a job they’ve been working on since pretty much the day after last year’s disappointing Final Four loss to Kansas.

And although Carolina’s season, to date, has not been the effortless romp many envisioned back in November, the results have come just the same. With a 27-3 record, a final No. 1 national ranking and an ACC regular season title in their back pocket, it would be stretching things to say these Tar Heels have underachieved — especially in light of the personnel losses Carolina has faced.

Dealt the unenviable expectation of needing to go undefeated to impress everyone, and having lost senior leader Marcus Ginyard – their toughest player and best defender – to a foot injury for the year, rather than folding, Carolina has adapted like champions. And after spotting the rest of the ACC a two-game start with early losses to Boston College and Wake Forest, the Tar Heels still topped the final league standings with relative ease, ending with a 13-3 ACC record.

That’s two games ahead of UNC’s closest competitors, Duke and Wake Forest. And as winners of 13 of their last 14 league games, Carolina enters this weekend’s ACC Tournament with a No. 1 NCAA seed virtually locked up. That’s good news, since point guard Ty Lawson may wind up sitting out this weekend in hopes of healing an injured big toe, which he aggravated against Duke.

On Tuesday, Lawson was named ACC Player of the Year – which is merely a bonus for Carolina fans, who already know they have one of the most unique college players ever in forward Tyler Hansbrough. Hansbrough may not be the MVP this season (Michael Jordan wasn’t always voted MVP either), but it’s hard to remember a college player that consumed more of the attentions of opposing defenses than Tyler.

Hansbrough has been hacked, held, fallen on, tripped, knocked down, undercut, squashed, poked in the eye, scratched and more by two or three defenders pretty much every time UNC has had the ball for four years now. The Poplar Bluff senior has responded not with frustration but by raising his free-throw percentage 11 points – from an already solid 74 percent when he was a freshman to an utterly kick-ass 85 percent this year. This, even as referees have whistled fewer and fewer of the inevitable jarring hits we all know are coming each time he touches the basketball. The big fella has also developed a reliable mid-range jumper and even a three-point shot, both of which he used with an assassin’s cool in Sunday’s latest dismantling of Duke.

Tyler’s numbers are down slightly from his junior year, when he averaged a double-double and won every college player of the year award. But I’m sure if you ask him, Coach Roy Williams or any of his teammates about the significance of that statistical difference, they would point to Carolina’s record as evidence that Psycho-T has again done his job.
And with the uniquely sure-handed, strong and speedy Lawson pushing the ball from the point position, surrounded by capable scorers Deon Thompson, Wayne Ellington and Danny Green at the other three starting positions, this North Carolina team is a threat to win each game based on its scary offensive potential alone. 

If Lawson has to miss the ACC Tournament, he won’t be the first Carolina point guard to sit out part or all of that sacrosanct event. Derrick Phelps, the backbone of the 1993 team, was injured in the ACC Tournament semifinal against Virginia that year, and he watched in a suit and tie while Henrik Rodl manned the point in the final, a 77-75 loss to Georgia Tech.

Luckily, Phelps was able to return and play in the NCAA Tournament that year, and he contributed heavily in a memorable run to the national championship. UNC fans might not be that surprised if history repeats itself in 2009.

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