
{"id":4208,"date":"2008-12-10T14:01:56","date_gmt":"2008-12-10T22:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=4208"},"modified":"2008-12-10T14:06:25","modified_gmt":"2008-12-10T22:06:25","slug":"unc-sports-notes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2008\/12\/10\/unc-sports-notes\/","title":{"rendered":"UNC Sports Notes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/soccer121108a.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/soccer121108a-193x300.jpg\" alt=\"Photo courtesy UNC Athletics. Junior Casey Nogueira buried two goals in the second half to send Notre Dame home and deliver UNC\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 19th NCAA championship in 27 years.\" title=\"soccer121108a\" width=\"130\" height=\"210\" align=\"left\" size-medium wp-image-4210\" \/><\/a><strong>Frank Heath<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>This year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s title all the more impressive<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This weekend in Cary, the UNC women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nUNC soccer is sometimes called a dynasty, but in truth it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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.<\/p>\n<p>The fact that the field for women\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fourth championship since 2000 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c even a billion-dollar enterprise like Carolina basketball has trouble doing that.<\/p>\n<p>Making this year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s title even more impressive is that the Heels had to play from behind in the final, after Notre Dame scored \u00e2\u20ac\u0153the fastest goal in school history,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 16 seconds into the match. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gotta put a crimp in your style; but Carolina showed its mental toughness and will to win by then shutting down the country\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s top-ranked, undefeated team for the next 89-plus minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Junior Casey Nogueira\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s two second-half goals \u00e2\u20ac\u201d her 24th and 25th of the season \u00e2\u20ac\u201d provided the extra punch that delivered Carolina from \u00e2\u20ac\u0153just another\u00e2\u20ac\u009d second-place finish. It was Carolina\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 19th NCAA championship in 27 years. In Friday\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s semis, senior Yael Averbuch, Carolina\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s All-American at midfielder, had lifted Carolina to a 1-0 win over UCLA, scoring the game\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only goal on a penalty kick.<\/p>\n<p>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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Bowling<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Moving to football, Carolina\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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. <\/p>\n<p>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. \u00e2\u20ac\u201d especially not back then.<\/p>\n<p>Now, well, anyway, can anyone even remember what the Papajohns.com Bowl was called last year?<br \/>\nPut it this way, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something ironic to me in the fact that Carolina, after Butch Davis\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 second season, is playing a bowl game against a Big East opponent in Charlotte \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the same thing that happened after John Bunting\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fourth season!<\/p>\n<p>The Tar Heels did a great job for most of this season, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no doubt, taking out several legit programs including Notre Dame \u00e2\u20ac\u201c a thing I thought I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never see. But based on the Heels\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 lackluster 41-10 humbling at the hands of State, all has not been figured out yet. The mid-season loss to injury of Carolina\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s incomparable wide receiver\/returner Brandon Tate eventually became a crippler. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Basketball in balance<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The UNC men\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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. <\/p>\n<p>After eight games, this basketball team looks as complete and naturally balanced as any in recent memory.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153II\u00e2\u20ac\u009d shows some defensive presence out front and a smooth confidence with the ball. And of course one can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that\u00e2\u20ac\u009d moment and finally lay to rest the demons from their collapses during two straight NCAA tournaments. The pressure of the moment in NCAA play \u00e2\u20ac\u201c which resulted in stretches where the Heels lost their heads and, subsequently, the most important games of their careers (twice) \u00e2\u20ac\u201c isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4208"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4213,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4208\/revisions\/4213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}