Round 2 - Fight!

Dear Ty Lawson,

Thank you for playing today and putting on a wonderful show. I hope you are able to walk tomorrow and can rest up for the Gonzaga game.

Sincerely,

Triumphant Tar Heel

Wow! Did you see him? I think I heard his toe pop a few times too. Insane game. How tough is Ty? Too tough. That killer crossover? AMAZING! The 3 pointers? CLUTCH! The and-ones? HOLY! Magical, extraordinary, jaw-dropping. And that was just the 2nd half.

But were you worried? I was for awhile. You really never knew when the toe would suddenly break off and then it's just Bobby. Apparently Larry Drew hurt his back in practice, so we again, had very little for a back court (Remember when we were so deep at the beginning of the season?). LSU came swinging out of the gate in the 2nd half and Marcus Thornton was playing like a man possessed, hitting shots everywhere. Ellington had another solid game in a row. Clark Kellogg mentioned that no guard is playing better then Ellington right now and he may be correct. Again, I see the fire in his eyes, not so much this game, but overall. He had 4 assists and I thought played good defense and had the big tap out to Danny Green for 3.

Things I didn't like:
1. Larry Drew not playing much. He hurt his back during practice. That again limits our depth, which we seemingly don't have a lot of. He will probably be fine for the Zag's, but you would have liked to have seen him get some more minutes tonight to face some pressure because LSU is not Radford.

2. Danny Green not shooting well. He was 3-10 from the field, 1-4 from 3 land. His shot might be stuck in Chapel Hill the way he has been playing, but he did have 6 boards, 2 steals, and 2 blocks. Like I've said before, Danny Green is the stat-stuffer and glue guy.

3. Ty Lawson playing. I know, you're thinking "What? Why? We wouldn't have won without him?" Well, like Roy said, we will never know, but this was kinda of a win-lose situation. If he doesn't play, you can't guarantee that UNC advances, but if he does play, you wonder what the effects will be on his toe come Sunday morning. Ty even said himself that the pain on a scale of 1-10, was at a 6 or 7. Not very encouraging. Sure, the game would have been different in the fact that Hansbrough would have gotten the ball more, and so would have Deon Thompson, Green, and Ellington, but we will never know.

4. Deon Thompson not playing much. Thompson didn't do much in the game and didn't play much. He was 3-3 and the jumpers looked silky smooth, but I think he didn't play much because of his defense and the athletic ability of LSU's bigs. Ed Davis seemed to match up a little better, but of the 4 bigs in the rotation, I think Hansbrough is the best to guard someone on the perimeter (like a Kyle Singler-type player). Now I haven't watched much of LSU at all (just this game actually), but it seems that Mitchell is an inside-outside player, so Hansbrough would be better suited to guard him and let Davis roam the paint (nice blocks by the way Eddy).

Things I liked:
1. Ty Lawson playing. Win-lose situation. He looked sluggish out there, easily not at 100%. He didn't look to push the ball in transition very much. He was passing the ball up past half-court. He went out and looked to be done for the game. He was a step slow, and couldn't hit anything. Then came the 2nd half and wow did he carry them. Very similarly to the Duke game at Cameron, he put the Heels on his 5'11" body and carried them. On ESPN, Steve Lavin was saying that he thought North Carolina could get to the Final 4 without Lawson. I beg to differ. He's a game-changer and I have no idea what would have happened without him, but I sure know what happened with him.

2. Defense. I believe from the 7 minute mark on, UNC went on a 21-7 run to close out the game. And they did it with defense, which led to scoring on the break. A few steals, some good rebounding, and Ty Lawson cruising. You could see Roy Williams pleading for a stop on the sideline. They forced 15 turnovers and had 11 steals, but they were out-rebounding, but they battled back on the boards because they were getting crushed for awhile. I think I saw a stat that UNC had out-rebounded LSU 10-1 the first 4 minutes of that final run. Well done Heels.

3. Advancing to the Sweet 16. I was watching the end of the Purdue-Washington game (I picked Washington, and I'm still not sure why) and when Purdue won, they were celebrating like they had just won the National Championship. We at UNC expect so much: Winning the ACC conference, beating Duke twice, winning whatever pre-season tournament we are playing in, going undefeated in our non-conference schedule, thinking we can go undefeated during the whole season. We should consider ourselves fortunate to cheer for a program like North Carolina. Roy Williams has done a great job of making our team competitive year in and year out. Are we satisfied with a Sweet 16 berth? No, absolutely not. But seeming a team like Purdue, who will not win the National Title, be super excited about advancing. This is a dream for all college basketball players and I think it's unfair that we are unhappy with things. Take last year for example, some people were calling for William's job after the loss to KU (the sticker may have had something to do with that), but he led us to the most wins in the school history, the ACC regular season, the conference tournament, and the Final 4. That's a really great season. Don't get me wrong, I want to win the National Championship and will be disappointed otherwise, but I'm just saying we should be thankful that our team is this good. Sweet 16 for the 4th time in 5 years.

Ok, LSU was a good team. They did win the SEC regular season and were probably more deserving of a higher seed, despite how bad the SEC really was, but they did give North Carolina a run for the money. But one of the biggest downfalls of LSU may have been the fact that they hadn't beaten a ranked team this season and now they still haven't. Onward Heels.

Other tournament notes
1. Wake Forest - Thanks for showing up.

2. Texas - Thank you for blowing the game against Duke. You should have won that game because Duke played poorly

3. ACC - Thanks for being a disaster in the tournament so far, except North Carolina

4. Western Kentucky - Thanks for not being able to play defense for 7 seconds at the end of your game and then failing to call a time-out.

5. UCONN has looked really good their first 2 games.