Covering Carolina sports beyond just men's basketball and football — with the most complete women's basketball coverage
Current Carolina players are exposed to much more information about opponents than they got in the days when Coach Hubert Davis was playing for the legendary Dean Smith. While Davis believes and follows the reasoning behind that approach, he gives players more insights on player tendencies than Smith did.
North Carolina slipped two spots to No. 18 in the latest AP Top 25 women’s basketball poll after losing to Virginia Tech in an ACC Tournament quarterfinal game Friday. All but one team below UNC in last week’s poll that played lost at least one game and the two teams ahead of the Tar Heels (23–6) in last week’s poll also lost.
While conference tournament play starts this week for many, it has already ended in frustration for Brandon Huffman’s Jacksonville State team. But Garrison Brooks hit a big career milestone and Walker Kessler was named as a Wooden Award finalist. The Gamecocks, the tournament’s top seed, lost Saturday at home 54–51 in the ASUN Tournament semifinals to Jacksonville, with Huffman scoreless for the third game this season but for the first time since Jan. 8. He contributed four rebounds, one block and one steal.
DURHAM — After a historic Carolina victory over No. 4 Duke that can only be topped by a Final Four win against the Blue Devils, the Tar Heels guaranteed that they won’t have to deal with their rivals until the ACC Tournament final. Before UNC’s impressive 94–81 victory Saturday to ruin Coach Mike Krzyzewski’s final game at Cameron Indoor Stadium, a semifinal matchup in Brooklyn appeared likely.
DURHAM — Many nights, the question is when or if Caleb Love will flip the offensive switch and whether it will be enough. It came late Monday and pushed Carolina to an overtime win over Syracuse. Saturday at Cameron Indoor Stadium, that switch flipped on Love’s jumper with 12:33 left after hitting only 1 of his first 12 shots. He scored nine points in the next three minutes to help Carolina take control before going on to a 94–81 upset Saturday of No. 4 Duke
GREENSBORO — Kids can lighten up even the most frustrating days and Coach Courtney Banghart’s three children soothed her and the team after No. 16 Carolina’s unexpected early exit from the ACC Tournament. With one seven-year-old twin son, Eli, on her lap, the other, Tucker, on Alyssa Ustby’s lap and Banghart’s six-year-old daughter Gray on Deja Kelly’s lap, the coach and players talked in the postgame press conference about how Friday’s quarterfinal game with No. 21 Virginia Tech went awry in overtime for an 87–80 quarterfinals loss.
GREENSBORO — The obvious goal for No. 16 North Carolina in Friday’s quarterfinal matchup with No. 21 Virginia Tech is to make it more like their first regular-season game and less like the rematch. The No. 4-seed Tar Heels (23–5) blew out the No. 5-seed Hokies 71–46 on Jan. 6 in Chapel Hill with a potent transition game and suffocating defense. In Blacksburg on Feb. 13, though, hot-shooting Virginia Tech (22–8) won a much-more physical game 66–61.
CHAPEL HILL — Someone in the UNC basketball family had a decision to make. Will he return for another season or move on to a new chapter in life? Charlie Jones, the sentinel guarding the tunnel at Carmichael Auditorium and then the Smith Center for 38 years, had been mulling his future as the official monitor of the inner sanctum of Carolina basketball. Jones was still uncertain as he worked his last shift of the season Monday on senior night for Brady Manek, Leaky Black and Ryan McAdoo.
At ACC Tipoff in October, North Carolina coach Courtney Banghart told a group of ACC Network announcers before going on the air that people were underestimating the potential of her third Tar Heels team. “I said to the crew that was at the desk, ‘We’re better than y’all think,’ ” Banghart said, figuring that they didn’t know the impact of graduate transfer guards Carlie Littlefield and Eva Hodgson. ” ‘Y’all don’t know Eva and Carlie. Y’all don’t know how much better my sophomores have gotten.’ I did think we were better than the credit we were getting.”
CHAPEL HILL — During Carolina’s pregame warmups, The Bangles’ “Manic Monday” played in the Smith Center. It wasn’t Brady Manek’s favored country music but was appropriate for his senior night and might just be profitable as well. He made it a Manek Monday with 12 of his team-high 22 points in the second half as UNC overcame big Syracuse runs to start each half and battled for an important 88–79 overtime victory over Syracuse.
Coming off two impressive victories to finish the regular season, North Carolina jumped two spots to No. 16 in the latest AP Top 25 women’s basketball poll. It’s the highest ranking for the Tar Heels (23–5, 13–5 ACC), the No. 4 seed in this week’s ACC Tournament in Greensboro, since they were No. 15 for the final four polls of the 2014–15 season. That team finished 26–9 and lost to South Carolina in the Greensboro Regional semifinal.
Brandon Huffman and Seventh Woods didn’t put up good numbers last week but their teams each had two good victories. But it was an up-and-down week for Garrison Brooks, Walker Kessler and Walker Miller ahead of a week when former Carolina teammates will meet. Huffman’s Jacksonville State team finished the regular season at home with an 81–68 win over Eastern Kentucky on Wednesday and a 69–52 victory Saturday over North Alabama to win the West Division and the top seed in the ASUN Tournament.
On the week of UNC’s final visit to Cameron Indoor Stadium with Mike Krzyzewski as coach, Episode 7 of the ACC Network documentary “The Tournament” spotlights one of most memorable, physical battles in that rivalry during his career. That’s a highlight of the episode that debuts at 9 p.m. Monday. Episode 8, which debuts at 10 p.m., documents the end to the legendary career of Hall of Fame UNC coach Dean Smith. That second episode Monday includes an interview with 1997 tournament MVP Shammond Williams that John Dahl, the executive producer and a UNC graduate, calls one of the best in the entire documentary and one that will “bring you to tears.”
RALEIGH — Far from the competitive rivalry of years past, North Carolina-N.C. State games recently have been like early non-conference football games: Get the expected win and don’t get anybody hurt. The Tar Heels easily did the first part with an 84–74 victory Saturday with Armando Bacot leading the way. But Leaky Black hyperextended his right knee in the first half. He went through warmups before the second half, but he didn’t come back into the game.
No. 18 North Carolina has some big goals that it can meet in the last week of the regular season and easily kept them possible Thursday night. Beating a feisty Virginia team on its senior night wasn’t easy, tough. The Tar Heels led by 21 in the first half but Virginia fought back and made them earn a physical 68–57 victory. Carolina battled through its worst perimeter shooting night of the season by again being tough on defense and repeatedly beating the Cavaliers in transition.
tarheeltribune.com 