Saturday, February 12, 2011

Better than it looked

It would be easy to characterize today's win over Clemson as an ugly one.  But that would be unfair to this year's squad.

Bouncing back - on the road - after a tough loss to your arch rival makes a powerful statement.  This team has more resolve than the previously thought.  

The talent started to emerge once Kendall Marshall was installed as the starting point guard.  The resolve started building shortly after that.   It rounded into full form today at Littlejohn Coliseum.  

The Heels got off to good start, and led at half despite playing some ugly ball.  But like it was at Duke, the Heels let the home team come back and take the lead late.   

But today, the Heels didn't back off and made plays.  The second-best one was Marshall's steal and lay up to essentially ice the game with less than two minutes left.

The best play was the out-of-nowhere dunk by Barnes. Late in games he really loses himself in the action, and he definitely did on that freak-nasty dunk!  If Marshall's steal iced it, Barnes' dunk was a frigid blast that started the process.  

The game may have looked ugly, but that dunk was not!

GO HEELS!

Quick random note:  I watched the first 30 minutes of this game on ESPN3; Maryland was playing at the same time so the Carolina game was not shown on TV in DC.  ESPN3 was okay but I had to deal with lots of buffering and delays, etc.  That may have more to do with Earthlink than ESPN3 but either way it harmed my viewing experience.  

But after a commercial reminded me that I can watch live games on my iPhone with the ACC Sports app.   I switched over, and it was great - no delays or buffering at all. 

The Barnes quote is from Jim Hawkins at www.insidecarolina.com

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