Friday's loss hurt. I was excited to start my Spring Break, yet because of UNC, I started it off with an L. However, like Big Sean says, we will bounce back. So, How did we lose?
First, I would like to address the atrocious officiating. They called a total of 48 fouls. I don't care if you're a Duke fan or a UNC fan, you cannot be pleased with this number. This essentially means that there can't be a possession where a team drives it in the paint without getting a foul call. On top of this, because of when and where these fouls were called, it led to Duke getting more free throws. Duke shot an insane 37 free throws while UNC shot only 18. Unfortunately for us, Duke capitalized on this. I have to give Duke credit here. They shot an outstanding 89% from the free throw line. Combine this with their 60% from the three point line and it would have been tough for any team to beat Duke. Another ramification of this foul calling was Joel Berry getting his fourth foul with fifteen minutes left in the game. This caused Roy Williams to bench him for the next ten minutes. This hurt us. Not having our leading point guard out there made our offense less fluid and less efficient. Combine this with Justin Jackson having another off-game, and it was tough for us to find some offense for that ten-minute stretch.
All-in-all, I don't think we played that bad. We had a decent field goal percentage, a surprisingly good free throw percentage, fewer turnovers than Duke, and we out-rebounded them. However, our proclivity for fouling, and Duke's skill at the free throw line and beyond the arc, made it hard for us to outscore them. So, unfortunately, no ACC tournament championship for us.
Now, all we can do is look towards the NCAA tournament. I would like to remind people that when we won the NCAA Championship in 2005 and 2009, we did not win the ACC Tournament during those years. So, there is still hope. Also, unlike Duke, we have a lot of experience after last year's tournament. This should enable us to have longevity during this year's tournament. UNC needs to take this confidence with them into the NCAA tournament.
