Feb. 17, 2010
By Adam Lucas
ATLANTA, Ga.--Traveling with North Carolina basketball, you get used to this scene: it's late in a game away from Chapel Hill, and the home fans are filing out. First, it's just a handful, but then the early departures start a tidal wave and hundreds rush to the exits, eager to be among that first wave of fans that gets smoother traffic leaving the parking lot.
In many ways, it is a satisfying feeling. Look at all those unhappy opposing fans, forced to grumble for another night about the Tar Heel juggernaut.
Something unprecedented happened Tuesday night at the incorrectly named Thrillerdome. With 10 minutes and 39 seconds left in the second half, Georgia Tech head coach Paul Hewitt called his third timeout of the half. His team led, 54-27, on the way a 68-51 final that was not nearly as close as the final score indicated.
A 27-point lead over Carolina is usually enough to make an opposing crowd delirious. This crowd of 9,191 was bored. It was such a complete whipping that some fans headed for the exits. At the next timeout, more departed. By the end, with reserves for both teams in the game, the crowd was so sparse it looked like an Atlanta Braves game in the Dale Murphy era.
"When they're leaving because we're so far down, that's embarrassing," Dexter Strickland said.
The stats are absolutely incredible. For the middle 21:30 of the game, Carolina managed just four field goals, continuing a mind-boggling stretch of periodic offensive futility. At one point early in the second half, the Tar Heels had made eight field goals. Tech, meanwhile, had almost as many dunks (six) as the Tar Heels had baskets. Around that same time, Carolina had 17 turnovers and eight made baskets.
How startling was this loss? The Tar Heels held Iman Shumpert, who scored 30 points in Chapel Hill, scoreless and he took just one shot. You read that right. Shumpert scored 30 fewer points than he scored in the first meeting...and Tech won by 17.
By late in the first half, you could see the Tar Heels visibly sagging on the court.
"You can sense it," Strickland said. "You can sense the team getting down the other team hits big shots and we're not responding. It doesn't have to be like that. Me being a point guard, it falls to me to get guys better shots in that situation."
It is noble--and encouraging for his long-term future--of Strickland to say that, but it's not true. It doesn't fall to him. It falls to everyone. Carolina entered Tuesday night's game at 3-7 in the ACC. What more motivation could you possibly need?
"It was a must-win," Strickland said.
Several players mentioned the importance of the game afterwards, in the quiet of another solemn locker room. The problem was that it didn't look that way on the court. The loss featured some of the most egregious blow-bys of the season, and too often they were accompanied by no defensive help.
It's not the fact that his team didn't compete in a mid-February must-have that galls the head coach. It's that his team didn't compete.
"I didn't say in the locker room, `We have to win this or we're not going to do this or that,'" Roy Williams said. "I don't believe in that. I believe in doing the best you can every day. If I'm desperate, I'm going to dive on the floor for the ball. If I'm desperate, I'm not going to turn the ball over on a handoff. If I'm desperate, I'm going to sprint back. If I'm desperate, I'm going to know who I'm guarding."
As frustrating as it is to watch, it's infinitely more wearisome to live through it. Nearly a half-hour after the game, senior Deon Thompson returned from the training room, where he had taken three stitches in his lip. More than perhaps any other player, Thompson was looking forward to this season. He talked giddily of returning to the Final Four, of adding another banner to his career haul. Sure, you can scoff at that now, but he wasn't alone. Those dreams have all but evaporated now.
As Thompson rounded a corner in the Alexander Memorial Coliseum labyrinth, he came upon Williams. The big man, still clad in his uniform, said nothing. He just sank into his coach, with Williams wrapping his arms around Thompson and clapping him on the back several times. Both have been called upon to try and explain this season to the public, to tell us what's going wrong, how it feels, or how they're going to fix it. Both have been upbeat and resolute.
Now, though, they just hugged. Neither man said anything. There was nothing left to say.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of five books on Carolina basketball, including the just-released book on the 2009 national title, One Fantastic Ride. Get real-time UNC sports updates from the THM staff on Twitter.
