North Carolina Tar Heels: Meeks Beats State in Return
The North Carolina Tar Heels maintained the driver seat in the ACC and became the only undefeated team in league play with a win over State.
The North Carolina Tar Heels defeated the NC State Wolfpack 67-55. It was a game with a couple of interesting storylines to follow as it went on.
First was the return of Bad Brice. Brice Johnson only got six points on the night and once again had some early foul trouble. That was just after we had credited him for not pulling this kind of performance all that often.
Johnson was joined in the MIA list by Marcus Paige and Justin Jackson. Three of the North Carolina starting five had down games. Jackson got some redemption late, but Paige could not find a shot that would go in for him the entire game. Paige finished with three points. It was the lack of finish by these three players that kept this game at a twelve point finish.
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State did not play inspired ball on the other end. They ran into trouble with the North Carolina defense and fouls. Anthony ‘Cat’ Barber was almost missing in the second half. Part of that was the application of ball pressure by Nate Britt, but the rest of it was just a failure to get Barber some looks. He mostly would come down the court, pass the ball off and never see it again.
State was handicapped in the matchup by another item. Usually a running team themselves, Mark Gottfried tried to keep the game from turning into a track meet since the Tar Heels had the deeper bench. A look at the score would suggest that he succeeded, but there were a number of missed Tar Heel shots that suggest otherwise. The slower pace did not seem to suit State either.
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A third item for the Wolfpack was foul trouble. Both Abdul-Malik Abu (12 points, 14 rebounds) and BeeJay Anya found themselves in foul trouble which prevented the State inside defense from being as stingy. The result was the breakthrough of Kennedy Meeks in his first game back from injury. Meeks scored twenty-three attacking the inside and the glass. Isaiah Hicks came off the bench to add ten more. The two accounted for roughly half of Tar Heel scoring in the game.
For the Heels, the slow night by Paige was alleviated by the sharp shooting of Joel Berry in the first half. The twelve points he scored in threes would be exactly the margin of victory when the game was over. Despite the ragged play, this was a tie game at half and State hung around for much of the second half.
For the Tar Heels it is 5-0 in conference and one rival down. Meeks appeared to tweak his knee late in the game and we will have to see what comes of that.
For State it is 0-5 and questions still must be answered if they are going to turn around their season and still make the NCAA Tournament.