North Carolina Tar Heels: Maye-Day hits on March 24th
The North Carolina Tar Heels advanced to the Elite Eight by beating the Butler Bulldogs 92-80 and getting a big contribution off their bench.
There is nothing too unusual about a North Carolina Tar Heels game being won on the backs of Justin Jackson and Joel Berry. Their last win against Butler had them both scoring in the twenties. That was news in the short run because Berry had fought ankle issues and Jackson had not quite been his lethal self from the field. However the Heels need more than those two to get the job done in these games.
The third man has been Isaiah Hicks or Kennedy Meeks. Sometimes it is just a collective team effort with contributions from Tony Bradley and the like. Against the Butler Bulldogs, it was Luke Maye. Maye is the fourth big man on the roster, but he is the only one flexible enough to shoot the ball from three point range.
The son of former quarterback Mark Maye entered the game when Hicks had picked up his second foul and had to leave. The matchups weren’t bad since Butler’s bigs were listed at 6’8” and 6’7”. They also were playing a zone where they would lose track of Maye, since normally both Tar Heel bigs worked around the paint area.
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Maye answered with a first half that the Tar Heels would need considering they lost fire in the second half of the game. He hit three three pointers and cleaned up some rebounds for more points. He had a career high of fourteen at the break. He would go on to achieve his first career double-double, the first first career double-double to be earned in the NCAAs since Julius Peppers.
The effect basically meant that the Heels did not lose any offense in the first half despite having to bench Hicks and later Bradley with fouls. Meeks also had a hard time getting going against the zone and was fouled hard on his few shot attempts. Maye, for one game, made them irrelevant.
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The Tar Heels will need big games from Meeks, Hicks, and Theo Pinson in the next round if they want to book a flight to Phoenix. The team got through this one with Maye, and signs looked a little better than they did against Arkansas last Sunday.