Well I would have never thought after our slow start that the final score would be a 27 point win. Our starters remained the same from the first game and we got an even worse result. UNLV jumped out to a 13-0 advantage and hit their first 3 3 pointers. They only made 5 more 3 pointers in the entire game though and finished 8-37 from behind the arc. That’s 21.6%. That isn’t good. Give our defense a lot of credit, but they also missed some wide open shots. Our defense was a lot better minus the first 10 or so minutes. I don’t know why but our teams have a habit of getting sucked into the lane on the weak side which leads to wide open 3s when the ball is skipped cross court. We have a bad habit of over helping and there were times when our guards just looked lost. Luckily UNLV went cold. We also got beat overplaying. Love went for a steal at the beginning of the game, missed, and it ended up with his man having an “and one” opportunity. UNLV also got an easy backdoor lay up on an overplay in the second half. We did do a better job of closing out on shooters though. Leaky Black had a nice block in the first half as a result and Love had a block in the second half as well.
We didn’t get our first basket until Platek hit a 3 with 13:45 on the clock. I guess Platek read my other blog posts because he had a very good game. He had 8 points in the first half on 3-4 shooting with 2 3s. He ended up with 11 points. He was one of 4 Tar Heels in double figures. The others were Bacot, Brooks, and Davis. After an impressive opener, Sharpe looked soft. He had one point, and was bothered by UNLV’s post trap. He had back to back turnovers in the first half because of it. Brooks didn’t score until under the 8 minute mark in the first half, but ended up with 14 points and 7 rebounds. Brooks converted a 3 point play to tie the game at 22 to cap off a 22-9 run. We then committed 3 straight turnovers, Love committed two of them before taking the lead 29-27 with 3:15 to play in the first half. Love did a decent job pushing the ball and making the extra pass, but he looked like he was forcing things in comparison to his first game. Leaky Black had a really nice couple of defensive possessions at the end of the first half. He caused two turnovers on two straight UNLV possessions to close the half which led to a Brooks free throw being the last bucket of the half. Black added 5 points and 10 rebounds to go with his solid defense. We closed the half on a 15-3 run.
We opened the half on a 13-1 run to make it 50-31 and cruised from there. Kessler got more playing time because of Sharpe’s struggles and he delivered. He had 7 points on 3-3 shooting. He also had 6 rebounds and an assist. Kessler competed on the glass and also ran the floor well. There was a sequence where he dove on the floor, outcompeted his guy for the ball, and called a timeout. It is nice to see our freshmen being so aggressive. Bacot had a quiet game. I say quiet, but his numbers were really solid. He went 4-4 from the field with 14 points and 5 rebounds. Davis led the team with 16 points and went 3-4 from behind the arc. He added 6 rebounds as well. Walton made the only 3 he attempted. Johnson saw his first minutes with under 8 minutes to go in the game, and struggled on the defensive side of the ball. If he can’t get that figured out then he won’t see the floor much.
Our ball movement was noticeably better tonight. Again there was an effort to pound the ball down low which needs to be the mantra every game. We wore down UNLV like we did Charleston. We may have one of the best front courts in the country. Just imagine if all our post players are on on the same night. I wouldn’t want to be on the opposing side of that. We out-rebounded UNLV 55-35 with 20 offensive rebounds. We had 7 steals and 5 blocks, but committed 16 turnovers. Turnovers and free throws were bright spots in the first game, not so much this game. We went 21-32 on free throws at 65.6%. That isn’t going to get the job done in a close game. There were several occasions where we missed both free throws. I know Sharpe and Love were both guilty of this. Brooks may have been too. All and all it was a lot better game if you take away the slow start. Our response to that was impressive especially considering we have a young team. We will play the winner of the Stanford vs. Alabama game tonight at 4pm tomorrow. Seeing that I have a job and watching basketball on the clock is frowned upon, I most likely won’t be able to watch the game tomorrow. If I lived in NC still I may be able to explain it, but college basketball isn’t really big in Delaware. Shocker I know. I will still be rooting them on by checking my espn app every 5 minutes.
Let me leave you with a little food for thought. This would be an unlikely situation, but would be interesting to see. While discussing our post dominance, I brought up the idea of “going big” or should I say bigger to my dad, a fellow unc basketball enthusiast and unc alumni. What if we could have a big at positions 3-5 and love at the 1 and davis at the 2. My choices after this game would be brooks at the 3, kessler at the 4 and bacot at the 5. Obviously would create some defensive problems for brooks having to guard the 3, but a 2-3 zone would work nicely.
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