University of North Carolina Athletics
Women's Basketball Battles Rival Duke
June 21, 1999 | Women's Basketball
January 20, 1999
North Carolina vs. Duke
North Carolina Tar Heels
Record: 19-2 overall, 6-1 ACC
Head coach: Sylvia Hatchell
Alma mater: Carson-Newman, 1974
Record at UNC: 260-127 (13th year)
Career record: 532-207 (24th year)
Assistant head coach: Andrew Calder
Assistant coaches: Ann Hancock, Shannon Spencer
Current ranking: #7 AP, #6 USA Today
Duke Blue Devils
Record: 15-4, 7-0 ACC
Head coach: Gail Goestenkors
Alma mater: Saginaw Valley State, 1985
Record at Duke: 134-65 (seventh year)
Career record: same
Assistant coaches: Gale Valley, Joanne Boyle, Shonta Tabourn
Current ranking: #11 AP, #15 USA Today
1997-98 record: 24-8 (13-3 ACC)
News of note:
* UNC leads the ACC and is sixth in the NCAA in scoring with 85.7 points per game.
* Both North Carolina and Duke rank in the top 10 in the NCAA in scoring margin. Duke is sixth, beating teams by an average of 18.9 points and UNC is ninth, winning by an average of 18.6 points.
* The Tar Heels' home winning streak is now at 19, the fifth-longest string in the NCAA.
* Juana Brown is second in the ACC in three-point percentage at .415.
* North Carolina's Chanel Wright and Duke's Peppi Browne teamed up this summer on the USA Basketball Jones Cup squad, which won a gold medal in Taiwan.
The Rivalry:
* This is the 49th meeting between Duke and North Carolina and UNC leads the series 35-13. The two first met on Jan. 13, 1976, when the Tar Heels won 85-54 at Carmichael Auditorium. UNC has won 19 of the 22 times Duke has come to visit.
* The teams split in the 1997-98 regular season, with each winning on its home court. The most recent meeting was in the semifinals of the ACC tournament in Charlotte, where UNC won 56-52 in the lowest-scoring game of the series. Nikki Teasley led the Tar Heels in scoring with 13 points, while Juana Brown added 12 and Tracy Reid and Jessica Gaspar 11 each.
Leaders:
UNC:
Scoring: *Nikki Teasley, 15.5; Chanel Wright, 15.1; Juana Brown, 14.3; LaQuanda Barksdale, 13.0
Rebounding: Barksdale, 8.6; Jackie Higgins, 6.3
Assists: Teasley, 5.3; Wright, 2.9
Steals: *Teasley 2.95
Duke:
Scoring: Michele VanGorp, 15.4; Georgia Schweitzer, 9.9; Nicole Erickson, 9.8
Rebounding: *Peppi Brown, 6.1; VanGorp, 5.4
Assists: *Hilary Howard, 4.4
Steals: *Browne, 1.6
UNC Head to Head Virginia
19-2 record 15-4
.441 fg % .483
.404 opponent fg % .376
.312 3 pt fg % .386
.266 opponent 3 pt fg % .266
4.9 3 pt fg per game 6.0
15.7 3 pt attempts per game 15.5
.666 free throw % .697
45.0 rebound average 42.6
+3.9 rebound margin +6.1
85.7 points per game 82.2
67.1 opponent points per game 63.3
Last time out for UNC:On Monday in Charlottesville, the Tar Heels beat Virginia 79-68, despite shooting 37.8 from the field and losing Nikki Teasley to foul trouble for a nine-minute stretch in the second half.
The game marked the first time since November that UNC has shot below 40 percent from the from the field. Juana Brown, however, was hot from three-point range, draining four of her five second-half tries and totaling a team-leading 20 points for the game. With 12:22 remaining in the game and the Tar Heels up by one, Teasley went to the bench with her fourth foul. *I saw Nikki walking over to the bench and I knew I had to step up,* Brown said. Just 18 seconds later, she hit her second three of a 27-second span.
With the win, the Tar Heels are alone in second place in the ACC race.
Scouting the Blue Devils:
Duke, 7-0 in the conference, is led in scoring by 6-6 Michele VanGorp with 15.4 points per game. Peppi Browne leads the team in rebounding with 6.1 per game.
Senior guard Nicole Erickson is coming two-game span in which she averaged 22.5 points and earned her second ACC Player of the Week honor.
High (scoring) Heels:
The Tar Heels' scoring average of 85.7 points per game is the highest in the ACC and sixth-highest in the country. Three times this season Carolina has scored 100 or more points and only twice, in an 86-68 loss to UCLA and in an 87-70 loss to N.C. State, has UNC failed to score at least 75 points.
Lights + camera = action for Brown:
Television may add 10 pounds to most people, but for sophomore guard Juana Brown it adds nine points. Brown is averaging 20 points in the seven Tar Heel games that have been televised this season, compared with 11.4 in the 14 that haven't and 14.3 for all 21 games. With the cameras there to capture it, she's shooting 56.1 percent from three-point range and averaging 3.3 three-pointers per TV game.
Three times this season Brown has led the team in scoring and all three have been televised. Most recently, she hit four second-half threes to lead the team with 20 points in a 79-68 win over Virginia (Home Team Sports) on Jan. 18. She was also the leading scorer with 27 points against Kansas (ESPN2) on Nov. 15 and 26 points against Alabama (Fox Sports South) on Dec. 20.
Brown, who is from Memphis, earned a reputation last season as the team's toughest defender. This year, she has broadened her repertoire. She earned ACC Player of the Week honors in the first week of the season after averaging 22 points in wins over Akron and Kansas.
Against Florida State on Dec. 5 (Sunshine Network, incidentally), she scored a new-career-high 28 points and hit one of the three-pointers that closed a six-point gap in the game's final 30 seconds. Against Alabama, she hit six three-pointers, all in the first half.
She has hit 34 three-pointers this season, already double last year's total. Brown says she put extra work into her shooting over the summer, aiming to become more of an offensive presence, and it looks as though her additional hours in the gym are paying off. Particularly when there's a television audience looking on.
Wright moves into 9th:
Upon hitting a three-pointer with 4:42 left to play against Hampton on Dec. 31, senior Chanel Wright moved onto UNC's alltime scoring chart. Her 13 points in that game bumped her career total up to 1,556, surpassing the 1,551 points scored by 10th-place Kathy Wilson >from 1985-88.
Her total now stands at 1,642, ninth overall and 74 points behind eighth-place Marion Jones.
Wright, who also celebrated her 21st birthday on the day she moved into 10th place, is averaging 15.1 points per game. A preseason pick for All-ACC honors and a candidate for the Naismith Player of the Year award, she boasts a career scoring average of 14.3. This season, she has established new career highs for scoring (33 against St. John's) and rebounding (11 against Kansas).
North Carolina Career Scoring
1. Tracy Reid (1995-98) 2,200 2. Tonya Sampson (1991-94) 2,143 3. Charlotte Smith (1992-95) 2,094 4. Pam Leake (1983-86) 2,001 5. Tresa Brown (1981-84) 1,931 6. Kathy Crawford (1980-83) 1,806 7. Dawn Royster (1984-87) 1,778 8. Marion Jones (1994-97) 1,716 9. Chanel Wright (1996-99) 1,642 10. Bernie McGlade (1977-80) 1,604Teasley in the lead:
As she did last year, Nikki Teasley leads the Tar Heels in assists with 5.3 per game. This year, however, she is also leading the team in scoring with 15.5 points per game.
Teasley has been the team's high scorer seven times this season. Against Florida State on Dec. 5, she hit the three-pointer that tied the game at 94-94 with 13 seconds to play and forced the overtime, then scored seven points in overtime as UNC pulled away to win 112-101. She scored a career-high 32 points in that game and earned ACC Player of the Week honors the following Monday.
Teasley also leads the team, and the conference, in steals with 62. That total is already five more than she stole all of last year and puts her on pace to earn a place among UNC's top-10 season totals for steals.
Welcome back to the team:
Tracy Reid, Carolina's alltime leading scorer, will work with the team this semester as a student assistant coach while enrolled in classes to finish up her undergraduate degree in communications. Reid, who played for the Tar Heels from 1995-98, earned WNBA Rookie of the Year honors last summer while playing for the Charlotte Sting. While at UNC, she was named ACC Player of the year in both 1997 and 98.
Barksdale does it all:
Sophomore forward LaQuanda Barksdale, who averaged 10 minutes a game last season backing up All-American Tracy Reid, has made the most of her expanded role. Starting at forward, Barksdale is averaging 13.0 points and 8.6 rebounds. She set new career highs in scoring in consecutive games with 22 points against Hampton and then 26 against Wake Forest two days later. Against Hampton, she hit her first eight field goal attempts and also grabbed 11 rebounds. At Wake Forest, she was 10-for-17 from the field in the return to her hometown of Winston-Salem and also added six rebounds and three blocks.
She has totaled seven double-doubles and is tied with 6-6 N.C. State center Summer Erb for the most this season. Her standout performances include a 16 point, 19 rebound outing against Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. Her boards (9 offensive) in that game tied a Hart Recreation Center record. Against Virginia on Jan. 18, she had a double-double before halftime and went on to total 17 points and 15 rebounds for the game.
Comfortable Carmichael:
The Tar Heels have won 19 straight home games, the fourth-longest such streak in the country. Following Old Dominion's homecourt loss to Tennessee on Tuesday, only Grambling (48), Tennessee (34) and Nebraska (25) have longer streaks.
UNC's last homecourt loss was over a year ago, to Virginia in triple overtime on Jan. 15, 1998. All but one of the wins in that streak have come at Carmichael Auditorium; UNC beat Georgia Tech 85-58 at the Smith Center on Feb. 8 after the Carmichael floor was damaged as the result of a fire in the building.
North Carolina hasn't lost to a non-conference opponent at home since Holy Cross won 81-77 at Carmichael on Jan. 2, 1991, a streak of 55 games.
Watching the polls:
North Carolina now sits at seventh in the AP poll and sixth in the USA Today/ESPN poll. The Tar Heels dropped one spot in the AP poll following the loss to N.C. State.
The Tar Heels started the year ranked No. 7 in the preseason coaches' poll and No. 10 in the preseason AP poll. The Tar Heels moved up to fifth in both polls after beating Kansas and fell after the loss to UCLA.
Week AP USA Today preseason 10 7 11/16 5 7 11/23 5 5 11/30 9 8 12/7 7 7 12/14 7 6 12/21 6 6 12/28 6 6 1/4 6 6 1/11 7 6 1/18 7 6Busy schedule:
The Tar Heels played 16 games in November and December, more than any other Division I women's team in the country and more than any Tar Heel team had ever played before the start of the new year.
Upping the total were four exempt games*one in the State Farm Tip-off Classic and three in the Rainbow Wahine Classic*plus two December conference games.
UNC in the NCAA Standings (Jan. 18):
Team scoring offense 6th (85.7) Scoring margin 9th (18.6) Won/lost percentage 8th (.905)UNC in the ACC Standings:
North Carolina is the only school in the conference to rank among the top five in the ACC in every category. (Standings of Jan. 19)
Team scoring offense 1st (85.7) Steals 1st (12.6) Turnover margin 1st (6.7) Scoring margin 3rd (18.6) Three-pointers per game 3rd (4.9) Field goal percentage 4th (.441) locked shots 4th (3.3) Free throw percentage 5th (.666) Rebound margin 5th (3.9) Scoring defense 5th (67.1) Field goal percentage defense 5th (.404) Three-point percentage 5th (.312)Individual ACC rankings:
Scoring: Nikki Teasley, 5th (15.5), Chanel Wright, 10th (15.1), Juana Brown, 12th (14.3); LaQuanda Barksdale, 15th (13.0)
Rebounds: Barksdale, T3rd (8.6)
Free throw percentage: Jessica Gaspar, 3rd (.800) Wright, 5th (.756)
Assists: Teasley, 2nd (5.3)
Steals: Teasley, 1st (3.0); Gaspar, 4th (2.1)
Blocks: Barksdale, 5th (1.1)
Three-point %: Brown, 2nd (.415); Teasley, 7th (.331)
Threes per game: Teasley, 3rd (1.9); Brown 7th (1.6)
Team captains:
The Tar Heel captains for this season are seniors Yanick Clay, Jessica Gaspar and Chanel Wright, and sophomore Nikki Teasley.
Hatchell's 250th UNC win:
North Carolina's win over Florida State on Dec. 5 marked Sylvia Hatchell's 250th victory at the Tar Heel helm.
Additionally, the win over Georgia Tech on Dec. 3 was Hatchell's 100th regular season ACC victory at North Carolina.
Hatchell took over the reins prior to the 1986-87 season and earned her first win in the season opener, 96-79 over Northwestern State in the LSU Crawfish Classic on Nov. 28, 1986.
Over her 12 years in Chapel Hill, Hatchell's teams have averaged 20 wins per season. In the past seven seasons, the Tar Heels have averaged 25 wins.
Hatchell, a native of Gastonia, N.C., and a 1974 graduate of Carson-Newman, has a career record of 532-208. She began her career as a junior varsity coach while earning a master's degree at the University of Tennessee, then went on to earn AIAW and NAIA national championships at Francis Marion before settling at North Carolina. Upon leading the Tar Heels to an NCAA title in 1994, she became the only basketball coach to claim AIAW, NAIA and NCAA Division I titles She earned her 500th career win on Jan. 22, 1998, with a 67-64 win over N.C. State.
Gaspar great at the line:
Senior guard Jessica Gaspar is shooting .852 from the line in ACC games, second best in the league. Her average of .800 for all games ranks third in the ACC overall, with a season average of .800, the best on the UNC team.
Gaspar is within shooting range of the best free throw season ever by a UNC player, a record currently held by Tonya Sampson's .818 during the 1993-94 season.
Her current career average of .785 is equal to the UNC record, set by Eileen McCann from 1981-84.
Gaspar is 60-75 from the line this season and 23-27 in the team's ACC games. Dating back to the Florida State game on Dec. 3, she has hit 28 of her last 31 attempts.
Aloha, Hawaii:
The Tar Heels spent Thanksgiving week in Hawaii, competing in the Rainbow Wahine Classic in Honolulu. There, the Tar Heels beat St. John's 77-67 on Nov. 27, lost 86-68 to UCLA on Nov. 28 and beat host Hawaii 75-72 on Nov. 29 to claim third place in the tournament.
Senior Chanel Wright scored a career-high 33 points in the St. John's game and earned a spot on the all-tournament team.
Other standout performances:
* LaQuanda Barksdale registered double-doubles against UCLA (17/13) and Hawaii (14/11).
* After shooting 0-for-7 in the first half against Hawaii, Nikki Teasley scored 18 points in the second half to lead the Tar Heels to a 75-72 win.
* Jackie Higgins came off the bench to average 12 points and 7.6 rebounds for the tournament.
In between games, players learned the hula at a luau and several also tried surfing.
Holiday cheers:
Since 1986, when Sylvia Hatchell took over as UNC's coach, the Tar Heels are a combined 83-13 in games played during the month of December. Seven times in the last nine years, including both the 1998-99 and the 1997-98 seasons, Carolina has made it through December undefeated.
In line for honors:
Senior Chanel Wright and sophomore Nikki Teasley were both named preseason candidates for the Naismith College Basketball Player of the Year award and for All-ACC honors.
North Carolina is one of only three schools nationally and the only one in the ACC to place two players among the top 20 candidates for the Naismith award. UNC is also the only school to place two players on the preseason All-ACC team.
Both Wright and Teasley are former ACC Rookies of the Year.
New career highs:
Four of UNC's regular starters have already logged career-high performances this season.
*Senior Chanel Wright scored 33 points against St. John's and grabbed 11 rebounds against Kansas, both career bests.
*Sophomore LaQuanda Barksdale scored a career-high 26 points against Wake Forest. She pulled down a career-best 19 rebounds against Holy Cross.
* Sophomore Juana Brown scored a career-best 28 points against Florida State.
* Sophomore Nikki Teasley scored a career-high 32 points against Florida State and grabbed a career-high 11 rebounds against Syracuse.
Higgins on target:
Sophomore forward Jackie Higgins, a junior college All-America last season, is shooting a team-best 51.9 percent from the field and providing 9.6 points per game off the bench. Her 6.3 rebounding average is second best on the team.
At 6-feet, she's regularly asked to defend and shoot over players four, six and even 10 inches taller. Still, Higgins has put in her share of strong performances, and not just in the weight room, where she has broken most of the team's lifting records. During the Tar Heels' three games in Hawaii, Higgins came off the bench to average 12 points and 7.6 rebounds. Against Tennessee State, she grabbed a season-high 13 rebounds and against Hampton she totaled a season-high 14 points. Against Clemson on Jan. 4, she scored 12 points and pulled down 11 rebounds for her second double-double of the season. Against N.C. State, she tied her career high with 14 points.
Overtime victory:
The 112 points North Carolina scored against Florida State on Dec. 5 was UNC's highest score since the 1996-97 season. The total is the ninth-highest in the NCAA this season.
Nikki Teasley led the Tar Heels against the Seminoles with a career-high 32 points in 42 minutes of play while Juana Brown scored 28 points, also a career-high, and Chanel Wright scored 26.
The Tar Heels trailed by six with 21 seconds to play before Brown hit a three-pointer then stole the ball on Florida State's next possession. A three by Teasley tied the game with 13 seconds to play and UNC outscored FSU 18-7 in overtime.
The last time the Tar Heels scored at least 112 points was on Nov. 26, 1996, when they beat Radford 113-67.
Early signees for the Tar Heels:
* Coretta Brown, 5-8 point guard
Statesboro, Ga., Southeast Bulloch High
* Courtney Chambers, 5-9 guard
Asheville, N.C., T.C. Roberson High
* Cherie Lea, 5-9 guard
lanch, N.C., Bartlett Yancey Senior High
* Jennifer Thomas, 6-0 forward
Detroit, Mich., Detroit Country Day School
ACC Champs Again and Again:
In an impressive run, North Carolina has won four of the past five ACC Tournament championships. To claim their most recent, in 1998, the Tar Heels won three straight games against ranked teams: 76-56 over No. 15 Virginia, 56-52 over No. 8 Duke and 81-50 over No. 16 Clemson. Tracy Reid was the tournament MVP and was joined on the all-tournament team by Nikki Teasley and Chanel Wright. Juana Brown earned second-team honors.
Recapping UNC's NCAA Tournament:
North Carolina reached the Mideast Regional Final last season before falling 76-70 to the Tennessee team that went on to win the NCAA title. UNC led by 12 with 7:34 to play before the Lady Vols stormed back to win the game. Even though UNC didn't reach the Final Four, the Tar Heels were ranked No. 3 in the final coaches' poll.
En route to the regional final, North Carolina toppled Howard 91-71 in the first round, Florida International 85-72 in the second and Illinois 80-74 in the regional semifinal.
The NCAA appearance was North Carolina's 11th overall and its seventh in 12 years under coach Sylvia Hatchell.
