University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Hampton An Unusual Winner
November 17, 2001 | Men's Basketball
Nov. 17, 2001
By Adam Lucas
TarHeelBlue.com
The scariest thing about Friday night's Carolina-Hampton box score is how good it looked on the Hampton side.
Not good as in, "Hey, they played fantastic." But good as in, "If Hampton plays like that, the Heels are going to win."
When opponents put up these numbers, they don't usually translate into wins in the Smith Center: 15.4 percent from the three-point line in the second half, 25 percent for the game. 31.6 percent from the field in the second half, 38.9 percent for the game.
Jason Capel had a double-double, Jackie Manuel played some floor-scraping defense, and Melvin Scott did a solid job running the team in his ten minutes of play.
And that's about it for the good news.
Carolina fans are used to a team coming into the Dean Dome about once per year and catching on fire from the perimeter. When that happens, it's easy to shrug it off as an annual rite of passage, kind of like how you always hit your knee on the coffee table when you forget it's there.
This wasn't one of those games. Hampton has a grand total of 168 games of Division I competition under their belt. The Pirates played without one of their best players, as second team preseason All-MEAC pick Cleveland Davis was suspended for the game.
Despite their big win over Iowa State in last year's NCAA Tournament, Hampton is still so new to big-time basketball that head coach Steve Merfeld looked a little befuddled when he entered the media room after the game.
"Well, I'm not really used to this," he said. "I guess I could start with some general comments...ah, I don't know."
General comments would probably be best. Here's a general comment: the Tar Heels just sealed the fact that for the next month, they are going to face a bucketload of zone defenses. The book is out--sag back and let the Heels fire away from the perimeter.
Hampton's zone wasn't particularly active. It didn't feature arm-waving traps and ball-hawking pressure. It was just a sagging zone, but it created 16 UNC turnovers and uncountable unwise shots.
Actually, the unwise shots were countable. Carolina fired up 21 three-pointers in the first half. They wound up attempting the most three-pointers in school history, as the 34 attempts eclipsed the 31 trifectas taken in 1996 against Florida State.
It was obviously a point of emphasis at halftime, as the attempts decreased even after the frantic last minutes, when shots were being jacked up at a breakneck pace.
"It was just frustrating out there," Kris Lang said. "Guys were shooting and we just weren't hitting them...we're a great shooting team. That's just not going to happen every night."
It can't. Jason Capel, who was supposed to be assuming some of the big shot responsibilities relinquished by Joseph Forte, hit only one-of-nine three-pointers. Brian Morrison hit 2-of-10 from beyond the arc. Kris Lang took zero free throws.
Part of the correction is going to have to come on the defensive end. Preseason was filled with talk of a more athletic team, of a defense that was going to force turnovers and control the game's tempo.
But Hampton had only ten turnovers, and only Manuel and Scott really looked like defenders who could force the issue if necessary.
At least on the Hampton side, the stat sheet didn't look especially ugly on Friday night. Which is exactly why the outcome seemed so shocking.
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