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No. 4 Tar Heels Hold Back Wolfpack, 76-63
February 28, 2001 | Men's Basketball
Feb. 28, 2001
By DAVID DROSCHAK
AP Sports Writer
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - No. 4 North Carolina was worrying about making the NCAA tournament field at this time a year ago, not ruling it.
What a difference a year makes.
Joseph Forte scored 27 points and Matt Doherty became the first coach to win or share an ACC regular-season title in his first season as the Tar Heels beat North Carolina 76-63 Wednesday night.
"I would rather be on top than at the bottom," senior center Brendan Haywood said. "Last year at this time we were struggling. Now, we're just trying to see if we're going to be a No. 1 or a No. 2 seed. That's definitely a better feeling."
The Tar Heels (23-4, 13-2 Atlantic Coast Conference) captured the No. 1 seed in next week's ACC tournament in Atlanta with the win, shooting 57 percent to rebound from a 20-point loss to No. 7 Virginia over the weekend.
No coach in the storied league - not Dean Smith, Mike Krzyzewski, Jim Valvano, Lefty Driesell, Norm Sloan nor Everett Case - ever had as successful first season as the 39-year-old Doherty.
"He's not going to say anything about it because he wants us to get the credit," Haywood said. "A lot of stuff this year has been about him. I know he doesn't like that because he knows without players he can't do anything. But I feel he should get a lot of credit."
Duke could tie North Carolina in the league standings with a victory at the Smith Center on Sunday, but North Carolina would win the tie-breaker because of its season sweep of Maryland.
"You don't want to share anything and you especially don't want to share it with Duke," Haywood said of the ACC regular-season title. "If we win that game we'll have a lot of momentum heading into the ACC tournament."
Forte had 19 points in the second half, while Ronald Curry added a career-high 14 as the Tar Heels have now won or shared 23 ACC regular-season crowns in the league's 48 years.
"I was patient and let the game come to me in the first half, then I attacked in the second half," Forte said.
The Wolfpack (13-14, 5-10) played the Tar Heels even for most of the first half and trailed by seven at the break, but poor shooting once again did in N.C. State, which hasn't won consecutive games since late December.
North Carolina led 46-38 with 15:08 left. N.C. State then hit just one of its next 13 shots as the Tar Heels took control with a 12-4 run to go up by 14 points.
"There were some shots that were questionable, some that were pretty good and probably a third category of shots that looked pretty good, but it's hard to estimate the impact of Brendan Haywood around the basket," said Wolfpack coach Herb Sendek, who fell to 1-11 against the Tar Heels.
Forte had a three-point play and hit a baseline floater during the end of the spurt.
N.C. State never got it under double digits the rest of the way in losing for the seventh straight time to North Carolina - the longest streak by the Tar Heels against the Wolfpack since 1981-83.
Ron Kelley, plagued with knee problems for much of the last two seasons, had his best game of the year for N.C. State, scoring 10 points and grabbing 12 rebounds.
The loss means the Wolfpack will be the seventh seed in the ACC tournament and play second-seeded Duke.
The teams combined for 26 turnovers in the opening 20 minutes of their 197th meeting. It was similar to the first one a month ago in Raleigh in which each club posted season-low point totals in a 60-52 North Carolina victory.
The Tar Heels took more than 12 minutes to recover offensively from a miserable 24-point second half against the Cavaliers on Sunday, turning it over 10 times in 10 1/2 minutes and scoring just 12 points to fall behind by five.
"I think our heads were right," Doherty said. "I know people were trying to make some things our of different comments (after the Virginia loss), but our team was together. If you didn't see that tonight then you weren't watching."
But the Wolfpack had turnover problems of its own over the last 6:08 of the half, coughing it up seven times as the Tar Heels used a 16-3 run to grab the halftime lead.
Curry's 11 first-half points matched his season high as he hit all three shots from the field and his five free throws.
