University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Loud, Long Night For Heels
March 5, 2003 | Men's Basketball
March 5, 2003
By Adam Lucas
WINSTON-SALEM--Memo to the Wake Forest sports marketing staff: as far as Carolina is concerned, you didn't have to add the ear-shattering Harley or the pulsating strobe lights or the amped-up in-game music in order to make Lawrence Joel Coliseum a tough place to play.
After all, the Tar Heels took a national championship team into the Joel in 1993 and emerged with a 26-point whipping at the hands of the Deacs. In fact, for three of the five years in 1993 and after, Wake hosted a 20-plus point victory over Carolina. Two of those three losing Tar Heel teams were Final Four teams--the Wake teams that beat them, of course, were not.
So it was almost comforting when the team bus pulled into the Lawrence Joel parking lot and was greeted by a stout-lunged Deacon fan yelling at every Tar Heel from across the street (safely out of arm's reach, of course). Give this guy credit. He did his homework, and recognized all the players on a first-name basis. And after the 75-60 loss, even in the rain, he was right back in his spot across the street, providing Byron Sanders with some helpful alternative uses for the crutches Sanders used to limp out to the bus.
Wake has done perhaps more than any other team in the Atlantic Coast Conference to remake their home court advantage over the past five years. Where they used to have just a few guys like the leather-lunged parking lot loiterer, they've now got a coliseum full of them. The student section even knew what kind of cars the Carolina players drive. Now that's research.
Unfortunately, Skip Prosser and his team were similarly well prepared. The Deacs harassed Raymond Felton into perhaps his most average game as a Tar Heel and played a sticky defense that limited Carolina to 30 percent shooting in the second half. Every pass was contested, no cut into the lane went unbumped, and every penetration attempt was met with a body and a hand check.
For Carolina's defense, instead of a sense of relief when Josh Howard went 3 of 11 in the first half, there was more of a sense of foreboding that he would catch fire in the second half. Of course, he did, hitting 7 of 10 second half shots and finishing with 24 points.
Carolina's potential answer to Howard, Rashad McCants, started out hot with five quick points. It looked like he was going to catch fire and provide a lift that this team has desperately needed on offense.
ut then, in a flurry of turnovers and missed shots that made up a nearly two-minute stretch in the second half when the Heels were unable to trim into Wake's 44-42 lead, something happened. And that's what seems to bite this team--something. It's always something. After a pair of McCants free throws with 17 minutes left in the half, Carolina didn't score again until Jawad Williams hit a three-pointer almost six minutes later, by which time McCants had picked up his fourth foul.
"I really felt like this was going to be my breakout game," McCants said. "I felt really good coming in. The only thing that was going to stop me was foul trouble...We're always in the game until the last three or four minutes. Then something happens."
"It seems like one thing doesn't happen right, and then another thing happens, and you can feel it slipping away," said David Noel. "At times like that you have to disregard those things and play your heart out."
What the Heels can feel slipping away now is the postseason, and with Duke coming to the Smith Center on Sunday, it's not going to get any easier, as the obsessive guy in the parking lot was quick to point out after the game.
Just another happy trip to Winston.
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly and can be reached at alucas@tarheelmonthly.com. To subscribe to Tar Heel Monthly, click here.
