University of North Carolina Athletics
North Carolina
Boston College
No. 3 UNC Cruises Past BC
January 17, 2008 | Women's Basketball
Jan. 17, 2008
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (AP) - North Carolina stole passes, forced turnovers and turned them into easy baskets. It was vintage Tar Heels basketball - and exactly what they will need to survive an upcoming stretch of tough games.
Freshman Cetera DeGraffenreid scored a season-high 20 points and No. 3 North Carolina tuned up for its showdown with top-ranked Connecticut by routing Boston College 87-59 on Thursday night for its eighth straight win.
"We showed out there how we can play," coach Sylvia Hatchell said. "We've just got to do it for 40 minutes."
Rashanda McCants had 19 points and Jessica Breland scored 12 of her 18 in the decisive first half for the Tar Heels (17-1, 4-0 Atlantic Coast Conference).
The nation's highest-scoring team shot nearly 48 percent, held the Eagles without a field goal for more than 11 minutes and broke the game open by closing the half with 13 straight points as part of a 30-1 run that bridged halftime.
The big run "helped us get pumped up a little bit more, because we were not making shots at the time," McCants said. "That streak got us working on defense more, (DeGraffenreid) got some steals ... and it just upped our intensity."
The Tar Heels might've had a good reason for looking past a BC team they beat by 22 points last season - three of North Carolina's next four games are against UConn on Monday, then No. 4 Maryland and No. 10 Duke - but that didn't happen. Hatchell's team turned up the tempo, generating 25 points off the Eagles' 31 turnovers.
"We're looking to keep getting better for tournament time," Hatchell said. "These next couple of weeks will be tough, but it'll make us better and get us ready, because we want to get back to the Final Four and (win) another ACC championship."
North Carolina grew its lead methodically, taking a 20-point advantage on its first shot of the second half, Heather Claytor's 3-pointer that made it 46-26, and then pushing it to 30 about 4 1/2 minutes later on McCants' 3.
Reserve Rebecca Miles had 16 points and 10 rebounds and Mickel Picco added 15 points and made three 3-pointers for sloppy Boston College (14-5, 2-2), which had 10 turnovers during the Tar Heels' dominating stretch.
"You can't, with a team like (North Carolina), throw the ball away," BC coach Cathy Inglese said. "You get things off of layups, you get things off of boards. With Carolina, you've got to take care of the ball. ... They just capitalized on it quickly, and that's what they do very well."
After Corey Rusin's baseline jumper at 5:45 of the first half pulled BC to 30-26, the Eagles didn't hit anything from the floor until Picco's layup with 14:28 left. By then, the Tar Heels' lead surpassed 30 points and it was all but over.
BC has lost two of three since winning six straight and had its most turnovers since giving it away 33 times in a loss to Notre Dame in November.
Claytor finished with 10 points for North Carolina while DeGraffenreid, her backcourt mate who was the high school player of the year in North Carolina last season, surpassed the 19 points she scored in November against the College of Charleston.
"I just kept taking it to the basket," DeGraffenreid said. Hatchell "told me to drive, instead of staying outside and not doing anything. ... It's a green light to shoot, pass, create, whatever, but basically, we were just creating for the open player and, if not, taking it all the way to the hoop."
Breland led North Carolina's surge late in the first half, scoring eight points during that segment of the run and starting it with a nifty fadeaway putback of a miss by McCants that made it 32-26. She later hit two free throws with 37.9 seconds left to extend the lead to 43-26. Then, she seemingly handed off the reins to McCants, who took over early in the second half, scoring 10 points in the first five minutes.
