University of North Carolina Athletics
Brownlow: Meeting Of The Minds
March 6, 2011 | Women's Basketball
March 6, 2011
By Lauren Brownlow
This Carolina team is absolutely unrecognizable from the one that took the floor on Senior Night and had a flat performance against Georgia Tech. It's even a different group from the one lost a tough one to Duke at Cameron.
But that Duke game gave this team a glimmer of hope of what they could accomplish with consistent effort and fight, even if they weren't playing well. The scary thing is that the Tar Heels haven't always been perfect in this ACC Tournament - they were 2-of-14 from three and beat the No. 10 team in the country by 26 points - but they are all on the same page.
"We had our team meeting (last week) and we basically sat down and told each other what our role was," Cetera DeGraffenreid said. "Coach Hatchell sat down with the seniors too and told us what we need to do on the court to win the championship. We're just trying to play team basketball and win it."
DeGraffenreid has been brilliant and completely in control of the team on both ends. She is directing traffic well and more importantly, finding her offense when it is there and not forcing it when it isn't. "She's done things this Tournament she hasn't done all year as far as leading our team," Hatchell said.
And then there's the resurgent Jessica Breland. It just seemed like every single jumper that rimmed out all season long fell today, and she had 28 points on 13-of-22 shooting. Hatchell has been saying all year that they need Breland to play the way she did today, and she's capable of it.
Breland would only praise her teammates' effort in getting her the ball in rhythm rather than herself, but her performance was special enough that Miami head coach Katie Meier was surprised when she actually missed one of her long-armed, silky-smooth jumpers in the lane. "I hugged her after the game, and I said that was just an inspirational performance," Meier said. "Even I had enough perspective to understand what she's been through and how emotional and how unbelievable of a performance that was."
It's not often that head coaches talk as extensively - and positively - about opponents, as Meier did. Her Hurricanes dominated the Tar Heels in Chapel HIll on February 13th. She opened her press conference this way: "I want to talk about a really special, awesome basketball team. ... They dismantled us. They did it very maturely. They did it very athletically. They did it very smartly. They did it very physically, and they did it with finesse as well."
ACC Player of the Year Shenise Johnson had 19 points, setting a record for consecutive double-figure scoring games, but she did it on 6-of-20 shooting (4-of-13 from two-point range). She was all class as well. "They tip every pass. They block every shot underneath. They force you to settle for three's," Johnson said. "They did a great job of covering us tonight. All my credit goes to North Carolina. It's just very hard to pass or shoot over them. They were all over the place."
Carolina's assist totals had been slipping recently as the seniors were trying to do too much. Now, everyone on the team is making the extra pass. On one possession in particular, at least four Tar Heels touched it in quick succession before Breland scored.
Four games in four days is a tall order for any team. But this isn't just any team, and they are ready to face a Duke team that they have matched up very well with all year long. To win in March, it takes everyone accepting that they have to do more, whether it's focusing that much more or going just a tiny bit harder after a loose ball. It takes communication on both ends, but especially on defense where the chatter is constant now.
"They've all just stepped up their game a little bit, and that's stepped up our team a lot," Hatchell said. "I knew they still had it in them. They had not done the best they could do. But this is the time to do it."
Lauren Brownlow is the executive editor of Tar Heel Monthly.
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