University of North Carolina Athletics
Brownlow: Swimming Strong
February 26, 2012 | Women's Basketball
Feb. 26, 2012
By Lauren Brownlow
It seems as if Carolina has been swimming doggedly against the current all season long. They haven't made much progress trying to get upstream. Finally, in the second half against Duke, some of that progress started to show - they just couldn't make it all the way back.
Down 17 points with 13:21 to go to the No. 7 team in the nation that blew them out in Durham 20 days ago, the Tar Heels dug deep. They chipped away at the lead slowly and methodically, getting it down to 11 with 8:37 to go and five with 3:22 to go. It got as low as four, but a few bad bounces went the wrong way - a three-pointer spinning out on one end, a rebound on a Duke missed foul shot caroming to a Duke player.
"We're still swimming and we're swimming pretty strong right now," head coach Sylvia Hatchell said. "We really are. The hard part is hopefully over for us. We've survived."
Carolina has survived perhaps the toughest ACC schedule in recent memory. The Tar Heels finished fifth in the league but had two games against four of the other top six teams. And they've done all this despite a ridiculous rash of injuries. Sports information director Bobby Hundley calculated that injured players have missed a total of 84 games this season.
"We could go ten years and that not happen," Hatchell said. "So we really survived a really tough stretch here but it's a new season, it's tournament time, it's anybody's game. Anybody can win. It's a short season and we've just got to go out there and do what we know we can do."
Hatchell's teams have traditionally done very well in the postseason, reaching 14 of the last 18 ACC Tournament championship games. The Tar Heels are 10-3 in the ACC Tournament in the last five years and 9-5 in the NCAA Tournament, winning at least one game in each four of the last five years and multiple games three of the last five years.
This team has improved both from a basketball perspective and a mental perspective, eliminating mistakes and gaining confidence each time out. Freshman Brittany Rountree got hot and with senior Chay Shegog exhorting her to shoot, she did just that and made 5-of-7 three's that keyed Carolina's comeback. She also got into the paint seemingly at will and dished off to open teammates.
Carolina has lost close games in every possible way: some where Carolina have failed to come all the way back from a deficit, some where Carolina couldn't hold a late lead and some where the game was close throughout and the Tar Heels came out on the wrong end.
Where the Carolina guards struggled to break presses, they're now getting it up-court quickly and confidently. Where they failed to execute in late-game situations, they were nearly perfect against Duke tonight.
"I thought we did some good things - Brittany (Rountree) made some big shots for us and we ran a couple things at the end, got some really good looks," Hatchell said. "We fouled the right (Duke player). We did some good things but it just didn't turn out for us right."
That's just basketball, and Shegog is encouraging her teammates to remember that. This team has shown what it is capable of: in home games against the league's top four teams, Carolina lost three by a combined 19 points.
"I just want to win," Rountree said. "As a team, like Coach Hatchell said, if we would have played throughout the whole game like we played the second half, we would have won. So if we have the right mentality and come out in the first game right after this, we should win."
"We just keep working at it," Hatchell said. "Hopefully, we'll pull some of these out."
