University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: Sweet 16 Notebook
March 25, 2016 | Men's Basketball
By Adam Lucas
The much-talked about matchup between Marcus Paige and Indiana senior guard Yogi Ferrell may be over before it started. During Thursday's media session, both Ferrell and Paige were asked about facing each other, a relationship that goes back to at least ninth grade.
Roy Williams deferred any discussion of a specific one-on-one matchup with his usual response: "We haven't talked about it yet. I will give them the matchups when I write the names on the board in the locker room before the game."
Ferrell described his strategy for guarding Paige: "You can't let him catch the ball. When he catches the ball, anything can happen for his team...The main thing with him is to limit his touches and catches."
But then Paige walked into the media room and short-circuited some of the stories that had probably already been written. "That won't be my initial matchup," the Tar Heel senior said. "That will be Joel Berry. I will spend some time on him throughout the game."
So, if Roy Williams intends to start Berry on Ferrell, that means Paige is likely to get the assignment on either Nick Zeisloft, a senior, or sophomore Robert Johnson, whose status is uncertain due to injury.
Post battle: But if the Ferrell-Paige battle doesn't unfold, there's still an appealing matchup coming in the paint, where Hoosier freshman Thomas Bryant will have to deal with Brice Johnson. Bryant is coming off a 19-point, five-rebound performance against Kentucky in the second round.
"It feels great to go against them," Bryant said. "Brice Johnson is a great athlete who gets out in transition and carves out space in the paint."
Johnson also mentioned Bryant's ability to play in transition; Friday night's matchup is setting up to be one of the most uptempo games of the 2015-16 season.
Injury update: Indiana sophomore Robert Johnson did not go through the Hoosiers' open practice. Johnson, who is shooting 44.7 percent from the three-point line, is a game time decision for Friday night's game.
No history: Despite the best efforts of multiple members of the media, the Tar Heels weren't especially interested in discussing the program's NCAA Tournament history against Indiana, which includes losses in 1981 and 1984. Both Johnson and Paige said they had no knowledge of those games other than the outcomes.
"If I was to talk to them about 1981 and 1984, I don't know if they understand that," Williams said. "Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm not talking to them about that. I'm talking about this year. The historical significance comes for us, and for your readers. It doesn't come for 17-, 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds."
Notes: There were the usual open practice hijinks, including the Tar Heels trying to squeeze a dozen basketballs into one rim and Joel James for some reason wearing a number-2 practice jersey that very much looked like it was sized to fit the current occupant of that number, Joel Berry...
Indiana coach Tom Crean repeated an interesting observation about Carolina he first made earlier this week: "One of the things that separates them is how well they pass the ball."...A national writer took Roy Williams by surprise with the news that the Tar Heels were currently in the middle of the second-longest Final Four drought for the program in the past 50 years. The longest was the gap between the 1982 and 1991 Final Fours...Carolina did go through a very casual open practice for 50 minutes in front of a partisan Wells Fargo Center crowd, but the team's primary practice took place earlier in the day at Drexel.
