University of North Carolina Athletics
Turner's Take: Road Wild
January 20, 2017 | Men's Basketball, Featured Writers, Turner Walston
by Turner Walston
The battlegrounds of ACC basketball have not been kind to visiting teams in the 2016-17 season. In 44 ACC games played, road teams are 13-31. Seven teams are winless on the road, and only Notre Dame (3-1), North Carolina (2-1) and Virginia (2-1) boast multiple road wins. Those teams combined boast more than half of the league's 13 total road wins. No team is undefeated away from home. Every team wants to win every game, of course, but it's particularly important to hold court in your house. So if you can get them, road wins are like money in the bank.
The Tar Heels stumbled out of the block on New Year's Eve, dropping a game they should have won at Georgia Tech. But no matter the opponent, the road is tough in the ACC. And since then, Carolina has wins at Clemson and Wake Forest. It took overtime for the Tar Heels to win at Clemson; the Tigers sit at 1-5 in conference play. They saw a 19-point lead dwindle to one before winning in Winston-Salem. "It's a road game in the ACC," Justin Jackson said after that tilt. An aggressive Demon Deacons offense and Tar Heel foul trouble allowed the home team back into the game, but big shots and big blocks earned a road win. "In that type of game, in that type of environment . . . it was loud out there and they definitely came out to play," Jackson said. "For us to come out on top, it was really good."
The road is not easy for anyone: last year's Tar Heels were 6-3 on the road, with wins at Florida State, Syracuse, Virginia Tech, Boston College, NC State and Duke and losses to Louisville, Notre Dame and Virginia. They finished atop the league's standings with a 14-4 record, a game ahead of the Cavaliers.
At 2-1 on the road and 5-1 in the ACC, the 16-17 Tar Heels have half of their remaining games on the road. They'll hop into the fast lane Saturday at Boston College before traveling to Miami for a January 28 one night stand bash at the beach with the Hurricanes. February 9, the Duke Blue Devils will be looking for payback from last year's season finale, and six days later the Wolfpack will attempt a backlash for Carolina's 51-point win back on January 8. Pittsburgh and Virginia await on February 25 and 27. That's a fully-loaded survivor series, with five road games against teams in the top 80 in Ken Pomeroy's current college basketball ratings, and three of those against teams in the top 34. Duke (12) and Virginia (5) stick out as potential roadblocks, and the Tar Heels will face those teams twice each in fewer than four weeks. The season culminates with another main event when the Blue Devils visit Chapel Hill for bragging rights on March 4.
Roy Williams and the Tar Heels have been complimentary and appreciative of the Dean E. Smith Center crowds at recent games: for the bad-blood rivalry with NC State, the super brawl with giant Florida State and the slamboree with Syracuse, from which the Tar Heels emerged with three wins. But though Carolina fans often travel well, opposing fans show no mercy. On the road, it's up to the team itself to muster the energy they might get from a Smith Center crowd. "I just think it's an inner circle thing you've got to focus on," Kennedy Meeks said Friday. "When everybody's buying in and everybody's focused on the game, I think the energy is enough from the bench . . . Carolina has fans all over the place, so I think we'll definitely have fans there, but we had a lot of fans at Georgia Tech and we lost that game, so you can't really focus on the crowd as much. You've got to know you're always going to have people there to support you, but I think it always starts with the inner circle."
That means setting the tempo from the jump. Carolina wants to run, to impose its tempo on other teams. Furthermore, they need to rebound. In the Tar Heels' current five-game win streak, they have out-rebounded opponents by better than 16 boards per game. In last week's wins over Florida State and Syracuse, Carolina won the rebounding battle by 22 and 20, respectively.
Commanding the glass and getting out to run early positions the Tar Heels to win, regardless of venue. "I think coming out early and making them adjust to us (will be key)," Meeks said. "I think even though they have home court advantage, our main objective is to dominate the boards, definitely play our game and run the court, and I think we're capable of doing that. The last couple games we've done a great job."
Now, the goal is to keep it up. Oh, and to keep fouls from going over the limit, as the Tar Heels are most effective when their big men can stay involved. That includes Tony Bradley, who with a healthy practice Friday was slated to return to the lineup at Boston College.
Should the Tar Heels emerge from this spring stampede by winning the games they're supposed to, they will position themselves for a top-four seed for the ACC's first-ever takeover of Brooklyn at the conference tournament. But the ACC is one of the nation's top conferences. Every day is judgment day, and as we saw on New Year's Eve, anything can happen. The road is wild.
