The men’s basketball team dropped a hard-fought battle to North Carolina 93-76 Saturday afternoon at the RBC Center. N.C. State fell behind early and then fought back several times, but the No. 5 Tar Heels were too strong in the end.
Both teams came out early running up and down the floor. North Carolina senior forward Danny Green hit a three pointer to tie the score at 11-11 at just the first media timeout at 15:54. Both teams were on pace for over 90 points. The pace was frenetic compared to the Wolfpack’s normal pace at 71 points per game. This pace cost State later in the game as the team never had quite enough left in the tank to overtake the Heels.
“We did a great job making runs,” Courtney Fells, a senior guard, said. “But down the stretch, we may have had a conditioning issue.”
Coming out of that timeout, the Heels went on a 10-0 run, and the team would never relinquish the lead.
As the Pack tried to battle back, it began to miss lay-ups – a trend which cost State valuable points.
“We just missed too many lay-ups,” Brandon Costner, a redshirt junior forward, said. “I think I counted 11 missed lay-ups.”
Despite cutting the Carolina lead down to four on four different occasions in the first half, the Heels would always find a way to pull back away.
“We worked so hard to get close, but then something kills momentum or a call happens,” Costner said.
By the end of the first half, Carolina had stretched the lead to 12 points at 43-31. All of the Pack’s missed shots showed in the deficit and in the team’s first half shooting percentage of 32.4 percent.
The Tar Heels came out of the locker room picking up right where it left off, pushing the lead to 18 at one point. But State would not give up. Over the next eight and a half minutes, the Pack whittled away at the lead until a deep two by redshirt junior guard Trevor Ferguson cut the lead to seven points going into a media timeout. The charge was led by Fells, who had 20 out of his 22 points in the second half.
But, just like the first half’s media timeout, the pause killed State’s momentum. Carolina did not let the Pack inch any closer.
“We cut it to [7] and then came out of the time out,” coach Sidney Lowe said. “Then we took a bad shot and they took a three…[Before then] I thought the momentum was in our favor.”
The Heels would maintain about the same lead until the 5:06 mark, when the visitors finished off the game with a 13-4 run to win 93-76.
But even though the game was already decided, the last few seconds still had some fireworks. North Carolina subbed in all of its backups with less than a minute to go. Then, senior forward Mike Copeland, playing some of his only minutes this season, went up for a dunk with 1.4 seconds left on the clock. Senior center Ben McCauley went up and fouled Copeland hard, sending him into the hardwood.
“As soon as he got up he went at me,” McCauley said.
According to McCauley, the attempt to score when the game was decided was not necessary.
“I was a little disappointed he was going for it. I thought it was a little unnecessary,” McCauley said.
Lowe, on the other hand, said he couldn’t fault Copeland for trying to score.
“They’re guys that haven’t played and want two points,” Lowe said. “You can’t fault a man for being in 35 seconds and having a chance to score two points in an ACC game.”
The play resulted in a double technical, and Tar Heel coach Roy Williams personally ejected Copeland from the game.
Fells, who Lowe said had been telling the team it was still in the game all throughout the second half, said the loss was hard to swallow.
“It’s very tough,” Fells said. “We worked our butts off.”
Senior Tar Heel standout center Tyler Hansbrough had his second biggest offensive game of the year to help lead Carolina to victory, finishing with 31 points on 12-17 shooting.
“He’s a good player, and they did a good job of getting him open,” Fells said.
The Pack will move on from the loss with its final non-conference game of the year next Tuesday night against North Carolina Central.
