UNC women's basketball escapes upset against Albany in ?rst round

NEWARK, Del. — After the North Carolina women’s basketball team’s 59-54 first-round NCAA victory against Albany, coach Sylvia Hatchell said her team entered the game ready for the Bob Carpenter Center’s largely pro-Albany atmosphere.

“We’ve played at (Connecticut), Tennessee, Duke,” she said. “We’ve had some games like that in hostile environments.”

From the beginning of the contest, it was clear that a better seed wasn’t going to protect No. 3 UNC (29-6) from No. 14 Albany (27-4), which led for most of the game.

Despite taking an early 9-3 lead, UNC ran into foul trouble and was outrebounded by nine in the first 20 minutes. North Carolina committed 15 first-half fouls and became visibly frustrated the more the whistle blew.

Tierra Ruffin-Pratt, who scored a career-high 30 points, picked up her third foul with less than a minute left in the first half. Her subsequent outburst earned her a technical foul.

As the teams headed to their locker rooms, Albany led 28-23. UNC’s players looked stunned as they walked off the court.

“The whole time we were preparing for this game, it was like, ‘North Carolina, scary, scary, scary,’” Albany coach Katie Abrahamson-Henderson said. “But there’s no way I would ever let these young women be scared of anything, and that was our theme, pretty much.”

UNC, on the other hand, was motivated by the fear of its season ending prematurely.

“I just didn’t want to go home tonight,” Ruffin-Pratt said. “So me, Waltiea (Rolle) and Krista (Gross), we took it upon us as seniors to lead our team to the win.”

And in the second half, those three players in particular put the weight of their team on their shoulders.

Albany’s Megan Craig, a 6-foot-8 center, got the Great Danes off to a quick start and helped extend their lead to as many as seven points.

But Rolle dragged Craig up and down the floor in the second half and otherwise dominated the post, recording 14 points, 14 rebounds and a career-high eight blocks.

Ruffin-Pratt continued to play aggressively despite picking up her fourth foul with just less than 10 minutes to play.

“I just played bold,” she said. “The foul trouble sat me out a little in the first half, but I just kept playing as hard as I could. It didn’t really stop me from being aggressive or anything.”

She scored 19 of her 30 points in the second half, including two crucial three-pointers late in the game, the last of which gave UNC its first lead of the second half with 6:35 remaining.

Gross tapped out two critical offensive rebounds in the game’s final minute to make sure the lead stayed with UNC.

North Carolina will play Delaware on Tuesday, perhaps humbled by its close call.

Afterward, Abrahamson-Henderson was asked if she thought her team should have won.

“Yes,” she said immediately. “We deserved to win that game. I think everyone in this room knows that, and I think North Carolina knows that.”

Contact the desk editor at sports@dailytarheel.com.