North Carolina comes close, but falls to Stanford in Saturday's women's Sweet 16

SPOKANE, WA. — At halftime of the North Carolina women’s basketball team’s NCAA regional semifinal game against first-seeded Stanford, UNC coach Sylvia Hatchell made the fifth-seeded Tar Heels a promise.

“I challenged them — if they would win the boards in the second half that we’d win the game,” Hatchell said.

The Tar Heels outrebounded the Cardinal 50-47 on Saturday in the Spokane Arena. But ultimately, Hatchell’s word didn’t hold true.

“We battled hard on the boards in the second half but we missed some shots and made a few mistakes. That was the difference,” she said.

After a hard-fought game that featured 12 tie scores and nine lead changes, UNC’s 2010-11 campaign came to a crashing halt when Stanford won the Sweet 16 matchup, 72-65.

With just more than two minutes to play, North Carolina (28-9) and Stanford (32-2) were tied at 65. UNC senior guard Italee Lucas could taste it.

“I was hungry and I wanted it so bad,” Lucas said. “Not just for me, but for my teammates. We were so close in those last two minutes in the stretch. It was in our hands, there’s no doubt about that.”

And four different times in the final two minutes of the game, the ball was in the Tar Heels’ hands. Until they dropped it.

Down by just two with 58 seconds to go, sophomore Tierra Ruffin-Pratt turned the ball over, and Stanford freshman Chiney Ogwumike all but sealed the deal for the Cardinal with a layup.

The Ogwumike sisters spelled double trouble for Tar Heels all game long. Chiney and her sister, senior forward Nnemkadi Ogwumike, combined for 35 of the Cardinal’s 72 points and 14 of its 47 rebounds.

But defensively, the Tar Heels had little to complain about.

Before Saturday’s game, the Cardinal had the fourth-best scoring offense in the land and averaged 80 points per game. Lucas said her team was successful at shutting down Stanford’s guards.
What plagued the Tar Heels in the final minutes, she said, wasn’t something physical.

“More than anything it was a mental lapse,” Lucas said. “We were right in it … down the stretch the focus needs to be there, even stronger and tougher than it is in the beginning of the game.”

Lucas led all scorers with 22 points, and Ruffin-Pratt scored 14 from the bench. Hatchell was pleased with the pair’s performances, but she couldn’t help but acknowledge that something was simply missing.

Breland went into Saturday’s game second on the team in both scoring and rebounding. But for most of the game, the senior forward was nowhere to be found.

In her 25 minutes on the court, she scored just two points. For Hatchell, Breland’s absence was a game-changer.

“Jessica didn’t have a good game, and that was a major factor,” she said. “If Jessica had her normal game, we would probably be really happy campers right now. I’m not blaming it on her … but that was very unusual for her.”

The Tar Heels went into Saturday’s game the heavy underdog. Many would call the Tar Heels’ performance against the consistent Cardinal a moral victory.

But this wasn’t horseshoes or hand grenades. And for Ruffin-Pratt, close just wasn’t good enough.

“Whether you lose by one or by 20, a loss is a loss,” she said.