While the big story for North Carolina's winter break was the loss to unranked Boston College the Tar Heels spent the majority of their break games displaying unadulterated dominance.
In five wins during the break" UNC outscored opponents 465 to 342 — for an average margin of victory of 24.6 points.
While those blowouts did come against unranked and largely underclassed opponents — a fact that prompted Roy Williams to say the Tar Heels simply ""had more gifts"" than the opposition after multiple games — it remains that UNC consistently looked like the best team in the nation" barring the loss to BC.
Consider lowly College of Charleston" who hadn't had an opponent hang 100-plus points on them since 1977 — until they had the misfortune to visit the Smith Center immediately after Boston College stunned the Tar Heels.
The result? 108 points in a 38-point win for UNC as the Tar Heels outscored Charleston 55 to 29 in the second half.
""We did a lot better job of rebounding in the second half" Williams said after the game. Basically" it was our opportunity for our players to get their bad taste out of their mouths after the game on Sunday.""
Teams in December fared little better. Oral Roberts" a bracket-buster in past years" also gave up 100 points to UNC in a 16-point win. Evansville will go down in history as the team against which Tyler Hansbrough broke UNC's career scoring record in a 91-73 UNC win.
""I was happy it was over with" Hansbrough said. I didn't really think about it much before until a couple games ago when someone mentioned it to me. I hadn't really been keeping up with it until everybody started talking about it" and I just tried to get it over with so we could move on.""
Outside of the lopsided victories" the winter break also saw UNC's rotation take a little more shape. Mike Copeland made his first appearance of the season in the game against Charleston.
Marcus Ginyard still limited by injuries returned to the floor for sporadic minutes. But against Charleston" Ginyard did not see the court.
""He has been struggling quite a bit" Williams said. He is not where we want him to be at this time and we decided not to play him. I think it is his foot and game shape" a bit of everything.
""We have not seen the offensive rebounds"" steals and the types of plays Marcus makes a living off. We are trying to just give him a little more time and see what happens.""
In Ginyard's stead" Danny Green continued to start for UNC. Green's scoring average has jumped to 12.7 points from 11.5 points last year.
Coming off the bench Will Graves as turned into a high energy player as the seventh man carving out 12.5 minutes per game for himself and providing flexibility with his ability to play guard or even power forward.
Contact the Sports Editor at sports@unc.edu.
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Saturday, April 27, 2024
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