The North Carolina JV men’s basketball team stressed the importance of fatigue following its 88-74 loss to Massanutten Military Academy in the Smith Center on Monday.
What happened?
The Tar Heels (1-3) faced a tall task against Massanutten (18-3) as they were a couple inches shorter at every position. This mismatch proved to work in UNC’s favor in the first half because 6-foot-2 junior Robbie O’Han would get Massanutten’s tallest player, 6-foot-10’ Mahamadou Diawara, to switch on to him off ball screens.
O’Han continuously took advantage of this matchup by driving past Diawara. Because of O’Han’s ability to score on the drive, along with the sharp-shooting from sophomore Jake Rutter off of the bench, UNC only trailed by a 44-42 score at the half. Rutter led the team with 15 points at the intermission.
However, the Tar Heels began to fall behind in the second half while Diawara was out of the game. Massanutten took advantage of this and didn’t let UNC back into the game for the last ten minutes.
“Once they took (Diawara) out, we didn’t really have a mismatch opportunity and their guards are still really tall," O'Han said. "We definitely struggled to score when they took him out."
Who stood out?
North Carolina had four players score at least 15 points in the game. Senior Brooks Palmer led the team with 17 points. O’Han, Rutter and sophomore Pearce Landry had 15 points each.
O’Han also led the team by playing 38 minutes and taking 21 shots. The next highest shot taker was Rutter, who took 11.
