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Basketball, much more than football, is about individual matchups and we do not match up well with UNC when Bacot is in the game. Love and Davis are so good on defense that our potential advantage with our "small" guys is greatly reduced. And we simply have no answer for Bacot. Driving to Chapel Hill my friends felt GT had a real chance to win if Bacot could not play. Not that he was very effective, but Franklin's early injury left us with Meka and Howard to defend an All-American. It was not a coaching problem.The last five minutes or so of the first half is what killed us. The lack of rebounding and massive free throw disparity just put the dirt on the coffin.
Very unimpressive effort, it must be said, by the team. We were definitely up for the rival game against UGA but it seems we forgot to pack in effort when we went on the road today.
In the last 5 minutes of the 1st half, our possessions went like this (forgive me if I have something out of order):
At the 5 minute mark we were ahead by a point.
At the 3 minute mark we are down by 4 (UNC had outscored us 7-2).
Then, Smith missed a shoot,
Kelly turned it over,
Sturdivant missed a trey, then turned it over,
Then Terry and Smith missed shots.
I do not think we got a rebound in those five minutes. Certainly not an offensive board.
Every team has stretches where nothing seems to work, but UNC outscored us 16-2 in those five minutes. Otherwise, we played them even up.
Coming into this season we all knew the fortunes of this team would depend on the play of Howard and Franklin. We had to have something inside on both ends of the floor. So far, this is not happening to the extent we need against good teams. Could it get better? Yes. And we are not going to face another ACC player like Bacot