I get tired of this garbage, like the statements by Greenemachine88, who, apparently, didn’t even watch the Duke game that he references in which Hansbrough got hurt. Guys get hurt in practice; guys get hurt in the first half; guys get hurt at home. With the three pointer, games are rarely over before the three minute mark. Just ask Arizona about that in its game against Illinois back in 2005 where they made up 15 points in under three minutes.

These idiots all still think it is 1972, with no shot clock and no three-pointer….

Roy was on The Jim Rome radio show yesterday and commented on it. He thought because Zeller was having a frustrating game against Kentucky he would leave him in a little longer hoping to get a few confidence building plays, couple boards, easy basket, etc…he also said what THF pointed out above, who should he have put in, walk-ons with 2:30 to go, no of whom is above 6’6″…

Obviously everyone associated with the team feels terrible, especially Roy, I don’t think there is anyway he can be blamed for this…as said by many above, unnecessary foul at an inopportune time.

One thing to remember though is that Roy Williams had Felton work during the entire off-season on his three-point shot before his Junior year, and the results were amazing. He went from being a poor three-point shooter his Sophomore year to being, arguably, the top three-point shooter in the ACC during his Junior year, which made a huge difference for Carolina that season. Carolina was a great three-point shooting team in 2005, which is something that was lacking the last two years.

I think that all of us can remember Felton’s big three pointer, steal, and free throws to keep Carolina’s title hopes on track when several of his teammates seemed to be losing their edge a little bit. Lawson has the chance to be every bit as good or better this year, with similar results–i.e., a national title–if he can play to his potential on both sides of the court and be the kind of leader Felton was.

Will he?

Reality…

Paterson hits his second FT to cut the UNC lead to 13 with 2:44 to go. Under no circumstances is this considered a “safe” lead, and you must keep your best players in. UNC then scored 2 baskets in a row over the next 58 seconds to grow the lead to 17, when Ty Lawson forced a steal that led to the Tyler’s breakaway. The important thing here was that there was no stoppage in play between between UNC’s last basket (1:46), and Zeller’s injury (1:26), so there was no chance for Roy to even think about emptying his bench. Roy did absolutely nothing wrong. The only thing I could remotely criticize is Lawson’s decision to give the ball up when and where he did, but that’s not really fair, either…

Ditto.

Greenemachine88,

It sounds like you might want to take your own advice about pulling heads out of rectums.

1. They need the minutes and experience since they in their first year.

2. Those two players happen to be the only post players we had left since Deon Thompson had fouled out. Unless you think it was a good idea to go the rest of the way with Will Graves at center and Justin Moody at PF it makes sense to leave them in.

And besides any of that the last I check Roy Williams was a HOF coach with a national title and a pretty clear understanding way above any of us of how to manage his basketball team. It was a stupid, dumb foul that ended up being a bad break. The same exact thing happened to Duke’s Kyle Singler last night midway through the 2nd half and his fall was actually worse than Zeller’s. This kind of crap happens and people only piss and moan when it happens inside of two minutes left in the game when it could really have happened at any point(see both Lawson and Frasor’s injuries last season)