I'm not sure either team really deserved to win that game. (On a performance basis, that is. As the struggle between All That Is Holy and The Creeping Mendacity of Evil, UNC naturally deserved to win.) The play was sloppy, the vaunted defenses were decidedly not, and the number of open shots that missed on both sides. It was painful to watch.
(Of course some that pain came when the big screen we (1 UNC fan, 1 Duke fan, and a bemused Ohio State fan) were watching the game on was switched to soccer (!) and we were relegated to a small TV behind the bar. The selection of our typical English pub was a poor one, apparently. On the brightside, I didn't have to hear Vitale or Billy Packer, let alone the insipid rivalry week couples on couches ESPN kept running.)
The one thing that sums up Duke's entire season? Five Blue Devil players scored last night. That's it. UNC's depth brought out a couple of faces I'd never seen in navy blue - Jordan Davidson and Martynas Pocius, who have a combined 17 minutes of ACC experience this year - but neither they nor Brian Zoubek took a shot.
As for the Tar heels, they couldn't quite get the pace up to their liking, and they couldn't find their perimeter defense for the second straight game, but unlike the eeriely similar game this weekend in Raleigh, they didn't wilt, they kept finding Terry, Hansbrough and Wright down low angainst an outmanned defense, and they had enough dribble penetration from Lawson and Ellington to keep Duke on their heels for a second-half comeback. It's been awhile since a fast start against a halfway decent team though, and I'd sure love to see a couple more of them rather than the comeback-and-wear-down model of play from early in the ACC season.
A couple of miscellaneous thoughts:
- I go the Duke fan to admit that only UNC player he really can't stand is Hansbrough, who he described as "Laettneresque." I, of course, disagree, nor am I really ready to award that to McRoberts as I was much more annoyed by the constantly open why can't you guard that guy he's the only one making any shots Scheyer. But can I just say how much I love the fact that Christian Laettner has become the standard unit of measurement for dickish players, even among Duke fans? We're only a couple of years away from submitting him to NIST and evaluating recruits' arrogance and propensity for social problems as being "roughly 0.37 Laettners."
- In one day, my Cameron Crazies post has become the number one Google hit for searches on "Cameron Crazies." If this blogging never amounts to anything - and how could tossing up random thoughts on the internet not be a pastime destined for incredible success - I'll always have that.