Seminoles vs Tar Heels boxscore
Look, there's nothing in tonight's game that you have seen all season long. Except the uniforms, of course. They were different. Also horrid; the warmup jackets, were white with what appeared to be tire treads on the front. Coincidentally, the team played early like they had been hit by a bus and never recovered.
Teams have realized that the quickest way to put the Heels away is to bombard them with points early, and wait for UNC to seize up and start turning the ball over. Which Florida State proceeded to do. The Seminoles, who hadn't hit more than seven threes in ACC play, shot 9 for 15 from behind the arc in the first half. Denied Solomon Alabi, their 7'1" center and the conference's leading shot blocker for most of the game due to foul trouble, FSU didn't bat an eye, completely shutting down Carolina's interior offense and still tallying six blocks and 34 rebounds. Chris Singleton outhustled the entire Tar Heel team, finishing with 19 points, 8 rebounds, 2 steals and 3 blocks. UNC's biggest rebounder, amongst all their height was... Marcus Ginyard with 10.
This was another one of those games when most of the offense fell to Will Graves shooting over his opponent's height, not unlike the first Georgia Tech game. And he delivered, finishing with 21, but even he looked tentative at times. No one on the team wants to shoot at this point and it shows. UNC couldn't get the ball down low inside against the FSU defense, and no big man had more than four field goals. The brightest point was Leslie McDonald's late play, which at least showed some intensity that was lacking from everyone else.
On the bright side, anyone flipping past the game probably didn't even recognize that it was UNC, and not some other team down by 15+ for much of the game. Perhaps we can look into having different uniforms for the rest of the season? I'm thinking something in a navy blue or gold; might as well make folks watching think it's Duke or Wake flailing away.