North Carolina State University Athletics
No. 3 North Carolina Tops Pack, 89-80
2/19/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
BY TIM PEELER
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. Earlier this season, NC State had trouble containing North Carolina in the final five minutes of the first half.
Wednesday night, in an 89-80 loss to the No. 3 Tar Heels at the Smith Center, the Wolfpack could not stop a run of 14 unanswered points in the first five minutes of the second half.
And that was the difference in a game in which Sidney Lowe and his team stayed even with UNC for the first 20 minutes, but had a brief lapse that allowed the Tar Heels (24-2 overall, 10-2 ACC) to take control of the game.
“It’s a mark of a good team that understands the importance of the first five minutes,” Lowe said after the game. “They impose their will on other people. You have to be tough mentally and physically and endure whatever happens to you out on the court.
“Once they get you down, they know how to execute. They also have a lot of weapons, and that makes it a lot easier.”
The Wolfpack trailed just 39-36 going into halftime, thanks in large part to sophomore guard Javi Gonzalez, who scored 16 of his season-high 18 points in the first half. Every time the Tar Heels tried to build a cushion of greater than four points, Gonzalez hit a shot that closed the gap.
He was a perfect 6-for-6 from the floor, including four 3-pointers in the opening half.
“He had an excellent first half for us and did what we needed him to do the entire game,” Lowe said of his young guard. “In the second half, they put a little more pressure on him, got up on him a little more and denied him the ball.”
It was the second big scoring night in a row for Gonzalez. Prior to Saturday’s 14-point performance against Georgia Tech, Gonzalez had not scored in double figures in his first 14 games of the season. He finished just one point off of his previous career-best of 19 against Duke last season as a freshman.
North Carolina All-America Tyler Hansbrough continued his domination of the Wolfpack, scoring a game-high 27 points to lead four Tar Heels in double figures. Danny Green added 19, Ty Lawson had 17 and Wayne Ellington had 16.
For NC State, sophomore Tracy Smith had 15, junior Dennis Horner had 13 and junior Brandon Costner had 12.
The Wolfpack scored the opening basket of the second half, but the Tar Heels reeled off 14 in a row, as State made a handful of ill-timed turnovers. For the game, the Pack made 15 turnovers, while the Tar Heels had only nine overall and just one in the second half.
Lowe’s team did cut the UNC lead down to six points, after an offensive put-back by Tracy Smith and a 3-pointer by Dennis Horner. But it never got any closer the rest of the way, despite hitting 64.3 percent of its second-half shots.
“Obviously, I am disappointed I don’t like to lose any ball game,” Lowe said. “But I am proud of my guys. We did a lot of good things in this game.”
In the first half, the Wolfpack (14-10, 4-7) was buoyed by the Gonzalez’s perfect shooting. The sophomore from Carolina, Puerto Rico, made all six of his shots from the field, including four 3-pointers.
The Wolfpack returns home Saturday to face Virginia in a 1 p.m. game at the RBC Center.
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
