Game blog: Tar Heels beat up Belmont Abbey 107-59
Nov 7, 2009
9:20 p.m., Game over: Goodnight. Tar Heels win 107-59. Thompson scored 23 points and had 8 boards. Tyler Zeller had 17 points. Ed Davis is all-around awesome. He filled up the stat sheet in every category...points, blocks, assists and rebounds.
9:14 p.m., The end of the bench is in: You've got James Gallagher, Thomas Thornton, Terrence Petree and Marc Campbell coming into the game. Pop the champagne Tar Heels this game is over! Now can you beat Duke in football tomorrow? We shall see. By the way look for the live blog for that game here at 3 p.m. tomorrow. Tar Heels lead 101-52 with a minute left.
9:02 p.m., The answer: North Carolina will play Valparaiso next Sunday here in Chapel Hill. They are the Crusaders. Who can forget Bryce Drew's shot 11 years ago in the NCAA Tournament to beat Ole Miss. What a memorable moment. While we are talking about UNC's schedule, how about Michigan State, Kentucky and Texas all coming up in the first few weeks of December? Wow.
Ed Davis just threw down a one handed dunk and he almost broke the nose of a Belmont Abbey player who took the ball to the face as it was coming through the hoop. Look out below!
UNC leads it 95-43 with under five minutes to play.
8:53 p.m., Where is the Crusader comeback?: Hey I've got a quick trivia question for you that I just came up with. The Tar Heels are taking on another team with the nickname "Crusaders" this season. Who is it? The answer will come later. UNC leads Belmont Abbey 80-38 now with 11 minutes to play in the ball game. The latest lineup in the game featured Henson, Zeller, and D. Wear. Strickland and Watts were the guard. They were together on the floor for the entire block of time in between media timeouts. Zeller has 17 points off the bench and is 7 of 11 shooting. Henson and Wear were getting some buckets too. They are just using the size and some good passing to get a close range shot every other trip down the floor.
8:42 p.m., Crowd pleasing block: Give it up for the local guy. Justin Watts from Jordan High School in Durham sent a block into the fifth row. The Belmont Abbey kid really thought he had an easy lay-up and was probably pleased to see Watts as the only guy near him. Watts made him pay.
8:35 p.m., One thing I like about Belmont Abbey: I'm looking down at their bench and all the coaches are dressed casually. Don't get me wrong they look professional, but they look like they are going to coach basketball, not go to a wedding. They have on bright red dry-fit polo shirts and black slacks. The shirts are tucked in of course and they all match. I think that's all you need for hoops. Why would you want to wear a suit to coach basketball? I would want to be comfortable, and is it really less professional if you wear a golf shirt and slacks? I think it's smarter. Look at any other sport. Football you have Belichick. Baseball the managers wear uniforms they could take the field in. Why do we need suits? I'm an Al Skinner guy in the ACC. He might be the only one in the league that rocks the polo shirt.
UNC has a 66-35 lead early in the second half. Deon Thompson is 11 of 12 for 22 points. Pretty efficient game don't you think?
8:18 p.m., Halftime is here: Hey we've got dunks and points. What more are you wanting. The defense got a little better for UNC in the final minutes and it turned into to easy baskets on the other end. Tar Heels lead it 57-31 at the half. Deon Thompson seemed like he didn't miss a shot. He missed one, going 8 of 9 for 16 points and 5 rebounds in the first half. Tyler Zeller was the other player in double-figures with 13 points off the bench. Ed Davis had a good floor game with 7 points, 4 boards, 3 assists and 2 blocks.
I hadn't gotten to this yet but Marcus Ginyard looks like he is back to full form. He plays tough defense. The foot doesn't appear to be bothering him. He was moving very well out there. He's listed as 210 pounds this year, that's down around 25 pounds. He's going to have more pep in the step this year.
8:07 p.m., The skinny on Belmont Abbey: The Crusaders reside in Belmont, NC. It's just west of Charlotte and just east of Gastonia. They play in the Conference Carolinas in NCAA Division II. Last year they had a good season with a 20-9 mark and 15-5 in their league. When you schedule these exhibition games you want to find a balance of a team that's nearby and a team that's pretty good. Maybe you look for a team that runs an offense that's a little tricky to defend. Most of these teams are going to stretch your defense and make you get out and guard the perimeter. I like how Duke scheduled the defending D-II national champions. That Findlay squad brought bus loads to Cameron earlier in the week and they came all the way from Northwest Ohio.
7:58 p.m., Recruits: There is at least one future Tar Heel in the building tonight sitting right behind the Heels bench that I can tell you of. Kendall Marshall is a 6-3 point guard from Bishop O'Connell in Arlington, VA. The Wear brothers both got into the game here for UNC. I cannot tell the two apart except for their numbers and names. There are some identical twins that are more identical than others, and they fit that bill. If anything is struggling a little bit it's the transition defense. Belmont Abbey is trying to get a long rebound and run with it. They kick it out and try to get an open 3-pointer. The Heels could make a mistake every single trip up and down the floor and they would still win this game by 20. They just have superior athleticism.
7:48 p.m., Heels try to make up for scrimmage loss to Vanderbilt: We don't have the exact stats but the Heels played in a closed scrimmage at Vandy this past Sunday and Roy Williams described their play this week as "ugly" and also "yucky." We didn't get a score or exact stats but you could tell that UNC got handled. They look crisp early on tonight and they basically seem to be getting a rotation down. John Henson and Tyler Zeller were the first two off the bench. Freshman guard Dexter Strickland was right behind them. Strickland has been a spark plug two. He's an athletic guard at 6-3. It's 27-14 with 9 minutes left in the first half.
7:43 p.m., Dunk fest: The Crusaders call a time-out here as UNC opens a 17-6 lead with three straight dunks. Thompson and Strickland got steals and dunks and Tyler Zeller just got the latest two hand jam underneath out of the offense.
7:38 p.m., Heels are up, really?: Bet you couldn't imagine that. Thompson has six points and the Heels lead Belmont Abbey 9-4 with 15:51 left to go in the first.
7:33 p.m., Game on: A quick start here at the Dean Dome. Deon Thompson scores the first two buckets for the Heels. He took his man off the dribble from the perimeter and took it all the way to the glass. The starters for North Carolina: Ed Davis, Thompson, Will Graves, Larry Drew II, Marcus Ginyard.
7:21 p.m., 100 years of hoops: I bet you didn't expect a live blog for a Friday night exhibition game. But I've got nothing better to do so I'm here. What better to do than take in Carolina hoops. Before I make my way into the arena I always ask scalpers what the going rate for tickets are. An hour before tip-off they were asking between $10 and $60. You could have bought tickets online for $10 a pop.
About 20 minutes before tip-off they played this awesome compilation video highlighting the history of Carolina hoops. It's hard to do that in a four minute (or so) video. Someone told me they played the same one at the alumni game a month ago. The crowd got pretty loud when Danny Green put his groin section on Greg Paulus' head while dunking over him a year ago. There were also some loud cheers for the evolution of Dean Smith photos and the winningest coach of all-time stuff. Hey it's 100 years of Carolina basketball and they are going to celebrate it. What is N.C. State going to do for that? Anything?
Belmont Abbey and the defending National Champions are coming up here in a minute.
