WRAL Sports Fan

North Carolina

Tar Heels crushed by nation's No. 1

By Sam Rosenthal

Jan 20, 2009

Basketball games between the nation’s consensus No. 1 and No. 2 teams rarely turn into 30-point blowouts, but that’s exactly what happened Monday night when the second-ranked North Carolina Tar Heels (17-1) lost their first game of the season to top-ranked and still unbeaten Connecticut (18-0), 88-58.

“They came into our house and showed us how to play basketball,” UNC coach Sylvia Hatchell said after the game.

Before the game, on paper, this looked like a battle of evenly matched heavyweights – both teams entered the game with unblemished 17-0 records. A crowd of 12,722 fans – the largest attendance ever for a North Carolina women’s basketball game – showed up at the Smith Center in Chapel Hill.

But UConn scored the first basket, caught Carolina with an uppercut hook of a 15-4 run to start the game, and never trailed.

North Carolina made some runs, but almost every time the Tar Heels gained some momentum, Renee Montgomery or Maya Moore knocked down a crucial, run-killing shot. Montgomery led all scorers with 21 points, along with five assists and six rebounds, and Moore scored 19, grabbed 12 boards and made four steals.

Carolina turned the ball over too often in the early going, allowing UConn to cushion its lead with easy buckets – a theme for the Huskies all night. While the Tar Heels toiled for every point, the Huskies moved the ball almost effortlessly into and out of the paint, setting up open jump-shooters and back-door cutters for high-percentage shots.

“There’s a certain amount of pressure that comes when you’re down 18, and now all of a sudden, you start to move up a little bit more defensively where you don’t want to be. And all of a sudden, you get caught by a backdoor cut,” UConn coach Geno Auriemma said about Carolina’s inability to force tough shots. “You press harder, and then you get beat on another one, and it just kind of snowballs. I think if it would’ve been a close game, we may not have gotten those opportunities.”

By halftime, UConn led by 16, 46-30. When the Tar Heels showed signs of life in the second half, the Huskies squelched them. “The most important thing that I saw was, when we had to do something, we did it,” Auriemma said.

The most telling stat of the game: UConn out-rebounded Carolina, 53-32 and snagged 21 offensive boards in the game. “You can’t let them have second shots,” Hatchell said, yet her team gave UConn as many second looks as a streaker gets on a subway.

But the Tar Heels’ key to defeat, according to Hatchell and players Italee Lucas and Heather Claytor, seemed more intangible than statistical.

“They were just a notch higher than we were as far as how intense and hard they played. They played harder than we did, and that’s something we’ve got to learn to do a lot better,” Hatchell said.

Claytor added: “I don’t think it’s skill level or anything like that. I think it’s (that) we played with less heart today, and they had more heart than we did.”

Hatchell said that the Huskies played with a physicality the Tar Heels hadn’t seen yet this season. “And I think it bothered us, it got to us,” she said. “We didn't go rebound with them. But this is the way a game is going to be when you get into the NCAA and play for a national championship."

This marks UNC’s worst loss since Duke beat the Tar Heels 97-63 in Durham during the 2002-2003 season. Now, the Heels must figure out “what we’re made of,” as Claytor put it.

How much does this one sting?

“We’ll find out,” Hatchell said.

According to Claytor, “It stings pretty deep.”

And Lucas, who led the Tar Heels with 15 points but looked shaken and reticent during the post-game press conference, stammered, “It does sting. I’m pretty much numb right now.”

The national press will likely speculate about the gap between UConn and the rest of the nation’s good teams, but there may be less speculation about where Carolina stands now. Auriemma, at least, offered UNC some words of encouragement – kind of:

“I don’t think anybody should leave here thinking that Carolina’s a bad team. Carolina’s chances of winning a national championship are just as good now as they were before the game started,” Auriemma said. “There aren’t a whole lot of teams that are going to be able to beat them. We just played really, really, really great basketball tonight, and I think that, more than anything, is the reason why the game was the way it was. We just played great.”

As Hatchell said, the Huskies came into the Tar Heels’ house and showed UNC how to play basketball. And that might sting a bit.