WRAL Sports Fan

North Carolina

Heels look forward to avenging 2006 loss to Gonzaga

By Sam Rosenthal

Mar 26, 2009

Chapel Hill, N.C. — North Carolina plays its home games in Chapel Hill.Gonzaga plays its home games in Spokane, Wash. – some 2,600 miles away.

But surprisingly, these Sweet 16 foes know each other already.

UNC coach Roy Williams and Gonzaga coach Mark Few stay in touch.

“I think he’s one of the great coaches in our game. I enjoy the dickens out of him,” Williams said during Carolina’s Tuesday press conference. “I told him, ‘You don’t ever think about leaving Gonzaga until you talk to me.’”

The two teams’ knowledge of each other goes beyond the coaches’ relationship, though. In the 2006 Preseason NIT semifinals, the Bulldogs beat the Tar Heels in Madison Square Garden, 82-74.

Ten players who appeared in that game on Nov. 22, 2006, will meet again in Memphis on Friday. From Gonzaga: Jeremy Pargo, Josh Heytvelt and Matt Bouldin. From UNC: Tyler Hansbrough, Danny Green, Wayne Ellington, Ty Lawson, Deon Thompson, Bobby Frasor and Marcus Ginyard – pretty much everybody.

Think the Heels remember that loss?

“We’ve got a bad taste from the last time we played Gonzaga,” Ellington said. “So you know what I’m saying: We owe ‘em.”

That game was the first one Carolina dropped that season, and it surprised many people. Ellington had trouble remembering exactly how the game went.

“That was a long time ago. But I know they kicked our butts. They gave it to us pretty good,” he said.

The 2006 meeting represented the first loss in a Carolina uniform for Ellington as a Tar Heel, along with Thompson and Lawson.

“They were a real tough team. They shot the three real well,” Lawson said. “Josh Heytvelt, he was a load down there in the post. Jeremy Pargo, he’s a good guard, real crafty and things like that. I remember just how well they played against us, and little things that they did.”

During that game, Gonzaga shot 53 percent from the field, and 57 percent from behind the arc, while holding Carolina to 37 percent shooting from the field and 23 percent from three-point range. Those statistics probably worry Williams now, as the 2008-2009 Bulldogs remain masters of field-goal percentage.

“They’re shooting 49 percent and giving up 37 percent – that’s almost unheard of. If you look at that, you just say, ‘Wow.’ And then they’re shooting 39 percent from three. And we’re really a really good shooting team, and we’re shooting 37 percent …,” Williams said. “So you look at those things, and you start trying to find something else to look at because those things make you sick.”

Judging by Williams’ comments, the word “balance” will come into play Friday – whichever team embodies it more will likely emerge victorious. The Tar Heels’ coach said the Bulldogs “have more than one guy that can really, really hurt you on a night. And they’ve had like four different guys go for — maybe six different guys — go for over 20 this year. And I think that that’s a more difficult kind of team to guard.”

But Williams also talked about his own team’s balance. Hansbrough (and to a lesser extent Thompson, Ed Davis and Tyler Zeller) score in the post, while Ellington, Green and Lawson terrorize teams from outside.

With both teams featuring potent offenses, the contest could come down to defensive execution.

During a conference call earlier in the week, the Zags’ coach talked about Carolina’s stopping power. “Their defense is so much better than people give them credit for, they just play a more up-tempo game so there are more possessions and more points allowed,” Few said. “Night in, night out, their defense is as good as anybody’s.”

And Williams had high praise for Gonzaga’s defense.

“They play every area. They guard you, stop dribble penetration, won’t let you have second shots,” he said. “They do a great job of boxing out, they have tremendous length. … But they’re so sound fundamentally.”

Williams also noted that the Bulldog roster boasts three players – Bouldin, Pargo, and Steven Gray – with better than two-to-one assist-turnover ratios. “We’ve played some teams that are pretty doggone good that have one guy,” Williams said. “So it’s a very, very good basketball team that, in my opinion, probably deserved better than a four-seed.”
The Tar Heels’ roster features two such players – Lawson and Frasor. Much of this game may depend on their play, as well as Lawson’s injured big toe.

But even more, UNC must get a better performance from Hansbrough than it did in the 2006 Gonzaga game. Then, No. 50 scored merely nine points – one of eight games out of the 138 he’s played at Carolina in which he scored in single digits. What’s more, Hansbrough only took five shots from the floor during that game.

It remains to be seen if Gonzaga can limit Hansbrough to such meager production again, or if the Tar Heels’ balance can trump the Bulldogs and even the all-time series at 1-1.

Two things are for sure: First, this game matters much, much more than the 2006 Preseason NIT semifinal.
Second, this game has lots to do with that 2006 Preseason NIT semifinal. And the seven Carolina players who lost that game – including the entire current starting lineup – know it.

“That was our first loss, that was my first loss as a Carolina player, and it didn’t feel too good,” Ellington said. “So we all remember that day and are looking forward to getting them back.”