I have never seen an Izzo team play that poorly on the 2nd game of an NCAA weekend. That was unbelievable. They may have played their worst game of the season. UNC shot well, sure, but they were spoonfed a big bowl full of turnovers. Blech.
^ i don't know. i think you have to credit NC. i don't think the spartans had a chance, the tarheels jumped on them from the get go.
I am being too harsh, but so many of the "steals" were Spartans throwing chest passes into the lumbar region of a Tarheel, etc. I guess you can credit them for getting their backs in the passing lanes? Seriously, it was horrible. And how many uncontested threes can a division I athlete miss? That Allen guy was 0-7 from long range, and at least four of those were wide open. Now I've worked up a lather again.
my dayton flyers broke a record for missed 3-pt attempts earlier in the year in the chicago invitational. they missed 24 and they still won!
As a fan who didn't care about either team, you're right on the money. It's not to take anything away from UNC -- they're a deserving champion. But MSU had more unforced errors last night than any team I've seen in a long, long time. They honestly had opportunities to get back in the game in the second half, but either dribbled out of bounds, threw a pass directly to Lawson (or his back, in some spots), or missed an absurdly wide-open three... over and over again.
UNC was just too stacked for any team to handle. Add the fact that they always get out to a 10-15 point lead, then you're left trying to get quick buckets against a denying defense that just lives off that kind of stuff, and you've got a dominant team. You can't expect to contain their offense either if you aren't finishing off defensive sequences with the rebound. Credit UNC's frontline for being bigger, I guess. UNC was a hurricane of pissed off talent that wouldn't let anybody beat them, simple as that. The MSU players were nervous to begin with, then they had to deal with UNC absolutely hammering them from the get go. It got to them, IMO, and the final result was that drubbing they received.
I'll give you this: sometimes MSU would get the ball up the court (Kalin up top, usually) and you could just see this kind of full-body sigh of "alright, here we go-- ugh, trying to find a way to score on these guys," as opposed to some sort of let's-go-kick-ass posture.
