They did it: UNC made it to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament after beating Maryland 74-66. Their reward for making it out of the first weekend? Facing UConn in the Sweet Sixteen. Not exactly the kind of award that anybody would want, right?
As is the truth most seasons, the Huskies are playing like arguably the most dominant team in college basketball. They currently have a perfect 36-0 record, and they are the favorites to win the national championship. But for Carolina fans, the question
is: do the Heels stand a chance? Is there a way they can upset UConn and move on to the Elite Eight?
The short answer is no, probably not.
Looking at how these teams match up, the Huskies are better in just about every category. The one category where the Heels have them beat is rebounding — the Heels are averaging 39.7 rebounds per game, but the Huskies are averaging 37.8. There are two ways to look at this: one, the Huskies aren’t that great of a rebounding team. Another way to look at it is they make a lot of their shots, so what rebounds are they supposed to grab? UNC could help themselves by beating UConn on the glass, but the challenge from there would be converting their boards into points.
That is where things are really tough — not only have teams been shooting poorly against the Huskies, but they are turning over the ball a lot. UConn is averaging 15.7 steals per game, which has made it extremely hard for teams that actually do shoot well against them to keep up. This is a problem for a Carolina team that averages 14.1 turnovers per game. While they only had eight turnovers in a loss against #3 UCLA, they coughed up the ball 20 times against #2 Texas. The Longhorns were able to score 24 points off those turnovers, which created a hole that was impossible for the Heels to climb out of. It will need to look a lot more like the UCLA game than the Texas game if Carolina hopes to win.
Finally, UNC will have to make sure that they are sharp offensively despite the fact that they will be dealing with one of the better defenses in the country. Lanie Grant, Nyla Brooks, and Elina Aarnisalo, will be called on to stretch the floor against the Huskies and knock down shots from deep. Nyla Harris will also have to be at the top of her game as well. Another issue that the Heels had against the Bruins was that Harris only scored six points off 10 field goal attempts, and that is not good enough to beat some of the better teams in the country.
To wrap things up, UNC surviving this one will be really, really tough. Running into a buzzsaw like UConn is unfortunate, but all they can do is their best and nothing more. And who knows? Maybe UConn’s bus driver will lose track of time and forget to pick them up from the hotel. It could happen, right?
