State has now achieved their goal

For years NC State wanted their basketball program to be on the same level as Carolina. Well, now they should be proud. Not because they have turned into a UNC clone, but because Carolina has turned into the new NC State.

If Dean were dead he'd turn over in his grave.

 

Hmmmmm....

Heels go down swinging
By Ned Barnett, Staff Writer, Raleigh News & Observer

CHAPEL HILL--The North Carolina-N.C. State game Tuesday was supposed to be about what happens next for two teams struggling to make the NCAA Tournament and to satisfy restless fans.

At the end of regulation, there was no answer. The teams were tied 62-62.

With the clock moving toward midnight, overtime came for two coaches running out of chances and two teams running out of games.

With so much on the line, State prevailed at the line and won 75-67. But the rival game really wasn't about the two old adversaries. It was about just one, North Carolina.

And it was not about what happened Tuesday night so much as what happened the previous game and what that meant about what happens next.

"That" was North Carolina's 96-56 loss to Maryland on Saturday in College Park -- the Tar Heels' worst defeat since they started ACC play 50 years ago.

You don't shake off a 40-point loss. You lie under it and wonder whether you'll ever get up. You wonder why you couldn't or wouldn't salvage respect.

Was it because your team is that bad, or had you ceased to care about being good, about being North Carolina?

Or worse, had the team decided to fold as a form of protest against a coach to whom the players no longer listen?

Those questions hung over Tuesday's game and the future of UNC coach Matt Doherty.

If the Tar Heels could win, split with their Triangle rival and raise at least the mathematical prospect of an NCAA bid, then perhaps the College Park trouncing was just another in the curious new lows Doherty's teams have explored.

If North Carolina could bounce back from so steep a fall, maybe it can bounce back from the program's overall decline. That could be the good part of losing by 40. At that depth, you hit bottom. Now it's all back up.

To Doherty's and his players' credit, they didn't come out flat. They fought and scrapped and almost won.

"I'm proud of our guys -- I really am," Doherty said. "After the game we had Saturday, for them to invest the energy and the emotion to come into a game like this and play as hard as they did, I was proud of them."

Carolina fans, who by now could be excused for losing faith, showed up, too. They did everything a crowd can do to win a game. But it wasn't enough.

Now the loss seems to be about more than losing a game. It's about losing a team. No matter how many L's Doherty collects, that's the one he dreads most. Now it looms larger than Julius Hodge's tying shot that took away a Carolina win.

In the high-pressure business of big-time coaching, losing your team is the one defeat from which there is no recovery. Dean Smith said as much when he held a rare news conference this month. He repeated his support for Doherty and cautioned against paying too much attention to unhappy fans.

Smith quoted his own coach, Kansas' Phog Allen: "The postman doesn't stop for every dog that barks. He'd never get his mail delivered."

But then Smith, who heard little barking during his years at North Carolina, delivered something that sounded like a certified letter for Doherty. He said a coach can survive the wavering support of fans, but he is doomed if he loses the support of his team. They have to want to win for him. They have to believe he can show them how to win.

That is where Doherty is now. A young man still new to the job of head coaching who's trying to figure out how to push his team without breaking the bond between players and coach.

So far, he hasn't had much luck at it. Three players transferred last year. All-America Joe Forte left early for the NBA amid tensions with the coach. Doherty briefly benched his star freshman, Rashad McCants. Another freshman, injured Sean May, is tentative about returning this year.

Players don't say anything directly, of course. But they don't have much left to give their coach. They have one more reason to quit on the season just as they surrendered in College Park.

North Carolina's Jaward Williams said, "I'm very tired right now, emotionally and physically."

McCants wore an inscrutable expression. Asked if he wanted to win one for his coach, he said it wasn't about Doherty.

"Every team wants to win games," he said. "You win some, you lose some and you live to fight another day."

Players do, yes. Coaches, after a while, don't.

 

Good article. It basically said the same thing I was feeling when I wrote this post to begin with. Carolina looks like a State team and plays like a State team (no disrespect to state fans, I don't mean it that way). Just talking to other Tar Heel fans, I think most of us are beginning to give up hope. Just my 2 cents.

 

I gave up on State's season earlier in the year. I'm almost used to it.