TARHEELS

[mswerb]

My team is done, and the mascot passed away. Sad day for the Tarheel faithful.

[Guest]

At least you're not a Duke fan.

[Mr. MacPhisto]

At least you're not a Duke fan.

I've always liked Duke much more than Carolina, but I guess I understand the vitriol thrown at the Blue Devils. Dean Smith always rubbed me the wrong way.

The truly sad story is the death of the TarHeels mascot. You never suspect something like that to happen over a weekend that's supposed to be enjoyable for the team and its supporters.

[swerb]

I can't ever remember seeing a team just completely fall apart at the seams that thoroughly. They missed 22 of 23 shots at one point down the stretch. The three that Ellington heaved with five seconds left in regulation was one of the stupidest plays I've ever seen. Not only was it a poor shot, but they didn't need three. Plus, they left enough time for GTown to get the rebound and call time out with 1.8 seconds left and almost win it in regulation.

Carolina was unthinkably deep this year, playing 12 guys regular minutes. But when you do that, even if you're a little fresher late, you have no true go to guy.

[mswerb]

I STILL feel sick.

[jdrake10]

Roy Williams has been taking some heat for this loss. He tends to save time-outs so the ESPN guys were hammering on him for that being how his team was so young.

What I found more interesting was a take I heard about Carolina's guys not knowing how to win close games. I guess they blew several leads late and lost several close games. One analyst blamed this on the fact they never play in real games that are close so they have no experience with this. All of the Carolina guys have played AAU ball forever. But AAU is more about devloping your personal game, not your team game. Further, in AAU you play like 3 games a day, so if you lose, so what, forget about it, you have to play again. Then these same kids go to elite high schools and go 30-1 with 29 of them blow-outs, so they still don't learn what it takes to win as a team down the stretch.

I don't totally buy it but it is an iteresting theory