Are you over-timed out after the weekend? I am.
I’m pretty sure they don’t keep records like the strange occurrence of beginning the Thanksgiving weekend with a double overtime game in football and ending it with a quadruple overtime in men’s basketball.
Six overtimes on the field and court, and both hard-to-take defeats. Thank goodness for the women’s basketball and soccer teams for their big wins over the weekend!
We were getting prepared for what happened in Kenan Stadium for most of the regular-season finale against N.C. State, which outplayed the Tar Heels due to a reserve quarterback and a good defense doing better than expected.
Carolina should have been ready for yet another benchwarmer to start and have the game of his life against the guys in light blue. Didn’t Jeff Sims of Georgia Tech do that last year before he got buried on the Yellow Jackets’ two- or three-deep chart?
And, earlier this season, a second-stringer from Notre Dame played the game of his life here, and then a third stringer (not Sims) from the Ramblin’ Wreck engineered yet another home upset. Redshirt freshman (and third-year player) Ben Finley was ready to graduate from State with a degree in finance, and now he is the Wolfpack’s QB1.
Still, the Tar Heels had their chances to win and could not finish, which was their main malady all of the 6-7 2021 season. They do have a chance to erase all prior disappointments by winning the ACC championship Saturday night in Charlotte over a Clemson team that finally looks beatable.
The hoop Heels had already blown a seven-point lead late and lost to Iowa State in the Phil Knight Invitational, but they could never imagine what happened to them in the third-place game against athletic Alabama of the SEC. Not only did they lose, but it took them four overtimes to do it, with all kinds of weird things happening between officials’ calls and Armando Bacot sitting out most of the four overtimes while he still had a fifth foul to commit.
Thanks to Steve Kirschner, we know that Caleb Love’s 36 shots attempted was only the fourth most in one UNC game. And he probably knows whether RJ Davis’ 24 set a record for two players combining for 60 of the 91 shots the team took during the 103-101 loss.
Hubert Davis will have to explain Bacot’s benching in favor of Pete Nance, who played very well in OT before making the final turnover on UNC’s last reasonable possession. And surely he did not like his inside-outside offense being so dominated by two ball-hogging backcourt players.
And now the once No. 1-ranked team has lost two games and faces the prospect of dropping four straight with visits to top 10 Indiana Wednesday night and at always tough Virginia Tech Saturday. Over time, we shall see.
Featured image via Eli Melet
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