It was a tale of two teams on Thursday night. The first North Carolina women’s basketball team to step onto the court in Carmichael Arena at seven o’clock was slow and uninspired. For the first two periods of the game that team would only score 16 points with 8 points a period.
The second North Carolina team, though still the same players, returned from halftime ignited and ready to go under head coach Sylvia Hatchell’s leadership. These players would go on to outscore Pittsburgh in both the third and fourth periods, but it was too late.
The Panthers beat the Tar Heels 76-60, putting UNC back at .500 on the season at 14-14 and 4-9 against ACC opponents. Also a struggling program, Pittsburgh now stands at 12-14 on the season and 4-9 within the ACC.
Throughout the first half of the game UNC completed a bleak 20 percent of their shots, going 5-for-24.
Freshman guard Destinee Walker led the team with a game-high 20 points. Freshman guard Stephanie Watts, current ACC Rookie of the Week, scored 16 points, while redshirt junior forward Hillary Summers produced 13 points.
Despite having insight into the team, Hatchell didn’t have the answers as to why her players simply couldn’t get their shots on net early on.
“I’d like to erase the first half from the history books of basketball,” Hatchell said. “If we had played the first half like we did the second half it would have been a whole different game. I don’t know why we started out so lethargic. We were so flat in the first two quarters. I don’t want to make excuses, but I still don’t know why we played the first two quarters like we were.”
The Panthers secured a 20-8 lead after the first period, closing out the last 5:21 on a 12-0 run.
“We were playing the first half like we weren’t even in the gym,” Hatchell said.
The early portion of the second period only furthered UNC’s drought, in which the Tar Heels finally broke through at 5:09 with an Erika Johnson free-throw. At that point the Panthers had scored 10 more points, marking the score at 30-9, after a 10-minute scoreless timeframe for North Carolina.
Entering halftime down 45-16, Hatchell said her intermission speech seemed to liven up her players, but she expects more accountability and fire to come from within the team.
“We’ve got to have more leadership on the court then where coach Hatchell won’t go crazy in the locker room at halftime and they come out and play with the intensity level that they showed in the second half,” she said. “More of that’s got to come from the players and I’m just going to keep challenging them there to do that.”
North Carolina would outscore Pittsburgh 18-11 in the third period and 26-20 in the fourth for an improved 47 percent field-goal percentage, but the deficit from the first half was just too large to overcome.
The largest lead Pittsburgh would hold in the second half was by 30, which UNC managed to dwindle to 15 at its closest point with 0:28 remaining.
“I think we’ve had a few games where we start off a little lethargic in the first half,” Walker said. “I think it had a lot to do with coach’s speech at halftime, getting us fired up. Also, we’ve had good senior leadership from Hil[lary]. The second half shows how good of a team we can be if we just start that way.”
North Carolina’s next game is on Sunday against N.C. State University and will be at 1 o’clock in Carmichael Arena.
“This one’s over and we’ve learned from it,” Hatchell said “We’ve got a big weekend coming up. We’ve got probably the most alumni coming in we’ve ever had. There’s our Kay Yow game on Sunday, playing N.C. State, of course. We’ve got lots of special guests coming in recognition of our ‘Play4Kay’ game. That’ll be a real special day. Hopefully we put on a better performance on Sunday and start the game a lot better than we did tonight.”
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