The Tar Heels could be in big trouble tonight.
Notre Dame’s 17-2 to run to beat Wake Forest at the buzzer in the first round of the ACC tournament creates quite a problem for Carolina.
The Deacons, who won three ACC games in the regular season, outplayed the Fighting Irish for about 35 minutes and then went stone cold as Notre Dame pulled one of its patented comebacks.
So instead of playing a doormat team with a first-year coach, the Tar Heels face a nemesis of sorts especially in Greensboro, where ND won its only ACC tournament championship over Carolina in 2015.
UNC rallied to beat Notre Dame in Chapel Hill last January, and the Irish are always dangerous when coming back from the dead. Their leader Nate Laszewski was held to two points against Wake and gets a chance to keep his junior season going.
With Carolina’s inconsistency to this point, the Tar Heels would be much better off playing a team with no experience in the tournament rather than an established program that knows how to never quit.
And this is when having one game under your belt against the team that hasn’t played since Saturday is also dangerous for the Tar Heels, who have been on a run of good game-bad game-good game-bad game for the last two weeks. After demolishing Duke on Senior Day, the pattern says that Carolina is due for a bad performance.
Notre Dame shot poorly for most of the game, but finished on a hot streak and will likely start tonight in the same mood. The Irish entered the tournament off an upset of Florida State, which kept the Seminoles from repeating as regular season ACC champions. Now comes another chance at giant-killing.
Carolina is already in the NCAA tournament, and 11-14 Notre Dame has to keep winning to have a chance to even make the NIT. So who will have more motivation?
The Heels have a size advantage over the Irish as they do over most teams, so a start like they had against the Blue Devils will be imperative to take control of the game.
Notre Dame continued its great tradition of comebacks under coach Mike Brey, and letting the game at Carolina get away has to be extra incentive.
“We have nothing to lose,” Brey said after his team’s buzzer-beater.
No kidding.
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