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Adam Lucas
1. Carolina dominated Marquette in the first round of the NCAA Tournament victory 95-63. Carolina made a remarkable 29 passes on 34 field goals, demonstrating incredible ball sharing skills.
2. Marquette’s scouting report on Caleb Love made it pretty clear that he was trying to get inside his head by working off Smart’s past scouting reports that suggested a physical relationship with Karolina. Result: 21 points in the first half for Love, in which Marquette scored 25 points for the team.
3. Love’s six 3-pointers in the first half tied a school record in the NCAA Tournament by hitting 3-pointers in just 18 minutes of play.
4. If the first half was the Caleb Love show, then the second half was mostly about R. J. Davis and Brady Manek. Davis had seven assists in the second half alone and finished the game with 12 assists (a Tar Heel NCAA tournament record of 14 for Kendall Marshall). Notable about Davis’ play was that his 12 passes came across six different Tar Heels, meaning he had at least one pass for every teammate he took to the court with.
5. And three of those passes went to Manek, who only had a very good game in the second half. He finished with 28 points on 10-of-15 shooting. Fifteen of those points came in the second half.
6. With all that individual praise, Leaky Black is pretty much going to be overlooked. He shouldn’t be. He pinned Marquette’s top player, Justin Lewis, to a meager 2 for 15, which essentially stopped Marquette’s offense. Black also had seven rebounds and eight assists.
7. Marquette probably doesn’t want to see the Tar Heels again in the NCAA tournament anytime soon. The last time the two teams met in the postseason, Carolina led by 25 points in 2011. On Thursday at halftime it was 28 points. It was Carolina’s second-highest halftime lead in NCAA tournament history (the biggest lead was 29 points over Rhode Island in the 1993 second round).
8. That first half was full of shenanigans, including Marquette’s Darryl Morsell trying to fight Caleb Love (he got a contact technical foul), and then Smart and Love got into a long and heated discussion. Smart also received a technical foul within the first 20 minutes as the Golden Eagles basically fell apart. The head coach of Marquette led the Carolinas 3-0 in games played mostly at the start of the season.
9. Armando Bakot is the new school record for rebounding in a single season. Backot recorded another double-double with 17 points over ten rebounds. He now passed Bryce Johnson with 417 in Johnson’s sensational 2016 season to become Carolina’s only yearly mark. The backcot was an important part of Carolina’s dominance in rebounding, which saw the Hills hold an overall lead of 50–33 and 23–10 on second chance points.
10. It was great to see Raymond Felton in the stands during Thursday’s game. Felton spent several years in the NBA with the Dallas Mavericks and is a regular in the area. He sat right behind Roy and Wanda Williams at Dickies Arena, so you know there were some great conversations in those rows. To learn more from Felton, he had a very hilarious interview on the Carolina Insider podcast earlier this week. Another Tar Heel with a professional career in the Dallas area, former cowboy Jesse Holly, was also in the game.
11. Roy Williams has traditionally paid close attention to St. Patrick’s Day, once ordering green shirts for his employees to wear under their shirts. Hubert Davis didn’t mention the holiday, but the result was the same: Carolina is now 14-1 on St. Patrick’s Day in NCAA tournament play. The only loss was against Texas Tech in 1996.
12. Carolina will now play Baylor on Saturday. In effect, the Bears will play the home game about an hour from Waco, and the Carolinas have taken advantage of that many times. The game time will be announced later on Thursday evening.