Wednesday, February 9, 2011

UNC builds 14-point halftime lead at Duke

DURHAM - With big men John Henson and Tyler Zeller dominating on both ends of the floor, No. 20-ranked North Carolina scored the first eight points Wednesday night at Cameron Indoor Stadium and led throughout the first half, posting a 43-29 lead at the intermission over No. 5-ranked Duke on the Blue Devils’ home floor.

Duke’s low post players were no match for Henson (10 points, six rebounds) and Zeller (13 points, nine rebounds). Zeller added three blocked shots as the Blue Devils were held to 33.3 percent from the field in the first half with nine turnovers.

Blue Devil senior guard Nolan Smith, who leads the ACC in scoring and assists, had his typical strong effort with 12 first-half points. Senior Kyle Singler added seven points, but he was just 3-for-10 from the field. Aside from Smith (5-for-12) the rest of the Blue Devil team was just 7-for-24 from the field.

Despite starting two freshmen and sophomores, North Carolina wasn’t intimidated in a raucous environment that was highly charged with first place in the ACC on the line.

Duke missed its first five field goal attempts as the Tar Heels rushed out to an 8-0 lead. A Smith 3-pointer later cut the deficit to 14-12, but Zeller hit a 12-footer and two free throws as North Carolina scored the next six points and continued adding to its lead.

-- Ken Tysiac

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry Ken. Guess you were wrong in your prediction as usual.

Anonymous said...

Hey ken...nice matchup where you had the heels winning the position matchups in an earlier article.Whoops....you showed thornton as the duke pg,but he played only 3 minutes.For future reference.....nolan smith plays the point and seth curry is the sg.You might want to do some research of who plays what positions before you write.I'll bet you feel really community college like right now.

Anonymous said...

Pretty lame to post about a half time lead. BTW, how did the second half go?

Anonymous said...

They published "Dewey beats Truman" too. They had deadlines. Ken, internet blogs don't have deadlines. What, then, is your excuse?

Anonymous said...

Didn't Ken give the Bench Edge to UNC for this matchup?? How'd that turn out? Hahahahahahhaha

Love,
Seth Curry

Anonymous said...

My goodness. Too bad Duke won. Next thing you know Ken will try to distract from the game by writing how uncreative the Duke students were. What a hack journalist.