UNC vs. Wake Forest Game Thread

North Carolina (18-3, 5-1 Atlantic Coast Conference) will play its third game in six nights when it visits Wake Forest (11-10, 2-5 ACC) on Tuesday night at the Lawrence Joel Coliseum in Winston-Salem.  ESPNU will televise the game nationally. Carter Blackburn (play-by-play) and Jay Bilas (analyst) will have the call.

The fifth-ranked Tar Heels look to win their fourth in a row.

North Carolina (18-3, 5-1 ACC) leads the country in scoring at 84.9 points per game despite struggling from the perimeter. The Tar Heels shot an ACC-worst 24.7 percent from 3-point range in their first five league games before hitting 10 of 16 from behind the arc in Sunday's 93-81 victory over Georgia Tech.

North Carolina's already potent offense has the potential to be even more lethal if it can build on an impressive showing from 3-point range. This could spell trouble for Wake Forest, which is likely going to have enough issues keeping pace with Roy Williams' team.

Wake isn't receiving much production from anyone other than C.J. Harris, third in the ACC in scoring at 17.3 points per game, and Travis McKie, fifth at 16.3. In Saturday's 71-60 loss at Clemson, Harris and McKie combined for 32 points on 11 of 24 shooting while their teammates totaled 28 while missing 19 of 30 shots.

The Demon Deacons were again careless with the ball, turning it over 15 times to go with 13 assists - the sixth time in seven ACC games they've had more turnovers than assists.

The Heels should continue to build momentum in this game.  Wake should not present much of a challenge, but the Heels will need to contend with potential fatigue and a let down game against a clearly inferior opponent.  I want to see the Heels come out strong, get a big lead and continue to get experience for White, McAdoo, and Hubert.

GO HEELS!!!   

On paper this should be a blowout. But, that is why we play the games. No "gimmies" in ACC play, no matter how out-matched a team is. Anything can happen. While I'm glad more 3's were falling for us in our last game, I REALLY don't want to see the guys fall in Love with it. If they are falling, then it can be a nice boost, but our strength lies in the post and driving to the basket and our transition game. POUND IT INSIDE and let the rest of the game develop from there as well as from the Defensive side. I'm hoping to see that same intensity to start the game, and hopefully throughout.

GO HEELS!

this will be another blowout. wake avgs 67 ppg and that will not cut it against the highest scoring team in the country at 85 ppg.  its amazing to consider the tarheels are averaging that many points and have not gotten a  good percentage from the free throw line and up until last game didnt shoot a good percentage from 3. im looking for the usual for this game good games from barnes zeller henson and marshall efficient shooting from bullock and some garbage time minutes for some roy to experiment with different lineup combinations. im hoping to see mcadoo build on his solid performance from last game. ive also been impressed with the hustle and rebounding of hubert.  also love seeing stillman white come in for some quality minutes in relief of marshall. 83-62 heels.

Well lets be honest Wake Forest just down right sucks this year but Roy respects their coach and could go easy on him. I think we could beat them by 30 if we wanted too but in the end I think we win by around 20 but dominate the  game. I really want to see us play a great game on the road for the entire game. To many times this year on the road we have not played good basketball for half of the game so I would like to see that change today.

As you guys have all ready said I expect the usual guys to have big games and Roy continue to work the bench in. I'm also interested to see how Bullock  handles his first start on the road. So far with Bullock getting extra minutes I think we are a better team but on the road could make a difference. Hopefully we play a great game and McAdoo and Hairston continue to improve so they can really help us come tournament time. We will need them to step up and give us good minutes off the bench if we are going to be the team I hope we can be. Go Heels !!!!

I'll tell what's really gonna piss me off, with this being a 9:00 game if we miss the first 5-7 minutes because they are showing another game that no one cares about or a game where a team is up by 25 with 4 minutes of STUPID fouling in an attempt to win an unwinable game. I swear, I have NEVER understood why they Schedule games 2 hours apart. RARELY does a game end in exactly 2 hours.

Go HEELS!

I just want to see intensity on defense. This game has sleepwalking possiblities, as our Heels are way better than Wake. And its a road game. I just want to see them bury this team. Show some killer instinct, dont let a garbage team keep it anywhere near close.

As much as I want UNC to do work Roy will use this game as a experiment or scrimmage to get rotation down n give the bench work. So expect the same as the gtech game high energy first halft heavy sub bench minutes in the second half. We're at the point where we gotta start looking at the big picture and get ready for march. I like the starters but Roy knows we gotta get the bench ready for those rainy days aka foul trouble days esp mcadoo he needs work n playing time because he are first big man of the bench. I would also like to see Hubert get work because of his height he's a possible rebound and defense man. The score will be closer than the actually game play but my biggest thing is getting pj mcadoo Hubert white and watts playing time and experience. If we can get 3 out of those 5 to be useful when they come off the bench we will be in the final four. Bold statement I know but this team is clicking and we have some hungry guys of the bench. Lets do work fellas acc is ours for the taking.

***NEW VIDEO*** "Tar Heel Nation" ---->http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPeIdqCzRtE

Should be an easy game for the Heels.  Just saw an interesting stat; UNC has 153 wins against Wake; more than any other team in the ACC.  LETS MAKE IT 154 TONIGHT!

I would love to see us build up enough of a lead to get Stillman White 10 minutes of playing time.  We need to get him as much court time as possible before the tournament starts.

GO HEELS!

.....Expecting a double digit road victory tonight....

GO HEELS!!!!! 

Absolute brick city so far for the Heels....complete opposite from the last game...Thank God this is Wake or we'd be down by 8 instead of up 8.....

A win is a win.....but my goodness!!!  That game was U-G-L-Y!!!!!!!!!!!!!  They can't all be poetic gems and i guess we should have expected some sort of shooting letdown after scorching the nets against GT. But the boys get credit for having a workman type effort with a ton of offensive rebounds and ability to get to the line when shots were not falling. I can almost guarantee you all that we will need to win at least one of these type games in the tournament to win it all. When the shots don't fall, you have to have other answers to get it done. Now if this was a decent opponent, we would have had a 2 point game on our hands either way....but it is the middle of the season and getting up for this game was understandibly hard to do....I just hope we can find our shot and finish around the rim alot better against a more talented and athlectic Maryland team on Saturday.....

GO HEELS!!!!!! 

Z's 18 boards would have been much more impressive if both teams weren't shooting 30%.  An 85 rebound game signals something terribly wrong.  At least we ended up with the vast majority of them, even though it was not our night to put them back in.  A win.

If ever there was a win to forget, this was it.  The only good things about this game was the FT percentage and nobody got hurt.
No need to elaborate any further...here's to better shooting days...there is no way they can ever do worse than what I saw tonight. 

To survive an ugly game with a win is a test of how our defense makes the other team play worse.  Carolina also posted its 600 ACC win.  The most of any other team since the league was founded.

600 Atlantic Coast Conference wins.  Congratulations Tar Heels.

GO CAROLINA – GO TO HELL dook

I don't think I've seen the kids miss so many easy shots, but they grinded it out on defense.  Holding Wake to 29% shooting and out rebounding them 55 to 40 shows that the kids played hard.  Sometimes you have to win the ugly ones.  

That is what is called Winning Ugly.  But the fact of the matter is it is still winning.  Zeller is really playing hard after a very luckluster start to his season.  One thing I would like to see is Barnes posting up a little more, especially when we need a basket.  He has a size advantage most nights, and he has really developed a nice post game.  I was amazed at how quiet the gym was at the start of the game.  It was almost like a scrimmage or practice.  It took the hard foul by Hairston, and the subsequent run by Wake for the crowd to get into the game.  There was no energy to feed off, and I think that helped contribute to the poor shooting, as well as some tired legs maybe. 

Saturday's game should be more of a challenge than the last 2, and there is the potential to look past it to Duke on Wednesday.   

As an aside, don't know what others think, but I really like Jay Bilas as an analyst.   

Good posts Everyone! Well said. An ugly win, but at least there was no let down in the effort. Sometimes shots just don't go down and you have to win any way you can. We only scored 68, but if you watched UK in the game before, they only posted 69 against an unranked Tenn.

CRYSTAL LAKE, yeah Bilas is a good analyst. He is intelligent and tells it like it is. The only thing going against him is, well, that whole d00k thing...

I agree regarding Bilas.  He may be the best color guy in the business.  He is basketball's version of Kirk Herbstriet.  Plus, if you have ever seen any of his tweets, he can be hilarious.

Glad to see the Heels can win ugly.  This game may come in handy when we play Virginia.  They can force ugly too.

a win is a win. even though they got good shots all game they just werent falling but more importantly they locked it down on defense and hustled after loose balls.  good thing this wasnt the duke or md game or they would have been in trouble.  3rd game in 6 nights so its not alarming that the game was sloppy.  if bullock defends like this and can knock down open 3s this team will be a very tough out in the tournament. although this is not the 2009 team out there this team is good enough to win in a year where theres real no true dominating team. looking forward to the md game sat then onto the duke game where we put the 31 straight home wins on the line.