North Carolina forwards Waltiea Rolle and Xylina McDaniel were being double- and triple-teamed in the paint. Boston College was getting to loose balls. The Tar Heels were a step slow.
Complacency might have threatened to take control of the ACC Tournament’s quarterfinal matchup from the third-seeded Tar Heels, but, as she has so many times this season, Tierra Ruffin-Pratt made sure it wouldn’t.
The senior point-guard finished with 19 of her team’s 62 points against the Eagles, the tournament’s 11th seed. She didn’t shoot particularly well from the field — four-for-14. But the baskets Ruffin-Pratt did make showed how critical she is to her team.
Twice during the second half, with the shot clock approaching single digits, Ruffin-Pratt waved her team to the baseline and stood with the ball near the top of the key. She dribbled, staring up at the clock, daring a Boston College player to stop her. Each time, she blew by her defender for two points.
“That’s kind of one of our plays we run with a low shot clock,” Ruffin-Pratt said. “So it’s something we’ve been doing all season. Tonight the shot was going in, or I was getting fouled.”
But there’s no one else the Tar Heels have trusted to create in a one-on-one situation as consistently as Ruffin-Pratt. Both baskets were critical for UNC in the second half, during which its lead hung by a one- or two-point thread.
With so few baskets dropping, though, her team also had to trust her to convert at the free-throw stripe.
“In the first half we probably started off a little shaky for all of us,” she said. “But I didn’t think the fouls would play as big of a role as they did in the game.”
The 68-percent foul shooter made 11 of 12 foul shots a week after going five-for-10 from the line against Duke.
