STARKVILLE, Miss. — Trailing 13-2 and steaming mad at his team, North Carolina coach Roy Williams yanked the team’s veterans.
Against a hot-shooting Mississippi State team playing on its home floor, Williams sent in freshmen Dexter Strickland, Leslie McDonald, Travis Wear, John Henson and sophomore Tyler Zeller.
Ten minutes later, the Tar Heels had gained the lead.
“It was like a 12, 13-point game,” Williams said. “Those guys got us back in the game.”
UNC freshmen scored 16 points of the 18-6 run that put the Tar Heels up 20-19 with 6:51 to play in the first half and attacked the physical Mississippi State defense with the intensity that Williams felt his starters lacked.
All told, Tar Heel freshmen scored 25 of UNC’s 36 first-half points, shot 57 percent from the floor in the first half, and kept North Carolina ahead of the Bulldogs.
The performance has been a long time coming, as UNC’s highly touted freshman class struggled to get up to speed with the rest of the team this season.
No player averaged more than 6 points per game or played more than 16 minutes per game entering Saturday.
But North Carolina’s freshman class was up to the challenge of MSU forward Jarvis Varnado, the NCAA career leader in blocked shots.
Henson, who is flourishing in the post after struggling playing the wing earlier this season, actually outplayed the much larger senior in the first half.
He helped hold Varnado to only seven points, four rebounds and one block while chipping in 10 points, six rebounds, two blocks and two steals in the opening 20 minutes.
He shot 5-for-8 from the field. Several times, Henson snagged loose balls under the basket and stuffed them home, and his alley-oop dunk late in the first half gave UNC its biggest lead of the game at 30-23.
It’s been a trend for Henson recently, as the freshman is averaging 9.5 points and 9.3 rebounds in the last six games.
Strickland and McDonald attacked the MSU defense and Varnado with dribble penetration. The two guards combined for 15 points of the bench, most of them on drives to the basket. McDonald even drew a three-point play while scoring over Varnado.
“Well, I knew I had to come in and set the tempo,” Strickland said. “We just wanted to go out there and play as a team and have fun.”
Strickland finished 3-for-4 from the field in 16 minutes of action. His play and that of his roommates McDonald and Henson sparked the upperclassmen, who sat on the bench for long stretches of the first half, to take charge in the game’s final moments.
“They helped us get back on track,” Marcus Ginyard said. “We didn’t quite come out with the focus we needed, and they helped us get our focus back.”
Contact the Sports Editor at sports@unc.edu.
