Gale force win: UNC Tar Heels blow past Miami Hurricanes

Down 12-5 to the North Carolina men’s basketball team after just four minutes, Miami’s head coach Jim Larranaga had to burn his first timeout of the game.

At the start of the second half, he waited only a minute and five seconds before calling another, but this time the damage had already been done as the Tar Heels were well on their way to a 73-56 conference victory.

“That’s great,” point guard Kendall Marshall said about forcing the quick timeout. “I was thinking at halftime, ‘OK, we’ve had big leads, but our problem has been performing in these first four minutes.’ I think we did a good job of that.”

UNC opened the second half with six unanswered points, but that was only the tip of the iceberg as it was part of a 17-4 run that spanned across the intermission.

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But there would be no silencing the Tar Heels for the rest of the half. UNC took off on a devastating run powered by strong defense that would ultimately seal the fate of the Hurricanes.

After the Jones follow dunk, the Tar Heels outscored Miami 14-6 to end the half and took a 40-25 lead into the break.

It was Marshall who led the offensive charge for the Tar Heels but not in his usual manner. He had one of his best scoring halves of his career with eight first-half points.

Tyler Zeller was the leading scorer for the Tar Heels with 16, but Marshall finished the game with 12 points (a season high) to go with eight assists and a pair of steals. Guard Dexter Strickland added 14 points and three assists.

Marshall said that the team’s success on offense, including his own, started with shutting down Miami’s talented back court duo of Durand Scott and Malcolm Grant.

“My first bucket, we got a steal and were able to get out on the break,” Marshall said. “When you get a defensive stop as a team, it’s going to be a lot easier to make things happen at the rim.”

The Tar Heels needed things to happen at the rim because they certainly weren’t connecting from the outside. For the game, UNC was a dismal 2 for 16 from beyond the 3-point line.

“At times we were really good defensively and the bottom line on the ugly part of the game, we just didn’t make any shots,” UNC coach Roy Williams said. “We really are a good shooting team. We can shoot the basketball, but we didn’t shoot it very well tonight.”

On the other end, oppressive defense held the Miami guards to just 6 of 20 shooting from the floor to make the difference in the second conference win of year.

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“I told the kids I really think nine home games in a row is really good because we won nine games,” he said, “but I do think we perhaps got a little complacent and thought things were going to be easy.”

It might not have been easy, but the final 17-point difference says otherwise.

Contact the Sports Editor at sports@dailytarheel.com.