North Carolina women's basketball avoids sprints by rebounding

After a 79-77 loss to No. 11 North Carolina Wednesday, Oklahoma State’s LaShawn Jones fielded questions about why the team couldn’t come away with the win.

What’s the biggest lesson the team learned from this game?

“Blocking out,” she said. “Not giving other teams second chance shots.”

After a quick glance at Jones’ statsheet, fans might double-take and check to see if they heard her correctly. But no, the 6-foot-3 center — who led both teams with 13 rebounds — didn’t misspeak.

Despite Jones’ individual performance, the Tar Heel basketball team managed to slip through the paint repeatedly on offense, crashing the glass to the tune of 22 offensive rebounds.

For Oklahoma State coach Jim Littell, that’s all he needed to see in order to understand why UNC picked up its third straight win of the season.

“You don’t have to look very far to realize that we lost the ballgame by giving up 22 offensive boards and 29 points on putbacks,” Littell said. “When you play a team that is as good as North Carolina, as athletic as North Carolina, you cannot give up 29 points on putbacks.

“We’ve got to do a better job blocking out.”

Littell praised Coach Sylvia Hatchell’s UNC team and talked about how No. 21 Oklahoma State had to find a way to play without as much of the athleticism that North Carolina brought into Carmichael Arena.

“We’re not very athletic,” he said. “We’re not gonna out-jump people, and we thought for a while that we could jump with North Carolina. And we can’t.”

Even with OSU’s admittedly poor effort on the glass and self-described lack of athleticism, it wasn’t a breeze for the Tar Heels to come away with a season-high number of offensive rebounds.

It was a matter of concentration and effort.

“We’ve been doing a lot of rebounding drills in practice this week, and so we knew we had to get on rebounds,” said sophomore forward Stephanie Mavunga, who led the Tar Heels with 11 rebounds — six of which were on the offensive side.

“It was just more of a mentality, and so we really knew we had to crash the boards. So I wouldn’t say it was easier — it was just more, I guess, putting more aggressiveness into it.”

That mentality comes from the simple fact that UNC players know the consequences of getting out-rebounded: running the next morning.

During their last game, an 84-68 win over UCLA, the Tar Heels were out-rebounded 52-42. Despite the 16-point blowout, the players had to run the next morning for losing the boards battle.

The goal is for that not to happen anymore. The Tar Heels have learned their lesson.

As Mavunga puts it, “the team doesn’t like to run.”

sports@dailytarheel.com