The No. 6 North Carolina men’s basketball team defeated UNC-Pembroke 124-63 on Friday evening in a game that was never close.
It was the Tar Heels’ first and only official exhibition of the season — and the first time UNC fans saw the first-years against competition. Still, it's hard to put too much stock into what went down because of the talent gap between the two sides.
“It’s hard to evaluate; the team was just undermanned,” said junior forward Justin Jackson. “They came in, they played hard, obviously broke that record for offensive rebounds. But sometimes it’s kind of hard to kind of see where you are at ... We pretty much could do whatever we wanted to.”
Jackson brought up the 30 offensive rebounds that UNC-Pembroke grabbed against the Tar Heels — the most boards collected against any UNC team Roy Williams has coached.
“We didn’t do as good a job of boxing out,” Williams said. “I told (the team) about a kid that came and visited while I was at Kansas. He said he didn’t realize there were 11 commandments, because he said after watching our practice that the 11th commandment was 'I shall box out.'
"And we did not believe the 11th commandment tonight.”
With their 30 offensive boards, the Braves still trailed North Carolina by four in the rebounding category (50-46). But that was pretty much the only area in which the game was close.
North Carolina had 33 assists to UNC-Pembroke’s nine, and six Tar Heels scored in double digits compared to just two for the Braves.
Friday was an opportunity for three of North Carolina’s first-years — Tony Bradley, Brandon Robinson and Seventh Woods — to see extended minutes in their first true game situations.
