With about 13 minutes left in the second half, and the North Carolina Tar Heels holding onto a tenuous one-point lead over Georgia Tech, UNC’s 7-foot-1 big Walker Kessler drove to the rim — and the world expected a slam.
Instead, Yellow Jacket forward Khalid Moore — six inches shorter than Kessler — met him at the rim and sent the blocked ball careening to the floor.
As Wednesday's game would end 72-67 in favor of Georgia Tech, the scene became clear: the Tar Heels, a perennial Goliath powerhouse, were again denied their first conference win of the season by a once-David team.
“It’s just a matter of want-to and focus,” senior forward Garrison Brooks said. “You gotta lock in more, you gotta know what’s going on at all times, you gotta know who you’re guarding, you can’t fall asleep on defense. You just gotta be more prepared.”
Coming into the game, UNC led its all-time series against Georgia Tech by a whopping tally of 69-26. The story was the same last week against North Carolina State, where the Tar Heels led the series 160-78. Both games ended in embarrassing upsets for head coachRoy Williams’ team. And as he'll tell you, there isn’t much of a positive side to this.
“The defensive end of the floor has been more important to us, (having) lower scoring games,” Williams said. “It’s got to be more important as well, because we’re not gifted enough on the offensive end to make a lot of shots.”
Defensively, things got so bad against the Wolfpack that Williams felt it necessary to change the starting lineup against the Yellow Jackets, giving three first-years the starting nod for the first time since 2007. Williams insists that, although important, the changes were not as major as they might seem.
Regardless, the result remained the same.
“The defensive grades (against N.C. State) sucked,” Williams said. “They weren’t just bad, they were terrible. I decided to start some different guys, it made no difference how much they played... you watch the State game and tell me if we were good defensively.”
