North Carolina freshman midfielder Nyambi Jabang was only in the game against Wake Forest for two minutes, but that was more than enough time to get a feel for how intense the contest was.
Jabang came in the game in the 76th minute and had to be taken out of the game less than two minutes later after taking a tough hit and suffering an injury.
But as soon as he hit the ground the run of play slammed to a halt. A pushing match broke out at midfield and both keepers came sprinting out of their boxes.
“They had a couple of guys celebrating that the tackle was a good, hard tackle. That’s fine if you want to celebrate your tackle, but the guy’s obviously down injured, and you’re celebrating that a guy’s injured, which is what I think our guys had a problem with,” North Carolina coach Carlos Somoano said about the incident.
“We’re not complaining about the call. I don’t know if it was a foul or not. A guy just came in hard. My only issue would be with them celebrating maybe that wasn’t their intent to celebrate he was injured, obviously, but he was down injured, so obviously we don’t like that. Our guys…I wouldn’t expect them to like that.”
The referees stopped play for at least five minutes and gave both teams a talking to before resuming the game.
The rest of the scoreless draw was tense and physical as it was before. There were two cards given out, both in the second half, and the referees whistled 28 fouls in the game.
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