For people who follow the NCAA Tournament every year, it’s almost a cliche phrase: To advance deep in the tourney, a team must have great guard play.
In Sunday’s game, the Tar Heels had it. The Sooners didn’t.
Compare these numbers.
North Carolina’s big three on the perimeter, juniors Ty Lawson and Wayne Ellington and senior Danny Green, plus freshman guard Larry Drew II, scored 48 points.
OU’s three starting guards, senior Austin Johnson, junior Tony Crocker and freshman Willie Warren combined for only 24 points, 18 of which came from Warren, and the backups failed to get in the score book.
That’s the recipe for how the Tar Heels handled the Sooners.
The Sooner guards turned the ball over seven times, while Carolina only turned it over six, but several of those turnovers for North Carolina were late in the game when the outcome was already decided.
OU’s guards were inefficient in consistently hitting shots and, for the majority of the game, inconsistent in the inside-out game with sophomore forward Blake Griffin. On the other side of the court, Carolina’s guards were efficient moving the ball around the perimeter and when they weren’t hitting 3s, they fed it to forwards Deon Thompson and Tyler Hansbrough for an easy deuce.
That’s another recipe for how the Tar Heels handled the Sooners.
Not until nearly the five-minute mark in the second half did OU finally make a 3, with a shot from Warren that cut the Tar Heel lead from 17 to 14.
Warren later hit another one in the final minute of play, but the Sooners as a team from the outside shot only 2-19.
Contrast that to Friday’s South Regional Semifinal against Syracuse.
The Sooners were 9-21 from the 3-point line, including a 6-11 performance from Crocker.
Those 21 points make a huge difference in a game against a quality opponent.
There was no question Griffin was the best player on the court.
He had Hansbrough in early foul trouble and made him basically a non-factor, but in the end, it was OU’s inability to score points with perimeter players that cost the Sooners a trip to the Final Four.
-Joey Helmer is a journalism senior.
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