In the second round it’s UNC vs LSU

It felt so long ago that UNC took their first step towards the Final Four in Detroit when they beat up on Radford. But it was just yesterday. Now comes the second round of the tournament where top seed North Carolina (29-4) will take on #8 seed LSU (27-7), who won their 1st round match against Butler 75-71, at 5:45 p.m. EST in Greensboro Coliseum. This game has a lot of meaning outside of the game on both sides of the ball. A win by the Tigers would mean that their head coach, Trent Johnson, would have brought three different teams to the Sweet Sixteen. That could be a motivating factor for LSU in this game. But Carolina has plenty of thos tid bits as well, first, with a win it will mark the third straight year that the Tar Heels win 30+ games in a row, a feat that has never been accomplished. Secondly, with that same win, North Carolina will tie Kentucky (who is in the NIT this year) for the most wins in the Tournament, at 98.

The optimists believe that with or without junior point guard Ty Lawson the Tar Heels can still win this game, citing that Las Vegas is picking UNC by 11 knowing that Lawson is still somewhat in doubt. The pessimists believe that without Lawson this could be a real hard game and even with the ACC Player of the Year it won’t be easy. Me, being a realist believe the following, if North Carolina goes to the bread and butter, aka the low post, establishing Tyler Hansbrough, Deon Thompson, Ed Davis and Tyler Zeller, then they should win the game. However, still being a realist, having the motor that has made this team run and run and run again, would just help things more. Am I confident that a Heels squad without Lawson could win this game? Yes, but I am a lot more confident if the point guard is playing, even if only 20-25 minutes.

Without a doubt this game is not going to be the massacre that the first round game was. LSU does have the SEC Player of the Year on their squad, Marcus Thornton, and he is a guard that has exploded for 30 points performances many times. Knowing what we know about perimeter defense, you know that this is going to make head coach Roy Williams get his team ready to track Thornton’s every move. The Tigers also have an inside presence in Tasmin Mitchell, who from what I have read around, had been a Tar Heel recruit at one point. For me the key here is knowing that these two will get their points, but not have a third player have a “big time game”. If that happens then the Tar Heels are going to move on to the Sweet Sixteen once again.

The one thing that both these teams have is experience, as they are both filled with Seniors and Juniors, so you have to believe that who plays the calmest is the one that is going to win. Again, I have to believe that Carolina is going to have the advantage when it comes to the inside play, so going to Hansbrough and Company from the get go is going to help the Heels tire them opponents out as well as get them into foul trouble. And as we saw against Radford, if the inside game is flowing, the outside shooters are going to see plenty of open shots, since the defense is going to collapse on the UNC bigs. You add the speed of Ty Lawson and this is once again a team that will score 10 points on one man fast breaks, which LSU should not have anyone on the team that can keep up with the speedy point guard out of Maryland.

And finally there is the fresh legs factor. While these are young men and they should not be tired after resting, you have to give the advantage to Carolina when it comes to the fresher bodies, as they played their starters from 30 minutes on down, while most of the LSU squad had to battle for a long time since their game went down to the wire. Once again, speed is crucial, and North Carolina has plenty of it.

Now, we have talked about Lawson a lot in this post, but is he going to be ready to play when it’s all said and done? From the articles around the web that I am reading it seems so. He might not play as much as usual, but if UNC can get control of the game and the combo of Bobby Frasor and Larry Drew can play as well as they did yesterday than Carolina should be in good shape. Plus, as I stated in the first paragraph, this game is being played in Greensboro, and that should give an extra edge to UNC. In all I do not expect a blowout, but I do expect that by the end of the game it’s UNC going to the Sweet Sixteen, tieing Kentucky for the most wins in the NCAA Tournament and getting thie unprecedented 3rd 30 wins season in a row.

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