Welcome To The Final Eight!
Carolina 81 Marquette 61
Next Up: Kentucky

Carolina hoops has a long memory. Many fans saw the Marquette game as a chance for revenge for '77...  That was before my time as a Carolina fan, however, so that wasn't how I saw the game.

Marquette was cold, cold, cold. It's often hard to tell how much of a low field-goal percentage is a consequence of good D, of course. Our D in the first half, especially early on, was obviously very active, and one hypothesis is that it got Marquette out of its rhythm early. But they also missed some relatively open looks, and just seemed cold as ice.

Marquette was overmatched, I'd say. For one particularly salient thing, our frontcourt is just a lot taller and more athletic. The game was, in effect, over from pretty early on, but Marquette never gave up, and that has gained them fairly widespread respect from the Heel-o-sphere.

Congratulations to them on a good year.

Now comes UK.

On the bright side, we don't have to play OSU, which seemed second only to Kansas. On the down side...we have to play Kentucky, so our relatively care-free tournament now turns, from a fan's perspective, into a quasi-moral battle. Nobody wants to see Calipari succeed.

We beat the 'Cats earlier in the year in Chapel Hill by two. Both teams have improved massively since then. Kentucky is currently favored by 1.5 points. My money's on the Heels, partially because of the addition of Marshall at the point, but largely because of our coaching edge. But I haven't seen Kentucky play that many times this year. This one could be a barn-burner...

Go Tar Heels.