UNC led Wyoming at halftime, but the mood was far from cheery in the Dean Smith Center.
The Cowboys had manhandled the Tar Heels on the glass, grabbing as many offensive rebounds (15) in 20 minutes as Carolina had total rebounds. It wasn’t clear which team represented the Mountain West and which the mighty ACC.
So head coach Michael Malone walked into the locker room with one thing on his mind.
“I challenged our manhood at halftime,” Malone said. “We had guys that had just played a whole half of basketball with zero rebounds. I went down the whole roster and challenged each player and challenged the group collectively to go out there and stop getting punked. Because the streets talk, and right now the streets are talking: ‘Go in the Dean Smith Center and push them boys around.'”
Malone, in essence, had called a group of very prideful young men soft. His is the straight-shooting, no-BS style which can be grating on some and honest to a fault. And the truth of his statement cannot be denied: the Cowboys had “punked” the Tar Heels on the glass.
“As men, you don’t ever want to hear that somebody’s punking you around or somebody’s taking food off your plate,” said Isaiah Denis (two rebounds in the first half). “Obviously, that should ignite a fire in you.”
“It made us really think about the effort that was put in in the first half,” said Maximo Adams (two rebounds in the first half). “He’s keeping us accountable, and that’s a great thing.”
The Tar Heels were careful to clarify that the challenge did not catch them off guard. In every huddle during the first half, Malone and his staff reminded the team of the ever-growing gap in the rebounding disparity. It was not a one-man show by the Cowboys: no player ended the game with more than eight rebounds. Michael Mora, Wyoming’s leading rebounder on the night, is listed at 6-foot-6 on the Cowboys’ roster — almost half a foot shorter than 7-foot-1 Sayon Keita (three rebounds in the first half). In timeout after timeout, Malone kept imploring his group with a few simple words.
“Hit somebody,” Malone said. “We were just ball watching. And as we’re ball watching, they’re crashing…. I wanted to turn the tide there and have a hit first mentality.”
“He tells us the truth,” Adams said. “That’s what it is.”
In the early minutes of the second half, it appeared Malone’s challenge would go unanswered. The Cowboys grabbed four more offensive rebounds in the half’s opening minutes, pushing their total on the game to 19. But the final 15 minutes were more to Malone’s liking: UNC shut Wyoming out on the offensive glass. And lo and behold, the Tar Heels were able to pull away and lead by as many as 18 points in the final minutes.
Still, the end-of-game statistics will no doubt rankle Malone. Despite UNC winning the rebounding battle in the second half of the Tar Heels’ 76-63 win, Wyoming still held a 43-37 advantage across the full game and scored 15 second-chance points. Carolina has now been outrebounded twice in the season’s first three games, with each of its three opponents grabbing at least 13 offensive rebounds.
How can the Tar Heels solve this glaring issue before Georgia visits the Smith Center Friday night? Malone has a few ideas.
“Most of our drills, you get rewarded for getting stops,” he said. “You get penalized for turning the ball over. You get penalized for giving up offensive rebounds. I think I have to come up with stronger penalties.”
Featured image via Chapel Hill Media Group/Todd Melet
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