CHAPELHILL— Inevitably, the question came.
Larry Shyatt paused for a moment, then responded as calmly as if someone had just asked him what the weather was supposed to be like tomorrow.
“I told somebody the other day — they really wanted to know why,”Clemson’s head coach said. “If we’re talking man to man, it’s not real hard to figure that one out.”
For the 47th straight time, the Tigers traveled to Chapel Hill and headed home with a loss. Carolina stands 47-0 all-time against Clemson at home, with double-figure wins in 16 out of the last 17 meetings.
Tuesday night’s 92-65 thrashing before 21,335 fans at the Smith Center was no exception. The tradition-laden Tar Heel program yielded four players in double figures and seven with at least eight points.
Clemson had the Atlantic Coast Conference’s leading scorer and little else. No post players to contain Brendan Haywood and Kris Lang. No answer for Carolina’s outside shooting.
And no end to the streak in site.
“It’s a relief for me. I’m a senior, I know I’m not going to be the team that lets the streak die,”said a joking Haywood, who finished with 11 points, six blocks and five rebounds. “You play a team that’s never, ever won here, that’s amazing, baffling. You don’t want to be the team that lets them come in here and get a victory.”
There was little danger of that happening, although Heels head coach Matt Doherty was unhappy with how his sixth-ranked squad played at times in the first half.
Will Solomon, tops in the ACCat 21.9 points per game, danced through a host of defenders on every possession and got free for 15 first-half points, including three 3-pointers. Clemson (10-7, 1-3) actually led 7-6 after five minutes.
Instead of taking advantage of the undersized Tigers, Carolina took what the Clemson zone defense gave them and reeled off a 12-1 run. Ronald Curry, Adam Boone and Joseph Forte each bombed 3s as the lead approached double digits.
The Heels (14-2, 4-0) finished with a season-high 12 treys on 27 attempts.
“It’s hard, because they were giving us the 3, they wanted us to shoot the 3s instead of going inside to Brendan,”Doherty said. “Some of them are very tough to turn down. It’s more of a mind game: Should I shoot or should I pass?”
The inside game surfaced when super-sub Julius Peppers got off the bench. The defensive end/forward had a one-handed tip and a rebound slam, Haywood scored on a dunk and Lang nailed a jump hook to push the lead to 44-31 at the break.
Dwon Clifton leaned in for a tough layup in the lane to give Clemson its first hoop of the second half at the 18:38 mark. Nearly four minutes later, Solomon’s layup ended a 12-0 Tar Heel run. In between, Lang and Haywood scored in the post and Jason Capel andForte drained 3s to break it open at 60-35.
“I would dare say that, from about that nine-minute mark in the first half until about nine minutes to go in the game, it was all Carolina,”Shyatt said. “They were magnificent.”
As the lead grew as high as 38 points, the only drama on the court remained the Solomon-Forte battle. Forte, second in the ACC at 19.8 points per game, scored 14 points, while Solomon was held to just two in the second half to finish with 17.
The scoring machines also proved adept at something else — talking.
“You’re a good player, I’m a good player,”Forte said with a laugh when asked about the on-court conversations. “He’d score on me and tell me about it, so I felt like I should tell him about it when Iscored.”
In the end, though, all the talk was about the streak. Forte has two more times to defend it, Solomon gets one last chance to break it.
“We didn’t want to think about the streak,”Forte said. “They’re thinking about it. It can be a motivating thing for them. Luckily we were able to build a lead.”
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notes: Doherty praised the defensive efforts of Forte, Curry and Brian Morrison, holding Solomon to 7-for-17 shooting. … All 15 Tar Heels played, with senior Jim Everett getting his first two points of the season. … Clemson, already with as many wins as last year, hopes to bounce back Sunday at Wake Forest. “Last week we took one on the chin pretty hard like some other clubs at Duke (a 115-74 defeat), and the play of our team the very next game against State (a 72-69 win) was pretty good,”Shyatt said. … The Heels travel to Florida State on Sunday.
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