How The Tar Heels Got Acquainted With Wagner
CHARLOTTE – Setting the scene: North Carolina’s basketball team riding a huge luxury bus from Chapel Hill to the Queen City to play in the NCAA Tournament, yet the Tar Heels have no earthly idea who they will play.
The top seed in the West Region, UNC knew it would play one of two teams between Wagner and Howard. The game was going on as Carolina’s bus cruised down I-85, so the glare coming off the backs of seats in front of the Heels were from the TVs showing the game pitting the Bison and Seahawks.
Consider the visual: Tar Heels slouched in a comfortable seat on bus watching the team they will face in two days in their most important game of the season.
“We watched it together,” graduate guard Cormac Ryan said Wednesday at Spectrum Center, site of Carolina’s game Thursday. “We watched part of it on the bus driving down, and we watched part of it at the hotel.”
The bus was quiet. Limited chatter, if any. It was a working bus ride.
“Just taking it in,” Ryan said about the scene on the team’s bus. “We’ve got a lot of smart guys on our team with a lot of great basketball IQs. So, just watching the game, taking note of personnel, plays, actions, styles obviously of both teams.”
Harrison Ingram didn’t take any written notes, but he took plenty of mental ones.
“I’d never seen either team play, so I just wanted to get a feel,” he said. “It’s a whole different experience.”
The Seahawks (17-15) won. That’s Wagner, champions of the Northeast Conference Tournament after winning three consecutive true road games, and then victors over Howard on Tuesday night in Dayton.
The Heels didn’t know much or anything about Wagner, which is located on Staten Island in New York City.
It helped, however, the Heels (27-7) did some advance work on both teams. So, when Wagner finished off the Bison, the Tar Heels were ready to dive into their scouting report and game plan.
“Yesterday in practice, we kind of went through both teams' stuff a little bit,” graduate forward Armando Bacot said. “Last night obviously we all watched the game, but we went over Wagner film last night too.”
Wagner lost four of its last five regular season games and finished the regular season in sixth place in the NEC, behind Central Connecticut State, Merrimack, Sacred Heart, Fairleigh Dickinson, and Le Moyne.
The Seahawks beat two of the top three teams in the NEC to claim the league’s automatic bid, the program’s first since 2003. Even more intriguing about its story is that Wagner has been playing with only seven scholarship players since conference play started, and have not had a live (five-on-five) practice since December 27.
The Seahawks coach in their only other NCAA appearance was former NC State star Dereck Wittenburg. This time around, it’s Donald Copeland, who acknowledged Wednesday he was a UNC fan growing up.
His team will face a Carolina club that knew nothing about the Seahawks when they woke up Tuesday, but sure had a feel for them the next day.