CHAPEL HILL, N.C.-Penn coach Glen Miller knew two important things before his team played No. 2 North Carolina Wednesday night. First, his team would have to play 40 minutes of good basketball to have a shot; and second, the Quakers would need to play excellent transition defense against the Tar Heels' explosive attack.
For 23 minutes and 33 seconds, Miller's team did just that, outscoring the Tar Heels 50-42. But it was the other 16:27 that cost the Quakers, as North Carolina outscored them 60-14 en route to a 102-64 win.
Many of those points came via the Heels' vaunted transition attack.
Overall, North Carolina (13-1) scored 48 points on 30 transition opportunities, not just getting the chances to score, but taking them too.
In the final eight minutes, when the Tar Heels turned a 15-point game that was still competitive into a blowout, they had 20 transition points on 11 possessions, failed to score only twice, and energized the crowd at the Dean Smith Center with dunks and easy lay-ups.
"The transition defense just fell apart," Miller said.
"They get out in transition and convert better than anybody in the United States," he added.
While the Tar Heels scored in transition all night long, they did so in two different fashions. In the first half, North Carolina forced Penn (6-6) into 15 turnovers with its aggressive, trapping defense. The Quakers succeeded early in the game with precise passing and sharp cuts, but then started making passes that were just a little bit off, and could not handle the Tar Heels trap.
This led to North Carolina taking nine more field goals and five more foul shots than Penn in the first, and although the Quakers shot a better percentage from the field, the Tar Heels had a nine-point lead at the break.
In the second, Penn only turned the ball over five times, and took the same number of field goals as the Heels did (36). But the Quakers shot 33 percent in the second half, including only 6-of-28 after a hot start, while North Carolina hit 61 percent, making 10 more shots en route to a 29-point advantage in the second half.
"That's something coach mentioned to us at halftime," Tar Heels sophomore forward Tyler Hansbrough said. "Pushing the ball and get easy buckets."
Indeed, his coach, Roy Williams, said that he thought his team's defensive intensity was turned up in the second half.
"I thought we were flying around everywhere and either getting turnovers or getting hands on the ball and deflecting it, and sometimes we did come up with it."
North Carolina converted 15 live-ball defensive rebounds into 21 points, with the average scoring play taking less than nine seconds.
Penn has had turnover problems all season, averaging 16.5 per game entering the North Carolina game. But the transition defense, which has been fairly strong throughout the year, faltered against the Tar Heels' all-around athleticism.
The good news for the Quakers, despite the loss and the final margin, is that they do not have to play another team as skilled as North Carolina for the rest of the regular season.
