CHAPEL HILL, N.C. - North Carolina, like any No. 1 team worth its weight in hype, has a bevy of offensive weapons it can use on any given night. But in its season-opening 86-71 win over Penn at the Dean Smith Center, the Tar Heels weren't going to take a chance of faltering in their season opener.
So they went big. And the Quakers went home disappointed.
Even without All-American forward Tyler Hansbrough, UNC was able to win the battle of the big men, having its way with Penn down low.
Junior forward Deon Thompson paced UNC with 17 points (7-for-11 shooting) and seven rebounds, adeptly using his 6-foot-8, 245-pound frame near the basket, posting up and creating space for short jump shots.
But Hansbrough's absence paved the way for a more intriguing development. A pair of freshmen - forward Ed Davis and seven-foot center Tyler Zeller - filled in admirably down low in their debuts. Zeller led the Tar Heels with 18 points, most of which came off the block, and Davis hauled in 14 rebounds to go with his 10 points.
"That's what your goal is coming into it, to get the ball inside," Davis said.
UNC's youthful front court was able to get the best of the Red and Blue's rotation of Jack Eggleston, Brennan Votel and Cameron Lewis - despite the man-zone scheme the Quakers ran on defense.
The Tar Heels were just 7-for-22 from three-point range, and when the shots starting clanking, the big men were called upon to pick up the slack.
"We did have a positive force on the inside," UNC coach Roy Williams said. "Against the zone, I don't think we should just shoot three-point shots just because everybody really wants to."
Added senior guard Bobby Frasor: "Once we started to work the ball inside, we really broke [the zone] down."
While Eggleston grabbed 12 rebounds (five offensive) - "It's definitely easier to rebound without Tyler Hansbrough in the game," he said - and Votel played an efficient 20 minutes before fouling out. Penn was left, for the most part, without answers to UNC's inside game.
Lewis took the opening tip-off, but the Quakers' 6-foot-8 big man was relegated to the bench for the entire second half and played just six minutes. Andreas Schreiber, perhaps Penn's most physically imposing player at 6-foot-9, 245 pounds, was out with a shoulder injury.
That forced Penn coach Glen Miller to resort to stop-gap solutions like freshmen Mike Howlett and Larry Loughery, to little success. Many of the Quakers' 30 fouls came down low, and three players (Votel, Loughery and guard Kevin Egee) were forced to exit early.
These matchup problems threw a kink into the Quakers' offensive game-plan as well - when the Tar Heels keyed in on Penn's guards, the big men were slow to adjust.
"We were just stagnant with our big guys," Miller said. "We need to back-cut more, we need to screen away more. We just didn't get consistent play out of our big guys in our motion offense."
Facing UNC may have been a tough challenge for Penn, which may not oppose a ranked team from here on out. But after the Quakers' opener, one thing is clear - if they want to dance with the big boys, the big men will have to step up.
