Mike Petersen, the Wake Forest women's basketball coach, said yesterday that he had a headache from watching so much film on North Carolina.
"They are so talented, it makes my head hurt," Petersen said. "You know they just don't have five girls named ‘Sue,' they've got a lot of great players."
Wake Forest (15-10, 6-5 ACC) and UNC (16-8, 2-6) will meet at 7 p.m. today in a pivotal ACC game, and for once the Tar Heels will be looking up at the Deacons in the standings.
In Petersen's previous five seasons, UNC was always a top-25 team. The Tar Heels are unranked now -- they fell out of The Associated Press poll Monday for the first time since November 2001, their streak of 163 weeks as a ranked team ending. Petersen doesn't expect that to make the game any easier for his team.
"Are you kidding me?" he said. "For years, even before I got here, Carolina has set the standard in this conference, and that's because of great players, they have a great coaching staff, and they just know how to get it done."
Petersen's Deacons are having one of their best seasons in years. They haven't finished at .500 or better in the ACC since going 9-5 (and 23-8 overall) in 1987, and that was the only time they topped .500 in the league.
A victory tonight would give the Deacons no worse than a 7-7 ACC finish and also might give them some ammunition for a possible NCAA Tournament berth. They have two wins over ranked teams (Miami and Virginia) and are holding their own, even though they have no senior starters.
"I just think we have a pretty resilient group, and they don't get discouraged if we get behind," Petersen said. "And they've done well in bouncing back after tough losses."
The Tar Heels have lost five in a row, including an 82-78 double- overtime loss at Virginia on Monday. The Deacons ended a two-game losing streak with Sunday's 60-56 win at Boston College.
Petersen is 0-6 against UNC since becoming Wake Forest's coach before the 2003-04 season, and he concedes that in years past, this game usually didn't mean as much in the conference standings.
"I would say that the rivalry part of it was the big thing, but that it was usually Wake Forest just trying to play the role of spoiler," Petersen said. "So in that respect, this game does mean more with everything we hope to accomplish."
Italee Lucas (16.4 ppg) and Cetera DeGraffenreid (13 ppg) lead North Carolina in scoring. Brittany Waters (13.8 ppg) and Thomasville's Secily Ray (10.6 ppg, 7.6 rpg) lead the Deacons, who have one of the ACC's top defensive teams.
"We have to take care of the basketball and really do a better job of rebounding," Petersen said. "They are trying to score 100, and we aren't about that, so we'll have to be solid on defense. That's why we've been successful."
jdell@wsjournal.com
727-4081
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement