Welter: Blowouts in big games are becoming an identity for North Carolina

By Pat Welter, Multimedia sports journalist

There's nothing worse than when your team doesn't show up. As a fan you feel a sense of dread wash over you. Sometimes it's just early jitters or bad luck, but sometimes the game is over before it even really starts.

"We came out, I guess we thought it was going to be easy I'm not sure," UNC forward Leaky Black said after an 87-67 loss to No. 9 Duke. "We got punched in the mouth and that's just what it was."

Playing Duke is a lot of things, easy is not one of them. Before you could even say "tobacco road" UNC's double-double machine, Armando Bacot, was in foul trouble. From my position on the baseline I could see Duke's Paolo Banchero hold up two fingers in satisfaction as he drew the second foul.

"I thought we started out so well," Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski said after the game. "We really won the first twelve minutes of the half."

With Bacot out of the game the Duke lead quickly ballooned to 31-8. The electric atmosphere for Coach K's final trip to Chapel Hill fizzled into a collective "oh no, not this again."

"I feel like it's a common trend," Black said. "Every loss has been a blow out for a reason. It's not that we aren't prepared, coach Davis does a great job giving us a game plan."

UNC's seven losses have come by an average of just over 18 points. They are 1-4 vs. ranked opponents. I appreciate Black's candor, but this isn't just a trend it's becoming an identity.

"Sometimes you play and you don't play as well as you want to play," UNC head coach Hubert Davis said. "I played four years here and twelve years in the NBA. There were games that I didn't play well. It wasn't a particular answer of why I didn't play well."

Duke does have better players. That's an easy place to start. They have five players that could get drafted in the first round. Banchero should go No.1 in the NBA draft and A.J. Griffin is playing himself into the top five after a 27 point performance including 10 straight points to start the second half.

"We didn't have an answer for Paolo and A.J. with the exception of a defensive standpoint was Leaky," Davis said. "Unfortunately we couldn't divide Leaky into two players."

Cloning Leaky Black. Maybe that's something they can work out before the next time UNC plays Duke on March 5th. I don't disagree with Davis, Duke presented matchup problems and it's a much more valid excuse here than when he said Wake Forest's Alondes Williams, Jake Laravia and Daivien Williamson were better than any of North Carolina's players. But Duke is a mismatch for everyone and they aren't winning all of their games by twenty points.

"The bigger the environment the more our team comes to play," Duke forward Wendell Moore Jr. said. "We have so many guys that love the big environment, the big spotlight, the big crowds, we love being the villain."

If Duke's the villain, I guess that makes North Carolina a hero that's lost its super power.

"Every big game we feel like it's going to be easy because we have that North Carolina on our chest, but it's the complete opposite," Black said.

The North Carolina logo doesn't have to stand for Superman, but it can't stand for this.