Faegan
All Conference
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2011
- Messages
- 3,017
- Like
- 2,923
Here are my late thoughts on UNC... I know others have written up a bunch of stuff, but I'm still away and haven't read much so apologies for anything that's repetitive or seems to be plagiarizing others!
Spring Break. We had a trip to Isle of Palms/Charleston planned for a while. The SU at UNC game was fortuitously scheduled for the same weekend we were headed south. Giddyup.
What a horrible trip down 95 on Friday… the rain was awful and 95 a disaster. We barely made it to Chapel Hill in time to go to Al’s Burger Shack. What a gem. Unless you really like Rosemary, stick with the sweet potato fries. High-quality meat and the fixins are just right. I have to eat gluten free… the bun was great and my family assured me the regular buns for the rest of y’all are excellent. I eat a lot of burgers due to my celiac diagnosis and what’s generally available out of the house. I can comfortably say this is one burger shack that gets it right. Highly recommended. Also had Bold Rock Cider for the first time. Generally speaking I can only enjoy one cider and then need to move on to something else. Bold Rock hits the right balance between and sweet/dry - almost seems watered down just a bit, but in a way that is a total plus. Cider aficionados should try it if you can find it up north.
We woke up and checked out the UNC campus. Impressive to say the least - spring had sprung and the intermittent downpours did little to ruin the experience. We ate breakfast at the Carolina Breakfast Shop, which was formally the student post office. It’s adjacent to campus and the food was good. A lot of students/alumni there for the weekend, so I won’t hold the slow-yet-friendly service against them.
Hard time finding out exactly where the game was - with the spring football game it was a bit chaotic and initially I thought the lax game was in Kenan. Parking was a bit of a challenge, but we eventually found our way to the new lax stadium. It’s impressive. There was a thread somewhere recently on SF.com about SU producing a soccer/lax stadium. I personally love the dome for lax. If we were ever so enriched that we could afford to have a soccer stadium such as UNC's new facility that could accommodate us later in the spring for a few games, I’d be all for it - weather permitting.
Even with the weather, I was surprised to see the crowd size. I had predicted a bigger crowd earlier in the week since the ladies played before the men, and the spring football game followed the men's game. Oh well. Didn’t happen. Hard to figure.
Full disclosure - we were only able to stay for the first half. We were going to be very late getting to our destination even before the start was delayed beyond the 3pm start time on the tix. My son recently had surgery so had to stick to our schedule and get him to the resort as early as possible.
If lax is a game of runs, this game was a poster child. SU quickly went up 2-0, six straight UNC goals made it 6-2, before Cuse found the back of the net for four straight to tie it up. We traded goals for 7-7 at the half. Cuse then went 6 straight to get us to 12-7. The last two goals came from the heels for a 12-9 final score.
Right out of the gate it was clear that UNC was winning the clamp at the x with ease, so I was not surprised to see Danny come in and relieve Jake. It happens. I won’t read too much into it, will be interesting to see what happens when we face UNC again.
The defense looked a little lost during UNC’s 6-0 run after our 2-0 start. That being said, I am continuously impressed by how we can make it hard for opposing offenses even when we’re not all on the same page. UNC was able to exploit some tight lanes with near perfect off-ball movement and their ability to get the ball in and out of their sticks and on net quickly.
Drake played really well during our first half drought. It could have been worse if it weren’t for him. I was surprised to see the number of saves he had in the first half when I looked at the box score… was sure it would have been more.
I know how some folks are a little down on some of the younger players, particularly the attack. However, I was happy to see Desko pulling out some of the starters to send a message when they were making some mistakes. We need to clean up some of our fundamentals if we hope to go deep in the post season. Nobody loves a good BTB more than me, but I’d be happy to exchange them for getting rid of the high/low passes, bad catches, and some of the subpar ground ball play during the runs our opponents are enjoying at times. It’s not lost on me that we were +8 in GBs vs UNC, but there’s some hesitancy to get after it on the offensive side of the ball. Lastly, am I the only one seeing that there seems to be a lot of opportunities to pull the trigger when we move the ball well but we’re not ready to rip it right when we get it in our pocket? I’m only nitpicking here because I’m concerned we’re going to get kicked to the curb before Memorial Day weekend in the same manner we lost to Virginia. Tight game, bad penalty, and then good night Irene.
Looking forward to the Navy game and the ACC tourney.
Spring Break. We had a trip to Isle of Palms/Charleston planned for a while. The SU at UNC game was fortuitously scheduled for the same weekend we were headed south. Giddyup.
What a horrible trip down 95 on Friday… the rain was awful and 95 a disaster. We barely made it to Chapel Hill in time to go to Al’s Burger Shack. What a gem. Unless you really like Rosemary, stick with the sweet potato fries. High-quality meat and the fixins are just right. I have to eat gluten free… the bun was great and my family assured me the regular buns for the rest of y’all are excellent. I eat a lot of burgers due to my celiac diagnosis and what’s generally available out of the house. I can comfortably say this is one burger shack that gets it right. Highly recommended. Also had Bold Rock Cider for the first time. Generally speaking I can only enjoy one cider and then need to move on to something else. Bold Rock hits the right balance between and sweet/dry - almost seems watered down just a bit, but in a way that is a total plus. Cider aficionados should try it if you can find it up north.
We woke up and checked out the UNC campus. Impressive to say the least - spring had sprung and the intermittent downpours did little to ruin the experience. We ate breakfast at the Carolina Breakfast Shop, which was formally the student post office. It’s adjacent to campus and the food was good. A lot of students/alumni there for the weekend, so I won’t hold the slow-yet-friendly service against them.
Hard time finding out exactly where the game was - with the spring football game it was a bit chaotic and initially I thought the lax game was in Kenan. Parking was a bit of a challenge, but we eventually found our way to the new lax stadium. It’s impressive. There was a thread somewhere recently on SF.com about SU producing a soccer/lax stadium. I personally love the dome for lax. If we were ever so enriched that we could afford to have a soccer stadium such as UNC's new facility that could accommodate us later in the spring for a few games, I’d be all for it - weather permitting.
Even with the weather, I was surprised to see the crowd size. I had predicted a bigger crowd earlier in the week since the ladies played before the men, and the spring football game followed the men's game. Oh well. Didn’t happen. Hard to figure.
Full disclosure - we were only able to stay for the first half. We were going to be very late getting to our destination even before the start was delayed beyond the 3pm start time on the tix. My son recently had surgery so had to stick to our schedule and get him to the resort as early as possible.
If lax is a game of runs, this game was a poster child. SU quickly went up 2-0, six straight UNC goals made it 6-2, before Cuse found the back of the net for four straight to tie it up. We traded goals for 7-7 at the half. Cuse then went 6 straight to get us to 12-7. The last two goals came from the heels for a 12-9 final score.
Right out of the gate it was clear that UNC was winning the clamp at the x with ease, so I was not surprised to see Danny come in and relieve Jake. It happens. I won’t read too much into it, will be interesting to see what happens when we face UNC again.
The defense looked a little lost during UNC’s 6-0 run after our 2-0 start. That being said, I am continuously impressed by how we can make it hard for opposing offenses even when we’re not all on the same page. UNC was able to exploit some tight lanes with near perfect off-ball movement and their ability to get the ball in and out of their sticks and on net quickly.
Drake played really well during our first half drought. It could have been worse if it weren’t for him. I was surprised to see the number of saves he had in the first half when I looked at the box score… was sure it would have been more.
I know how some folks are a little down on some of the younger players, particularly the attack. However, I was happy to see Desko pulling out some of the starters to send a message when they were making some mistakes. We need to clean up some of our fundamentals if we hope to go deep in the post season. Nobody loves a good BTB more than me, but I’d be happy to exchange them for getting rid of the high/low passes, bad catches, and some of the subpar ground ball play during the runs our opponents are enjoying at times. It’s not lost on me that we were +8 in GBs vs UNC, but there’s some hesitancy to get after it on the offensive side of the ball. Lastly, am I the only one seeing that there seems to be a lot of opportunities to pull the trigger when we move the ball well but we’re not ready to rip it right when we get it in our pocket? I’m only nitpicking here because I’m concerned we’re going to get kicked to the curb before Memorial Day weekend in the same manner we lost to Virginia. Tight game, bad penalty, and then good night Irene.
Looking forward to the Navy game and the ACC tourney.
Last edited:
