UNC’s Xylina McDaniel crushed to miss game against USC

Each game since it happened has been tough, but has been a tiny bit easier each time.

This one reverses that.

“This will literally be the hardest game I’ve ever missed,” Xylina McDaniel sighed on Thursday.

McDaniel, North Carolina’s junior forward who hails from Columbia, will spend Friday’s Sweet 16 matchup against South Carolina where she’s spent the last 22 games – on the Tar Heels’ bench. McDaniel tore her Achilles on Dec. 21, ending her season.

“I got a rebound, and I was turning around to dribble, and a girl fell on my foot,” McDaniel said. “I went down and I couldn’t get back up, and when I got my MRI, and they told me, I was like, ‘What? This is not real.’”

McDaniel’s never been used to sitting during games, not when she and USC’s Asia Dozier were part of a dynasty at Spring Valley High School and definitely not when she reported to UNC and was named ACC Rookie of the Year.

She and Dozier agreed not to talk this week and McDaniel admitted that she pulls for the Gamecocks when she’s not playing them – she knows pretty much the whole team.

“I’m not going to give you our game plan, but we have talked about the new players,” McDaniel said. “I will find a way to get into it on the bench.”

-- David Cloninger