It’s the same old story for North Carolina basketball in loss to the Wolfpack
It must be old for North Carolina coach Roy Williams watching his team follow the same plot lines every game. Slow first half start. Double-digit deficit. Get focused to mount a comeback. And while Saturday’s win over Kentucky hinted the Tar Heels were ready to create a new narrative, Tuesday’s 79-76 loss at N.C. State was just another lame sequel.
“The difference in the game to me was their sense of urgency early in the game,” Williams said in his postgame remarks. “The first 10, 12, 14 minutes, their sense of urgency was greater than ours. They shot 70 percent, got every rebound when they did miss a shot. And so all of a sudden, (we’re trailing by 17).“
Against the Pack (5-1, 1-0 ACC) that lack of urgency led to a lack of detail defensively.
Wolfpack guard Shakeel Moore had made three 3-pointers all season, but drilled three in the first half against No. 17 UNC en route to a season-high 17 points. It was the freshman from Greensboro’s first game in double-figures scoring. But Williams felt that too should not have happened.
“You got to play the screen on the ball the way we practice every day, and we didn’t do that at all,” Williams said. “And then all of a sudden they’re getting open shots. And a guy comes off the bench and he makes one 3, then I’d go out and guard him. So he makes another 3 and then we give him another 3.”
That’s been a familiar script for the Tar Heels (5-3, 0-1) this season. Carolina has trailed by double-digit deficits in the first half six times in its eight games.
UNC and its comeback attempts
As accustomed as the Heels are to falling behind, they’re also pretty self-assured that they can come back. They rallied from down 46-29 with a 15-3 run to close out the first half and start the second.
Then for almost a seven-minute stretch between the 15- and 8-minute mark, Carolina would pull within a basket and be in possession to tie or take the lead, but never completed the play. Turnovers and shot selection, the old faithfuls of their shortcomings this season, sabotaged their rally.
“I just think for us moving forward, we just need to play with more fire, more intensity and stop letting players out hustle us a little bit,” said R.J. Davis, who had 11 points on 5-of-14 shooting, after the game. “It’s just like the little things that we have to fix.”
At 53-51, Caleb Love got a skip pass and missed a wide-open 3-pointer. Love missed all four of his attempts from behind the arc and finished with 11 points on 3-of-14 shooting.
At 57-55, Brooks missed a free throw that would have completed a three-point play. Andrew Platek got the rebound, but turned the ball over trying to get the ball inside.
Brooks missed another basket with the score 59-57. And Platek, after pulling the Heels within 63-62, committed a foul on a Devon Daniels basket to give up a three-point play. That sparked a 14-2 run for the Pack that put Carolina in a deficit too big to overcome.
“We’re a pretty young team,” said sophomore Armando Bacot, who scored a team-high 16 points on 7-of-9 shooting from the field. “...Not having that experience I think sometimes might hinder us from having and knowing what to do in certain situations. But we learning and there’s still a lot of basketball to play.”
Tar Heels play with purpose, focus in stretches
The frustrating part comes from watching the stretches Carolina plays with purpose and focus. The Heels only seem to get that way once they are trailing big. Because as bad as they played in coughing up the ball for 18 turnovers, they still managed to have a chance to send the game to overtime.
UNC held State to two made free throws the remaining five minutes of the game, but it wasn’t enough time to complete the rally. Davis missed a 3-pointer to tie from the left wing with four seconds and Love missed a clean look from 3 that was straight on at the buzzer.
“This UNC, we don’t celebrate moral victories,” Bacot said of their comeback. “So we just got to do better and just win the game.”
This story was originally published December 23, 2020 at 12:08 AM with the headline "It’s the same old story for North Carolina basketball in loss to the Wolfpack."