Pete Nance, UNC basketball break out of shooting slump thanks to ... lemon cookies?
As much as North Carolina forward Pete Nance loves to eat lemon Oreos, they really have nothing to do with how well he’s been shooting lately.
The results say otherwise. It’s a small sample size to be sure, but ever since coach Hubert Davis left a box of lemon Oreos for Nance in his office, his 3-point shooting has taken off.
“I always take a nap in his office right before the game so he left a pack for me on the couch,” Nance said. “So definitely I think there was a lot of power in the cookies.”
Nance shot 45 percent from 3-points range last season at Northwestern. On Friday, his percentage at UNC from behind the arc had dipped to just 28 percent that included a streak of 18 consecutive misses from 3 this month.
Nance put an emphatic end to a shooting slump by going 4-for-4 from 3 and scoring 22 points in the Tar Heels win over Virginia on Saturday. He followed that by going 3-for-6 from 3 in Monday’s 77-66 win over Florida State and scoring 15 points with 10 rebounds.
“It was a simple conversation about what’s your favorite cookie and now it’s turned into a big deal,” Nance said. “It’s crazy.”
It may only get worse.
An anonymous donor had dozens of lemon Oreos delivered to Hotel Indigo in Tallahassee to await the Tar Heels before they played at Florida State. Davis also said he had purchased a second box of lemon Oreos for Nance after Saturday’s win over Virginia.
“I left them in the office because he hadn’t finished the ones that I gave him (on Saturday),” Davis said. “We get on a flight, get here to Tallahassee, check into our hotel get into the lobby and at the front desk there are 20 to 25 boxes of lemon Oreo cookies. I still right now have no idea who sent them.”
(Jimmy’s Famous Seafood took credit for sending the 36 boxes. The twitter account for the resturant based in Baltimore, has long professed its support of Carolina basketball. It was one of the first companies to hire Armando Bacot as a pitchman when NIL (name, image, likeness) became legal.)
A debate between Nance and Davis that started off about choosing who made the better cookies between Crumbl and Insomnia, took a detour when Nance said his favorites were actually lemon Oreos. Now it’s morphed into something else entirely because of how Nance has played.
It’s spreading to the rest of the team too.
UNC guard Caleb Love initially just chuckled when he saw the delivery waiting for the team in the lobby. But then he had a few, too.
“I just thought of Pete, I looked around I thought it must be for him,” Love said. “I’d never had them before but they taste real good.”
Carolina responded on Monday by making 11 of its 14 3-pointers in the first half against Florida State. That total bested the nine 3-pointers made in the first half against the Cavaliers.
The Heels were nearing the worst shooting percentage in program history from 3-point range at 28 percent prior to Saturday’s game. They’ve moved it to 31.1 percent in two games, and it’s still among the lowest percentages in history, but what can’t be quantified is just how much confidence they have in shooting them now.
“We’d been struggling to shoot kind of all year, but we always knew and we were always confident that we had really good shooters in the locker room,” Nance said. “So you know, nights like (Monday) are no surprise to us. We see what we do every day and the work everybody puts in. And like I said before, water always finds its level. So I think I think we’re starting to see the the team that we really are when it comes to shooting from the outside.”
If that means they want to credit lemon Oreo for being responsible for it, so be it.
“A week and a half ago, I’d never heard of lemon Oreo cookies,” Davis said. “Now I see them every day.”
This story was originally published February 28, 2023 at 1:48 PM with the headline "Pete Nance, UNC basketball break out of shooting slump thanks to ... lemon cookies?."