Coming off a convincing 76-60 win over Virginia, it looked like NC State men’s basketball was ready to upset one of the best teams in the country. Instead, the Pack squandered an opportunity for a signature win, losing 67-54 to No. 7 UNC-Chapel Hill.
With just over 10 minutes left in the second half, graduate guard Michael O’Connell made a layup to make it a two-point deficit, but then the Tar Heels went on a 15-2 run that stretched over five minutes to put the game away. It’s the third straight game Carolina has held an opponent under 57 points and has done so by disrupting the flow of its opponents’ offenses.
“I’ll just give [Carolina] credit for making us play a little different,” said junior guard Jayden Taylor. “It took us out of our flow and that ultimately led us to playing kinda slow.”
The red-and-white kept the game within reach for a majority of the contest, but it failed to overcome shooting 27% from the floor and an abysmal 2-21 from 3-point range. The Pack’s leading scorer — graduate guard DJ Horne — also had his worst performance of the season, scoring just six points on 2-16 shooting from the field.
“Whenever you’re not making shots, it’s never fun,” Horne said. “It felt like we were kind of even in the first half as far as making shots; in the second half they made more than us.”
While the Pack struggled to make shots, it still played hard defensively for most of the game and managed to hold the Tar Heels to just 39% shooting. The Wolfpack held Carolina guard RJ Davis — the ACC’s leading scorer — to 16 points on 6-19 shooting and completely shut down star Carolina center Armando Bacot, who finished with just nine points and five rebounds.
A sold-out PNC Arena was on its feet from the very first bucket of the game, when fan-favorite graduate forward DJ Burns scored a layup over Bacot to give the Pack a lead it maintained for a good part of the first 12 minutes of play.
UNC went on a 9-0 run later in the half to take the lead as the Pack struggled to knock down shots from distance and finished the first half 0-10 from beyond the arc. NC State moved the ball well and found open looks, but its shots were just not falling.
“I thought we got great looks in the first half, it just didn’t go,” said head coach Kevin Keatts. “It’s going to be tough for us to beat anybody when we shoot the ball that bad, … but we got to figure out how to make some shots.”
Despite shooting so poorly in the first half, the Pack headed to the locker room only down two thanks to the physical defense it played, especially on Bacot and Davis. Taylor did a phenomenal job of making Davis take tough shots, and Burns, along with junior forward Ben Middlebrooks, held it down in the paint to thwart Bacot.
Coming out of the half, both sides started slow offensively — much like the first half — but as time went on the Wolfpack continued to miss shots while the Tar Heels started to make them. The lack of production on offense affected the effort given on the defensive end.
“When you’re not making shots is when you got to become more connected on both ends of the floor,” Keatts said. “We were affected on the defensive end when our shots didn’t go in.”
Against teams like Notre Dame, NC State could afford to have an off night and rely on its defense, but when it plays upper echelon teams, it must find different ways to score when its 3-point shots are not falling.
On a positive note, graduate guard Casey Mosell entered the 1,000-point club when he knocked down a pair of free throws in the first half. But if the Pack wants to avoid another offensive letdown like this, it will need Morsell to step up as he went 0-6 from beyond the arc tonight and made just three of his 12 shots.
It’s still early in the season, and this is only NC State’s first ACC loss, but it needs to find a way to beat teams in the Quad 1 tier of college basketball or it will find itself on the wrong side of the bubble come selection Sunday.
The Pack will look to rebound against Louisville on Saturday, Jan. 13 at the KFC Yum! Center. Tip-off is set for 12 p.m. on the CW.
