UNC thorough, tough in dominant 85-64 win over Pitt

Theo Pinson and some of his North Carolina teammates thought back Sunday to what they’d experienced exactly a year earlier against Pittsburgh. They thought about a humbling and physical defeat and the memory of those things provided inspiration.

“They pushed us around,” Pinson said, referencing UNC’s 13-point loss at Pitt last season. “And we knew we couldn’t have that this year, because (playing tough is) what people are saying that we can’t do – and we know we can. So we just wanted to come back and send a message.”

The Tar Heels sent one early in the first half on Sunday at the Smith Center and drove the point home in the middle of the second half during a particularly dominant run that propelled UNC to an 85-64 victory. The win was among UNC’s most complete in several weeks.

The Tar Heels (21-4, 10-2) in recent weeks had encountered no shortage of tense moments. There was the close win Tuesday at Boston College, where coach Roy Williams missed of the second half amid a vertigo attack, preceded by second-half failures in defeats at Notre Dame and Louisville.

And “even when we were winning before we lost those two in a row,” Marcus Paige, the senior guard, said Sunday, “we weren’t playing great basketball.”

And so this was something of a change: a mostly clean, mostly dominant victory – the Tar Heels first against a team that brought a winning conference record into a game against the Tar Heels. They led 17-4 early, carried that 13-point lead into halftime and then were at their best midway through the second half.

About five minutes into the second half, Pitt (17-7, 6-6) had cut UNC’s lead to seven. It was a precarious moment, given what happened to North Carolina in previous second halves.

This time, though, there was no drama, no need for heroics in the final seconds. The Tar Heels calmly pushed the lead back to nine points, and then 11 and then 14 after a 3-pointer from Paige, who finished with 15 points and went 3-of-6 from behind the arc Sunday.

“We were like, ‘Let’s push this up a little more and just take their heart out,’ ” said Pinson, who finished with six assists and one turnover. He also drew the praise of Williams, who was pleased overall with his team’s passing.

The Tar Heels, who shot a season-high 59.3 percent, finished with 26 assists on 32 made shots from the field. The offensive execution, and its crispness, was reminiscent of games earlier this season when UNC looked like the best offensive team in the country, before it hit a slump in January.

There was rarely a lull on Sunday. Five Tar Heels scored in double figures, led by Brice Johnson, who finished with 19 points.

Paige provided further proof that his recent shooting woes are a thing of the past. And Justin Jackson, the sophomore forward, finished with 14 points and for the second consecutive game made two of his three 3-point attempts – an encouraging sign for him given he’d missed all nine of his 3s in the previous five games before that.

Williams, as he has many times after successful shooting performances, greeted reporters afterward with a short quiz before he went with one of his favorite expressions for these kinds of situations.

“You guys have been here many times with me, what am I going to say to start off with?” he asked. “This is a test. Everything looks better when the ball goes in the basket.”

And yet shooting wasn’t the only positive for his team. The Tar Heels were more active defensively “than in a long time,” Williams said.

That activity helped UNC force 19 turnovers, which the Tar Heels turned into 24 points. Many of those came in transition, where UNC outscored Pitt 16-2 in fastbreak points. Those fastbreak points were more than the Tar Heels had scored in the previous three games combined.

“Our offense was great for a long stretch of the season, and then it kind of dwindling a little bit, and we just weren’t as crisp,” Paige said. “And today, we kind of got back to that old way of just moving the ball – didn’t stick with anybody. If you have a shot, take it with confidence.”

During four of UNC’s previous five games – at Virginia Tech, at Louisville, at Notre Dame and at Boston College – the results were in doubt with five minutes remaining. At the same point in Sunday’s game, the Tar Heels held their largest lead, 26 points.

It wasn’t a perfect performance. Williams was quick to point out the offensive rebounding discrepancy and said it was “mind-boggling” that the Panthers finished with 19 offensive rebounds to UNC’s one.

And yet it was the kind of performance that UNC hadn’t provided in a while: dominant, clean and thorough, nearly from start to finish.

“It feels a lot better to get a win like that,” Johnson, the senior forward, said. “Because people were starting to look at it like, oh, ‘They might be going downhill and this might be the end of them or this might be the turning point of our season.’ … Tonight we just decided that we’re going to play from the jump.”

This story was originally published February 14, 2016 at 2:49 PM with the headline "UNC thorough, tough in dominant 85-64 win over Pitt."