UNC basketball’s 72-51 win over Michigan brings Final Four comparisons. Find out why.
Let’s be clear, no one was calling North Carolina’s 72-51 win over No. 24 Michigan Wednesday in the ACC/Big Ten Challenge a must-win game. Not when it’s still December, without any tangible implications from the outcome and no one’s season ended with the loss.
But it’s not a stretch to say the Tar Heels (5-2) knew they needed a good showing. They needed something to prove to themselves, if not to their naysayers, that they can be an elite team.
The thoroughness of Carolina’s domination may be enough to finally move past the Hall of Fame Tipoff losses at the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut.
“It’s been hell these last two weeks, we just been itching to play a top team, and show that we can play against those teams,” said UNC junior forward Armando Bacot, who had a season-high 14 rebounds to go along with 11 points. “This is something we had marked off on our calendars and we just knew we had to come out there and compete.”
Caleb Love, who scored a game-high 22 points on 9-for-16 attempts, called it a “statement game” for the Heels.
Here’s a couple of the statements they made: the 51 points allowed were the fewest the Heels have ever allowed in their ACC/Big Ten Challenge appearances. The previous low was 55 points by Ohio State on Nov. 28, 2007. The 21-point margin of victory was the largest for the Heels in the Challenge since they beat Michigan State by 35 on Dec. 3, 2008.
Both of those seasons ended with Carolina in the Final Four including the 2009 national championship. For this team to end up in New Orleans for the 2022 Final Four, it needs a lot more performances like Wednesday night.
And UNC sophomore forward Dawson Garcia believes they are capable of it. He said getting “punched in the mouth” in Connecticut helped focus the team.
“We all knew what we were going to come in here and do (Wednesday night),” Garcia said. “And I don’t see us looking back at all.”
The win marked the first over a an Associated Press ranked team for UNC coach Hubert Davis.
Michigan (4-3), however, won’t be ranked much longer after beginning the season No. 6 in the preseason polls after suffering their third loss of the season. The Wolverines have a lot of questions they have to address if they’re ever going to live up to their potential.
Carolina’s been there.
“We just had to do some soul searching,” Bacot said. “And we just had to figure out do we really want to be a great team or a good team and feel like we took a step in the right direction.”
The Heels still actively reference their losses to Purdue and Tennessee in the Hall of Fame Tipoff at the Mohegan Sun. It didn’t matter that they lost to two good teams: The Boilermakers are now poised to become the new No. 1 after Duke lost to Ohio State. The Volunteers have climbed up to No. 13. It scared the Heels straight into understanding they had to play better.
“It was a big-time wake up call that we all needed,” said Garcia, who scored 14 points against Michigan. “Ever since Connecticut, we’ve been locked in in practice. We had our best practice of the year, in my opinion, (Tuesday). And I just like where things are heading right now.”
Carolina has put together consecutive games holding its opponent to less than 40 percent shooting from the field. It’s also had four straight halves of play where the opponent did not reach 40 percent shooting. The Heels never did that last season.
Davis said he’d much rather his players learn from winning than having to suffer setbacks. But he did say their two losses has helped served a greater purpose.
“It was a sense of reality of how hard we have to work, how hard we have to prepare and how hard we have to play on any given night,” Davis said. “And so from that standpoint, I think that reaffirmed what we need to do in order to put ourselves in a position to be successful.”
The Heels positioned themselves well by committing a season-low six turnovers. The caveat is that it came against one of the worst defenses in creating turnovers. Ken Pomeroy has the Wolverines ranked 325th in defensive turnover percentage. (Carolina is even worse, ranking 351th, but it got Michigan to cough up 13 of them.)
UNC’s defense held Michigan’s top two leading scorers in Eli Brooks and Hunter Dickinson, to a combined 15 points when their combined average per game is 30.5 points.
“I mean, y’all see it too, we’re very talented team,” Bacot said. “It’s just putting it all together. We’ve got a lot of new faces, new coaches. It’s not gonna be easy, starting off, but this is definitely some good to build off of.”
This story was originally published December 2, 2021 at 6:00 AM.