UNC basketball bounces back from loss with 65-57 ACC road win at Virginia Tech
North Carolina needed this one. In a season that’s felt lopsided from the Tar Heels tendency for deflating losses — punctuated by Wednesday night’s home loss to Pittsburgh — they finally got the performance they needed in a game with stakes at Virginia Tech.
Carolina snapped the Hokies’ six-game winning streak with a 65-57 victory in Cassell Coliseum The win was the Heels’ first against an opponent in the Quad 1 category of the NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) rankings. No team has made the NCAA Tournament since the NET began the 2018-19 season without a Q1 win.
It may not erase the stench of how Carolina played against Pitt, but it didn’t allow that disappointment to sabotage the close of the regular season.
“That’s who we are all year, we’ve been a resilient group,” UNC coach Hubert Davis said. “And we’ve also been a group that plays poorly at times, when it’s least expected.”
Davis said the Heels haven’t always handled their successes very well. They’ve shown the ability to bounce back from embarrassing losses, but they haven’t always shown that they can bring the same energy after a big win into their next game.
That characteristic will be put to the test in roughly 48 hours as the Heels face Louisville. UNC won the first meeting against the Cardinals 90-83 in overtime on Feb. 1. If it gets this version of Caleb Love, it shouldn’t have a problem.
Love scored a game-high 21 points and tied his career-high with seven assists leading Davis to call it his “best game as a Carolina basketball player.”
“I know he played well against Duke last year, but to me, this was the best I’ve ever seen him play,” said Davis, referencing Love’s 25-point, seven-assist game in their win at Duke last season. “He had a great understanding of when to pass, when to shoot. He made great decisions.”
Love said after watching game clips of some of his shot selection and the turnovers he’s committed, he took a different approach against the Hokies.
“Virginia Tech is a solid defensive team in the half court so you’re not really gonna score on a first pass or second pass, you got to break the defense down,” Love said. “So I got downhill, and I broke the defense down and found the open man and it was successful, and then it opened up shots for myself.”
UNC (19-8, 11-5 ACC) took its biggest lead of the game at 47-33 with 14:36 left, but then it got sloppy. The Heels committed turnovers on three consecutive possessions and that was followed by a pair of bad shots. The Hokies (16-11, 8-8) took advantage with an 11-2 run to pull within 49-44, but they never got any closer.
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Here’s what we learned from the Heels’ win:
Play of the game?
Leaky Black struggled at times offensively and committed a season-high four turnovers against the Hokies. But when Carolina desperately needed a play, the senior from Concord came up big.
Love missed a long 3-pointer and Hokie forward Keve Aluma secured the rebound. But before he could make an outlet pass, Black stole the ball right out of Aluma’s hands. The possession ended with R.J. Davis finding Brady Manek streaking backdoor for a dunk with one second left on the shot clock.
The basket gave Carolina a 55-46 lead with 4:23 left and seemed to deflate the Hokies’ rally.
“He was not looking like at all, he was kind of facing the students,” Black said. “I was near and I was just like, ‘Let me swipe at it,’ and obviously, got it. I felt like my energy just kind of found myself in the right position for those plays.”
Black also helped trigger a 22-6 run in the first half after the Hokies had their biggest lead of the game at 22-16. Black’s three-point play got UNC going on the run that allowed it to take the lead for good before halftime.
Bacot’s breakthrough
In their first meeting with Virginia Tech, Armando Bacot scored 12 of their first 14 points and was perfect on his first six shot attempts from the floor. Since then, the Hokies made him a nonfactor for UNC offensively.
Bacot missed 12 of 13 shots to finish the game in the Heels’ Jan. 24 win. In the first half Saturday, he had more turnovers (two) than shot attempts (one) in a scoreless first half.
Carolina made a point to get him going in the second half. Bacot scored on two of the first three possessions en route to scoring 12 points in the second half. He added 15 rebounds for his 20th double-double of the season.
“I’m pretty sure Virginia Tech, especially with how we beat them the last two years and ACC tournament, we knew that they wanted to ruin our season,” Bacot said. “Our backs were against the wall so we had no choice but to come in and win.”
3-point defense
Virginia Tech entered the game as the top 3-point shooting team in the ACC and the second-best in the nation shooting 41 percent. Carolina ranked 14th in the conference in allowing its opponents to shoot 39.6 percent from 3.
It seemed like a recipe for disaster for the Heels.
But Davis said they made a choice to cover Aluma and Justyn Mutts 1-on-1 in the post so that they could stay connected to the Hokies’ shooters. They also made sure to identify where those shooters were in transition to limit another big part of when they took 3s.
Aluma and Mutts combined for 37 points in their first meeting, but on Saturday the Heels limited their scoring to 16 points from Aluma and 10 points for Mutts.
The result was the Hokies shot just 2-for-12 in the first half and 3-for-14 in the second. The Hokies’ 19 percent shooting from behind the arc was their worst showing in ACC play.
“Aluma and Mutts, they had good games, but they didn’t dominate,” Davis said. “We didn’t have to double team and so on the perimeter, we just stayed home with the shooters.”
This story was originally published February 19, 2022 at 6:05 PM.