UNC basketball surprises Virginia to earn key ACC win entering season’s final week
North Carolina won its biggest game of the season at the best possible moment, with its NCAA tournament hopes for an at-large bid teetering on the edge.
The Tar Heels jumped on No. 6 Virginia and never trailed in a 71-63 victory in the Dean E. Smith Center on Saturday. The win marked their first Quad 1 win in the NCAA Net rankings, a metric that will be one of several used by the NCAA tournament committee when selecting teams.
“We finally put in a full game,” said Armando Bacot, who had 11 points and six rebounds. “Against all great teams I think, for the most part, we played well it’s just little plays we didn’t make, we weren’t hitting shots. I thought this game we did a good job of culminating all that together, really showing it and It was great.”
Carolina (18-11, 10-8 ACC) still has to finish strong, with a road trip to Florida State on Monday before the regular season finale against Duke presents another Quad 1 opportunity.
It was without question a much-needed confidence booster just one game after scoring a season-low 19 points in the first half at Notre Dame. The Heels earned their first win over a top 10 team at home since March 2019 against No. 4 Duke.
“That’s the team we are,” said guard Caleb Love. “That’s the team that we need to be going forward as far as on defensive end and executing on the offensive end.”
Pete Nance was out with a back injury and Bacot suffered an ankle injury about 90 seconds into Carolina’s loss at Virginia on Jan. 10. But both made a considerable difference against the Cavaliers (21-6, 13-5) small lineup.
Nance scored a team-high 22 points, marking just the third time this season he’s surpassed the 20-point mark.
As Nance conducted a postgame interview on the court, the remaining crowd began chanting “Pete, Pete, Pete.” He said it gave him chills considering how difficult the month has been.
“There’s such expectations and I think it’s been hard because I’m the only new guy so when you don’t pick up exactly where you left off, I’m easy to blame,” Nance said. “I’ve just been trying to keep my head down and keep working. This season is far from over, but just excited to get to the next one and keep building this momentum.”
He was the player who had arguably taken the most criticism given the Heels’ bubble status in that, as the graduate transfer who replaced Brady Manek in the starting lineup, he hadn’t provided the same kind of consistent 3-point shooting.
For a large chunk of this month, some fans openly campaigned on social media for him to be replaced in the starting lineup by Puff Johnson. Nance said the criticism used to bother him more as a younger player, but he’s largely off social media so he can block out any negativity.
UNC coach Hubert Davis heard it enough to where he called the general practice of criticizing the team “disgusting.”
“They’re just kids and maybe they don’t play the way that you want them to play all the time,” Davis said. “But they’re kids.”
Nance showed a lot of maturity with how he bounced back His 3-point shooting had fallen to 28 percent for the season and he’d made just four of his last 28 attempts spanning over the last nine games.
Until Saturday.
Nance scored the game’s first basket with a left corner 3-pointer and proceeded to make three more in the first half including one over Jayden Gardner just before the buzzer to cap off a 14-point first half.
Nance helped power the Heels’ 9-for-16 effort from 3-point range as they tied a season-high in conference play with 42 points in the first half. They also shot 57 percent from the field in the first half, which was also a season-high.
“The main thing right now is just staying together as a group and just believing that we can do this,” said guard R.J. Davis, who had 16 points and team-highs with 10 rebounds and four assists.
The pace of the game slowed in the second half as neither team could find any sort of rhythm.
Virginia, which trailed by as many as 17 points in the first half, cut its deficit down to 52-43 and had the ball with a chance to make it a two possession game.
But when Kadin Shedrick was contested at the rim and missed a lob out of a timeout, the Heels were able to push their lead back to double digits, punctuated by a Nance dunk off a Bacot assist.
Carolina’s defense forced 12 straight misses starting with Shedrick’s as it bucked a recent trend of allowing its previous three opponents to shoot 50 percent or better in the second half.
The Cavaliers shot just 39.5 percent in the second half.
Nance wasn’t just active offensively. He recorded a season-high four blocked shots including one on a Ryan Dunn dunk attempt that left him flexing afterward.
“When we’re good defensively, that always bleeds into our offense and getting good shots,” Hubert Davis said. “Whether we make it from 3 or not, it always gives us a chance to be at our best on the offensive end, so that stretch was huge.”
It’s only big games and big situations left for the Heels, as they try to avoid being the first preseason No. 1 team since the NCAA tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985 to not make the tournament.
This story was originally published February 25, 2023 at 8:05 PM.