UNC basketball falls to Virginia in ACC quarterfinal; NCAA hopes rest with committee
North Carolina coach Hubert Davis came to Greensboro for the ACC tournament believing the Tar Heels did not have to win four games in four days in order to claim the league’s automatic NCAA tournament bid.
He’s about to find out if he was right.
The No. 7 seed Tar Heels fell to No. 2 seed Virginia 68-59 in Thursday’s quarterfinals. Now, Davis and the Heels (20-13) will have to sweat out Selection Sunday to see if they will become the first team ranked No. 1 in the preseason polls to not make the NCAA tournament since the field expanded to 64 teams.
The News & Observer asked Davis what would be his argument if he could present a case to the tournament selection committee. He didn’t have an immediate answer, saying he “wasn’t thinking about that.” But then, he continued:
“Regardless of our record, I think we have shown throughout the entire year that we can compete and play and beat anybody in the country. I know that we played a really tough non-conference schedule. I know that the ACC for whatever reason is undervalued as one of the elite, if not the elite, conferences in college basketball.”
Davis also took issue with the NCAA NET rankings because of how volatile it seems at times in ways that don’t always make sense.
Case in point, a Heels’ win on Thursday would have dropped UVA from being No. 30 in the NET. That means UNC’s home win over the Cavaliers last month would bump down to a Quad 2 victory. However, Virginia would still be a top 50-ranked team so winning on a neutral court would have made an ACC tournament win over UVA a Quad 1 win.
“It could be a Quad 1 win in November, but in March it’s not,” Davis said. “But at the end of the day, we had chances. For eight or nine of the 13 losses that we had, we were up in the second half, and so, we had our chances.”
And they had a chance against the Cavaliers thanks to R.J. Davis’ performance.
The junior guard scored a game-high 24 points marking the seventh time this season he had 20 or more.
The Cavaliers have been prone to scoring droughts this season, and for a long time seemed immune from it in the second half. UVA shot 78 percent from the field (11 of 14) through the first 11 minutes after halftime and built a 51-41 lead.
But Carolina chipped away to make it a one possession game. And when Davis scored his final points on a three-point play with 2:02 left, the Heels were within 57-55. But they would get no closer.
Carolina missed its next six shots and the Cavaliers made seven of eight free throws to secure their victory and advance to the semifinals.
“The missed free throws, turning the ball over, just the little things, it’s been like that the whole year,” R.J. Davis said. “Just attention to details, little things that we just need to perfect and that we didn’t do in today’s game.”
While baskets seemingly came easy to Davis, it was a lot tougher for the rest of the Heels, who finished just 35.8 percent from the field. Carolina made nine first half 3-pointers in their home win over the Cavaliers last month.
“It felt like they were a lot more aggressive on the ball,” said Pete Nance, who had 22 points in the Heels win, but had just seven on Thursday. “Last time it was just kind of a quick show and they got out of there, but I felt like they were a lot more aggressive this time around and it paid off for them.”
UNC senior forward Armando Bacot started the game and played 21 minutes after being limited to just 18 minutes after suffering an ankle injury in Wednesday’s win over Boston College.
Bacot didn’t seem hobbled by the injury early on as he battled through physical play in the post. But as the game progressed in the second half, he had a slight limp to his gait. Once Bacot exited the game with 10:09 left, he never played again.
When it wasn’t his ankle, it was UVA’s backline defense that combined to effectively nullify him as an offensive weapon. Bacot scored just four points and one of his baskets came on an offensive rebound after a D’Marco Dunn miss.
“The second half, I really just felt like I was just out there,” Bacot said. “I just told the coaches like I really couldn’t do anything, I felt like I was hurting the team. I really couldn’t rebound, couldn’t do anything. So I rather us rocked out with the other squad that was out there.”
Without Bacot as a centerpiece to their offense, the Heels couldn’t get going offensively.
Aside from Davis’ 8-for-14 shooting, the rest of the team combined to shoot just 28 percent from the field. That included guard Caleb Love who missed his first seven shots before making his first field goal on a 3-pointer with 8:54 left in the game. Love was the only other player who scored double figures with 11 points.
“There a very disciplined team on both ends of the floor,” Love said. “As far as on the defensive end, they hedge hard and just play team defense and it was just tough for us to get easy ones. They played the better game.”
This story was originally published March 9, 2023 at 9:06 PM.