Tar Heels enter danger zone: Three takeaways from UNC basketball’s loss at Wake Forest

Saturday, it was a Frenchman — Stanford’s Maxime Raynaud — who dropped 25 points to hand North Carolina a Quad 3 loss.

Tuesday in Winston-Salem, Englishman Cameron Hildreth had his turn, scoring 20 points to lead Wake Forest past the Tar Heels, 67-66, at Lawrence Joel Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

This marks two straight losses for UNC (12-8, 5-3) after a season-best four-game win streak. North Carolina, which had previously excused all of its losses as being against Quad 1 opponents added another of those losses in Wake Forest after suffering a Quad 3 setback against Stanford.

The Demon Deacons (15-4, 7-1) extended their win streak to five in a row. Wake Forest has now won eight of its past nine, and is 10-0 at home.

After a back-and-forth opening period, Wake Forest rattled off a 12-0 run to kick off the second half. But, with just over nine minutes remaining, North Carolina punched back with a 10-2 run of its own. In that sequence, Drake Powell hit a midrange jumper and Elliot Cadeau stole the ball from Wake’s Hunter Sallis and fed Ven-Allen Lubin for a layup. Then, Davis and Cadeau hit back-to-back triples to make the score 51-49 — a slim two-point margin in favor of the Demon Deacons with seven minutes to play.

Throughout the remainder of the game, North Carolina tried to shake that two-point deficit.

After Hildreth worked his way to the free-throw line and knocked down a pair, Cadeau found Lubin on the other end of the floor for an alley-oop dunk. North Carolina was still down by two when Jae’Lyn Withers rose up for a 3-pointer — a rarity, considering he has a 19% success rate on the season from that spot — and nailed it.

The ensuing “Tar! Heels!” chants of the traveling crowd didn’t last long thanks to Wake Forest senior Tre’Von Spillers, who went on a personal 4-0 run.

First, he earned a second-chance tip-in lay and then, after Withers tried his luck on a second 3-pointer — and missed — Spillers ran the baseline and caught a lob from teammate Efton Reid III and flushed it for a dunk.

Cadeau then turned the ball over — his third turnover of the night and the team’s 12th at that point — leading to a Johnson steal and Davis foul at the other end. That meant two free throws and, again, a two-point deficit.

With each bucket from UNC, Wake had a response, and was soon able to close out the game with ease.

Here are three takeaways from the game:

Another hot start for Cadeau

Cadeau led the way for the Tar Heels in the opening half, scoring 11 points on 4-of-6 shooting.

North Carolina went on a 13-2 run early in the first half during which Cadeau either scored or assisted on every point.

It started at the 16:50 mark when Cadeau drove left, stopped and swung the ball to Ian Jackson on the perimeter for a three. Then, on North Carolina’s next bucket, Jackson found Cadeau for a triple of his own.

Swish.

On the next trip down the court, Cadeau beat Hildreth, drove to the basket and scooped the ball in with his right hand. The next play was more of the same. This time, however, Juke Harris was left in the dust.

Then, to complete his run, the sophomore point guard split two defenders, beelined for the front of the rim and earned an and-one basket. He pounded his chest before sinking his free throw to put UNC up 16-7 — the team’s largest lead of the game.

North Carolina soon relinquished that lead.

Turnovers plague Tar Heels

After recording a season-low five turnovers in a loss to Stanford on Saturday, North Carolina entered the locker room at halftime on Tuesday having committed seven.

That total jumped to 12 by the game’s end.

It’s a number that is rather on par for the Tar Heels this season. The team averages 11 per game — good for eighth in the ACC and 74th in the country. Not good, but certainly not terrible.

Tuesday, it was the timing of the turnovers that seemed most damaging.

After going up by nine early in the game, North Carolina turned the ball over on two straight possessions — on bad passes from Withers and Davis — and Wake Forest cut into the Tar Heels’ lead.

Then, at the end of the first half, UNC turned the ball over three times in the course of a minute. Freshman forward James Brown attempted a putback and traveled. Then Davis and Jackson lost control of the ball on back-to-back possessions.

And during the Demon Deacon’s 12-0 second-half run (more on that below), it should come as no surprise that North Carolina turned the ball over four times.

This list is nearly as exhaustive as Hubert Davis’ repeated pleas to eliminate the Tar Heels’ little mistakes and little errors.

Wake Forest kicks off second half with 12-0 run

When UNC coach Hubert Davis called a timeout with 11:08 remaining in the game, the Demon Deacons jumped off the bench in celebration. Wake Forest sophomore guard Ty-Laur Johnson — who had just hit a 3-pointer in the far corner, falling in the process — bumped chests with his teammate. Meanwhile, at the North Carolina bench, Cade Tyson offered words of encouragement to Jackson as he walked off the floor and joined the team huddle.

But whatever Davis said in the huddle didn’t immediately take effect.

Sallis hit another shot to make it 12 straight points for the Demon Deacons before Powell broke the Tar Heels’ scoring drought with a jumper just in front of the free-throw line.

That was North Carolina’s first shot in the team’s last eight tries.

The team as a whole, with just under nine minutes to play, was shooting 29.4% from the field. Wake Forest, on the other hand, shot 52.9% in that same stretch.

While North Carolina eventually cut back in to that Demon Deacon lead, the run proved insurmountable in the end.

This story was originally published January 21, 2025 at 11:41 PM.