Four in a row: Takeaways from North Carolina basketball’s ACC win at Florida State
North Carolina approached mid-February as a team in turmoil, with its NCAA Tournament hopes fading by the game; with a talented but flawed roster often finding ways to lose, and never finding the correct combination for sustained success. The losses were piling up. The angst surrounding one of college basketball’s proudest programs was rising.
The pressure was starting to show, both in the performance of players who seemed tense and in the concerned expression of coach Hubert Davis, who attempted to maintain an outward positivity that belied the stress and the defeats that appeared to age him.
That Tar Heels team, the one of a couple weeks ago, looked to be going nowhere fast.
But this one? The one that came into Tallahassee and left late Monday night with a 96-85 victory against Florida State? The one that has now won four consecutive games? The one that tied its longest winning streak of the season, and just when victories are often at their most difficult to come by? Perhaps UNC has figured some things out, after all.
Make no mistake: Carolina is in the midst of the most manageable portion of its ACC schedule. Since a listless 20-point loss at Clemson on Feb. 10, the Tar Heels have found themselves playing against the a collection of the destitute and the hopeless, at worst, and against the merely struggling at best. They’ve been playing against teams with virtually no postseason hopes, including one (N.C. State) that likely won’t make the ACC Tournament, let alone any other.
Still, UNC (18-11, 11-6 ACC) in this four-game winning streak has done what good teams should do against such competition. It has done what a great many of its best teams long made a habit of doing this time of year. Against Syracuse, the Tar Heels survived a late Orange push and held on late. Against N.C. State, they simply imposed their will. Against Virginia, they left no doubt.
And here against Florida State, they persevered through a wobbly stretch midway through the first half, weathered an FSU comeback effort in the second and mostly controlled things outside of those moments. There was balanced scoring (six players in double figures, led by RJ Davis’ 20 points), some zone defense, a meaningful contribution from Cade Tyson and, perhaps most impressive of all, a complete mitigation of the long and lanky Seminoles’ considerable size advantage.
(Who had UNC out-rebounding Florida State by 14? No one? Sounds about right.)
The Tar Heels converted 13 offensive rebounds into 24 second-chance points, their most since 28 second-chance points against Kansas in the 2022 national championship game. It was a vintage rebounding performance for a team that hasn’t often mustered the effort necessary to produce it — until recently, that is.
“I’m glad the switch came on,” UNC coach Hubert Davis said.
The questions, still, are obvious enough: Has UNC really turned the proverbial corner? Or is this good mojo more attributable to an uninspired ACC and underwhelming competition? There probably won’t be much of an answer until the Tar Heels end the regular season against Duke on March 8 in Chapel Hill.
Nonetheless, a four-game winning streak is a four-game winning streak — and for a team that appeared on the brink of collapse not that long ago, it’s significant.
Here are three takeaways from UNC’s triumph in Tallahassee:
1. Tar Heels find a way to play big(ger)
On paper, this was a colossal mismatch: UNC, given its off-season inability to address its needs in the frontcourt, is one of the most undersized major-conference teams in the country. The Tar Heels’ lack of size has been perhaps the most dominant storyline surrounding them since November, so much so that the talk of it has almost become cliche.
Indeed, we get it: UNC is small.
FSU, meanwhile, is not. Only Duke, Elon and Utah have more collective size than the Seminoles, according to kenpom.com. Duke had its way once with UNC already and while the Tar Heels pulled away against Elon back in early November, that game remained closer, and for longer, than anyone expected.
UNC’s physical limitations are well-documented, and it’s simply going to have to find a way to play bigger than it is. And it did that on Monday night – at least in stretches long enough to prevail. By halftime, for instance, UNC had eight offensive rebounds that it had turned into 12 second-chance points. The Seminoles’ totals in those two categories: zero and zero.
That sort of complete dominance was never going to last, and the Seminoles managed to even things out a bit in the second half. Still, UNC did an impressive job in neutralizing FSU’s size. Some of that might’ve been a bit of luck — the Tar Heels took a lot of 3-point attempts, which tend to make for longer rebounds — but another part was creating favorable match-ups.
And yet another part was will, and those intangibles Davis has spent a lot of time talking about. The Tar Heels finished with 35 rebounds to FSU’s 21 — and UNC outscored the Seminoles 24-6 in second-chance points. That shouldn’t have happened given the physical make-up of these teams, but it did.
And in a lot of ways it was attributable to the Tar Heels’ want-to.
“It was huge for us tonight,” Davis said. “It’s been huge for us the last four games. It’s something that we have talked about on a daily basis, that as long as I’ve been here, even as an assistant with Coach (Roy) Williams, we always go off to the offensive glass.
“And for pretty much most of the season, that was not a strength of ours. But over the last four games, five games, it has been.”
2. Tar Heels weather the storm, and finish.
How many UNC fans found themselves thinking “here we go again” at certain points in the second half? It was, for a little while, as if we’d seen this show before. The Tar Heels’ lead was shrinking, shrinking, shrinking ...
A home crowd, energized by what was happening before it, was growing louder and louder. That happened a few times in the second half, when on three occasions Florida State cut its deficit to six points – down then from a high of 14. Indeed, it looked for a bit like things might be slipping away; as if the Tar Heels might find themselves in some sort of down-to-the-buzzer stress test.
Not so much.
Every time FSU threatened, UNC responded. After the Seminoles made it a six-point game on those three occasions, here’s what followed: Seth Trimble made a 3-pointer; RJ Davis made a 3-pointer; Jae’Lyn Withers made a pair of free throws. And after those Withers’ free throws, UNC soon pushed the lead back into double-figures.
It grew as large as 16 points, on Elliot Cadeau’s 3 with a little less than five minutes remaining. And that was pretty much “ball game.”
Indeed, finishing a game like this left the Tar Heels with “a completely different feeling,” RJ Davis said, than where they were only two weeks ago, after the defeat at Clemson. Back then, UNC was reeling. And now?
“The way we recovered from that has been great,” he said. “We’ve been buying in. Everyone’s been contributing, producing in so many ways.”
The Tar Heels scored on 67% of their possessions, and averaged 1.5 points per possession. Both numbers reflected UNC’s second-chance opportunities, and its proclivity on Monday to take advantage of them.
3. A strong streak, but let’s not get carried away here.
The good news for UNC is obvious enough: It has righted a season that was on the verge of catastrophe. The Tar Heels after that loss at Clemson were 14-11 and 7-6 in the ACC. A road game against not-good Syracuse awaited. Syracuse is far from what it used to be but, still, playing in the JMA Wireless Dome is never easy – and nothing had been coming easily for the Tar Heels.
But they gutted out a victory there. They dominated N.C. State four days later, in front of a snow day crowd at the Smith Center. They never allowed Virginia much of a chance on Saturday at the Smith Center. And then came the quick-turn test in Tallahassee Monday night.
This appeared to be the most difficult challenge of UNC’s past four games, and the Tar Heels mostly made it look easy. Mostly. Sure, the defense lacked at times. The Seminoles found their way back in it midway through the second half. But good teams find ways to assert themselves in these sorts of settings, and the Tar Heels indeed did that.
Here’s the thing, though: There’s no real way to evaluate the depth of UNC’s recent improvement. Yes, the Tar Heels are playing a lot better than they were a couple of weeks ago. Even so, the competition is ... not great. And won’t be, until the regular season finale against Duke. This, though, is also true: the Tar Heels NCAA Tournament hopes would be on life support if they’d split these past four games, or even won three of four. Their margin of error is that nonexistent.
In that way, they’re giving themselves a chance. And they’re building momentum in the process.
This story was originally published February 24, 2025 at 9:33 PM.
