UNC basketball suffers first loss. Observations from setback to Georgia
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Georgia beat UNC 78-70, handing coach Michael Malone his first Tar Heels loss.
- UNC shot 32.9% and missed badly from 3, including an air ball late in the game.
- Georgia hit two late 3s, and both teams had 18+ offensive rebounds.
Perhaps the biggest shot of the season for the North Carolina men’s basketball team didn’t even touch the rim. And that is maybe the best summation of an ugly night that the Tar Heels, in the end, couldn’t manage to make ugly enough.
Georgia pulled away from UNC to hand Michael Malone his first loss as the Tar Heels coach, 78-70, on Friday night at the Smith Center. It’s a crushing loss for UNC, which spent all game fighting through a 32.9% shooting effort and finding a different way — this time with some aggressive play to muddy up the game.
But then it all unraveled. After taking a nine-point lead, the Tar Heels (3-1) were outscored 27-10 over the final 10 minutes, 35 seconds of the game. Four offensive rebounds by Georgia in under a minute allowed it to take two leads, the second of which at the 2:11 mark it never lost as Georgia hit a pair of threes in the final 1:48 of the game.
After Georgia hit a three that seemed to create the separation late, which this version of the Tar Heels offense would struggle to make up, UNC freshman forward Maximo Adams hit freshman center Sayon Keita with a pass underneath the rim for a dunk to cut the lead to 72-70. But a 3-pointer by Georgia guard Blue Cain with 1:00 left led to desperation mode for the Tar Heels. It needed threes that it couldn’t make all game, so UNC guard Neo Avdalas stepped back into one on the left wing. And it air-balled.
“I think we shot maybe seven or eight air balls tonight,” Malone said.
It squandered a solid all-around effort for UNC senior guard Terrence Brown, who had 21 points, four steals and a block on 7-of-15 scoring. But he was the only person hitting threes (4 of 8) as UNC shot 23.7% on 38 attempts from deep.
The looks simply weren’t falling for the Tar Heels. And that was a problem because they took 20 three-point shots in the first half and 38 in the game. The first 20 minutes were particularly paltry: UNC was 9-of-36 shooting (25%) and made just five of its 20 shots from deep. The large number of perimeter misses wasn’t the extent of the problem, though: UNC was also 2 of 4 on layups, and missed two dunks in the first frame.
Some solid defense kept the Tar Heels in the game for much of the first half still. After Georgia took a 17-14 lead on them at the 10:52 mark of the first half, it led for all but 2 minutes, 39 seconds for the remainder of the half. But UNC never allowed the Bulldogs to lead by more than five points before a final flurry. But things looked uncomfortable nearly the full first half for the Tar Heels. They missed shots and struggled to inbound the ball against Georgia’s pressure.
A key sequence late in the half looked like it could flip the momentum in the direction of UNC, but instead did the opposite.
UNC guard Terrence Brown was credited with his third steal of the first half, grabbing hold of a ball and getting possession back — right after a 3-pointer by Brown gave UNC a 28-27 lead — for the Tar Heels on a jump ball call. Brown screamed, and the crowd screamed back at him. But after a timeout, Matt Able threw the inbounds pass away and Georgia went ahead 29-28 with 3:45 left. UNC scored just once more after that as the Bulldogs finished on an 11-3 run to go to halftime up 38-31.
“When we went into halftime and we were down seven,” UNC guard Isaiah Denis said, “Coach (Malone) told us, ‘We’re going to win this game on defense.’”
So UNC showed some aggression in the opening portion of the frame. After starting with a 3-point attempt, Keita grabbed an offensive rebound — something the Tar Heels competed on much better Friday — and put back a layup. Three of UNC’s next four shots (all makes) were at the rim, with all coming on the fast break. The Tar Heels erupted ahead, and when it started taking threes again, it was making them.
Brown connected on one to provide a 48-45 lead for the Tar Heels with 15:00 left, then sophomore guard Isaiah Denis took three in a row over 1:26. He missed the first, but then hit two on back-to-back possessions to give UNC a 58-51 lead with 11:24 remaining.
It was a quick sign of life for the Tar Heels, but again, this game would not be won by hitting shots on either side. UNC missed its next eight in a row as the Bulldogs pulled within 60-57 with 8:32 left. Neither team connected on back-to-back field goals for a while thereafter, as the game steadily devolved into a back-and-forth.
Avdalas hit a tough layup to put the Tar Heels up 66-63, but then Georgia responded with a layup 10 seconds later to make it a one-point game again with 4:14 left. UNC couldn’t run because it stopped getting stops.
“It’s really simple,” Malone said. “You know, we got off to a really good start in that second half in terms of getting stops and rebounding, and then run.”
UNC got a break with a missed free throw on the front end of a one-and-one, but then the “bad habits” Malone described postgame started to show up: Georgia grabbed two offensive rebounds on one trip down the floor, Georgia forward James Scott punching home a tip dunk at 2:58. Then after an Avdalas layup, another offensive rebound led to a shooting foul and two free throws for Georgia. It’s close games like this that teach Malone, a coach in a new place leading a new thing, about his teams.
And Friday proved that the Tar Heels are still beating themselves.
“Just got to execute at the end of the games,” Brown said. “I feel like we played pretty good the whole game until the end, and then we just didn’t execute right.”
Here’s what stood out from the game.
The fast break unlocks the Tar Heels
Brown was fired up, and a fan in the front row behind the basket got to feel it. Perhaps literally.
Brown, no stranger to showing emotion, had every reason to following an and-1 layup at 16:21. His celebration took him to the first row of the stands, where he seemingly came close to going nose-to-nose with a fan in the front row. It was a moment where UNC discovered something it hadn’t seen earlier in the game: The benefit of having a pair of players who can push the ball up the floor like UNC guards Avdalas and Brown is there’s perhaps no better way to score. And when those opportunities come aplenty, the Tar Heels can look pretty dynamic.
“We could be a really good team if we just do the little things,” Brown said, “rebounding, not turning the ball over, and executing on offense.”
Over a 12-3 run for the Tar Heels during a 1:45 stretch early in the second half, all 12 points were scored on the fast break. Getting stops and running made a team that looked horrid at times offensively in the half court look like a dominant offensive team. UNC made four shots in a row during that stretch and changed a game that looked to be falling out of its favor. That’s a formula for the Tar Heels. Now the challenge is getting to it more consistently.
“We shouldn’t have got away from what kept us in the lead when we were up seven,” Denis said.
The Tar Heels battle on the glass, but that doesn’t solve issues
After three games where offensive rebounding was the top storyline, the ball seemed to be finding its way to the Tar Heels on Friday. Or maybe they were forcing their way there.
UNC had 16 offensive rebounds, scoring 17 second-chance points to make a real difference in a scrappy game between teams who didn’t have exactly their best offensive outings. There were swinging elbows, bodies flying around, and players like Keita simply being taller than his Georgia opponents, as he grabbed the offensive rebound that flipped the game for the Tar Heels simply standing tall and putting his hands up. But for all UNC fought, its defensive rebounding issue remains.
Georgia grabbed 18 offensive rebounds and scored 15 second-chance points. In a game where UNC rebounded the ball a lot better, it still felt as if some of the most crushing shots the Bulldogs hit were a result of the rebounds UNC didn’t grab.
“Just attention to detail, knowing what we’re doing on the defensive end, making sure we’re going to hit somebody and actually box them out,” Brown said, “and not letting them get into the paint.”
Two missed dunks for UNC?
Jaydon Young wanted the ball. A little less than midway through the first half, Denis pulled in a defensive board and saw Young wide open. Denis hit him, Young was thinking dunk, the rim was thinking no.
Young getting stuffed by the rim with 12:40 to go in the first half ended up being a good thing for the Tar Heels, as guard Terrence Brown chased down the offensive rebound, swung to Young in the corner, who swung back to Brown on the right wing for a three. But it’s wild to have one of those plays in a game. Two? In one half?
Yet at the 9:31 mark, Denis seemed to have beaten all defenders up the floor and rose … perhaps a bit too early. So he missed another one. Denis had actually forgotten about it after the game. But looking over and describing all the missed layups he saw on the stat sheet postgame reminded him of it, mid-sentence.
“If we don’t think we have it dunk, just making sure we go up with a strong finish,” Denis said.
That didn’t end as well for UNC, as Georgia collected the defensive rebound. When shooting 10 of 16 on layups and 1 of 3 on dunks, those are two missed opportunities.
“We missed two dunks tonight,” Malone said. “We missed eight other layups. We shot 56% at the rim. That is not nearly good enough.”
This story was originally published November 13, 2026 at 9:23 PM with the headline "UNC basketball suffers first loss. Observations from setback to Georgia."
