UNC loses second consecutive game at home. This one to Pittsburgh.
North Carolina has lost again.
After leading by as many as 14 points in the first half, the Tar Heels allowed Pittsburgh to comeback and win 73-65 at the Dean Smith Center.
UNC coach Roy Williams will once again have to wait before passing his mentor Dean Smith for fourth-most wins all-time. He currently has 879 wins.
The Tar Heels are in a rut. Struggling to score and, recently, struggling to defend, the Tar Heels have lost six of their past eight games.
It was Pitt’s first win over UNC at the Dean Smith Center.
Entering Wednesday’s game, the Tar Heels had lost five of their past seven games, including an embarrassing 96-83 defeat to Georgia Tech on Saturday. It took the Tar Heels 13 minutes to score their first field goal.
Those issues appeared to be corrected. It only took the Tar Heels 40 seconds to score against Pitt, when Garrison Brooks hit a mid-range jump shot to get things started.
But it wasn’t good enough to earn them a win.
After shooting 1 of 10 from behind the 3-point line in the first half, Pitt got hot. The Panthers made 8-of-12 3-pointers in the second half.
Pitt’s Trey McGowens was a big reason for that. He scored 24 points. His 3-pointer with 5:36 remaining gave the Panthers an eight-point lead. Justin Champagnie added 22 points, and hit 4 of 5 3-pointers in the second half.
“No. 11 (Champagnie), shooting 28 percent for the year, and he’s 4-for-5 in the second half against us tonight,” Williams said. “So it’s something that when things are going bad, a lot of things continue to go bad, and some way somehow we’ve got to figure out how to stop the bleeding and start playing better.”
The Tar Heels never got closer than four points.
McGowen’s emphatic dunk with 1:11 remaining sealed it.
“We got stops when we needed to,” Pitt coach Jeff Capel III said.
UNC junior forward Garrison Brooks, who was coming off a career-high 35 point game, led the Tar Heels again with 21 points.
UNC freshman forward Armando Bacot added 15 points.
And one
The Tar Heels ramped up the pressure, double-teaming near half court on almost every defensive possession in the first half. The pressure forced Pitt to turn it over four times in the first eight minutes.
Personal foul
The Tar Heels struggled with turnovers. While Pitt forces turnovers on one-fourth of its opponents possessions, the Tar Heels made some silly mistakes and bad passes. At times they seemed rushed. They had seven turnovers in the first half, which was the primary reason the Panthers were able to keep the first-half lead to single digits.
They had 10 turnovers in the second half.
ICYMI
On Monday, Williams said on his radio show that this was the least gifted team he has coached in his time back at UNC. He had been upset with their effort in the first half against Georgia Tech. It appears they got the message in the first half.
Then they appeared to get nervous in the second half.
Making sense of the numbers
10 Pitt’s 3-point field-goal percentage in the first half. The Tar Heels contested shots, and Pitt also missed some open 3s.
67 Pitt’s 3-point field-goal percentage in the second half. The Panthers were 8 of 12.
17 The number of turnovers for the Tar Heels. Pitt scored 16 points off those turnovers.
This story was originally published January 8, 2020 at 9:03 PM.
