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It was a one-point defeat, but Carolina lost long before that.
The Tar Heels gave away their second straight game and are now in danger of missing the NCAA Tournament for the second time in three years. That hasn’t happened at UNC since the Matt Doherty days.
The next game is Saturday against 17th-place Boston College, which lost by 19 points to struggling Virginia earlier in the evening, so you can mark that 2:15 home game as a “W.” But what comes after that will determine if Carolina can even stay on the Big Dance bubble.
Winning on the road in the ACC is hard, but it shouldn’t be when the home team misses all six 3-pointers in the first half and finishes 2-for-15 from the arc. Carolina gradually lost most of a 9-point lead by fouling the Deacons enough to attempt 16 free throws before halftime, which offset their 29 percent shooting overall.
Carolina fell behind by eight points in the second half before a late rally made the 67-66 final score deceiving. The Heels were desperately playing catch-up by making five long balls in the second half but did not go to the free throw one time while the 7-1 Deacons made 8 of 11 and dominated the backboards despite coming in rated at the bottom of the ACC in rebounding margin.
Wake Forest was No. 77 in the NET rankings and will jump up after beating No. 38, joining the Tar Heels on the bubble with a 15-4 record by improving to 10-0 at home. After playing BC, Carolina goes to Pitt and Duke, comes home for a rematch with the Panthers and then visits Clemson, all three teams rated higher and will be favored to win on their home courts.
“I thought our guys really competed, and we played well enough to win here on the road,” Hubert Davis said. The stats do not bear that out after shooting 40 percent overall (26-for-65) and 25 percent from outside (8 for 32). That, despite winning points in the paint and points off turnovers, was not enough to prevail in Winston-Salem, where the Heels have now lost four straight times.
Losing to Stanford and Wake make what had looked like a promising season now difficult to avoid scrutiny by the NCAA selection committee, chaired by UNC athletic director Bubb Cunningham, who must leave the meeting room when Carolina is discussed.
Once the tough stretch ahead ends, the Heels may find themselves in the same place they were in Davis’ first season, when a win at Duke assured an NCAA at-large bid. Carolina certainly can win one or two of those games but continues to be inconsistent.
“Wake Forest does a really good job protecting the paint, and we knew we would have to knock down some 3’s in order to space them out, and we just couldn’t do it,” said Davis.
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Featured image via Associated Press/Chuck Burton
Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
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