UNC falls to NC State in the ACC Tournament championship
UNC couldn’t find enough offense or enough defense to wrestle the ACC Tournament championship away from a hungry NC State team on Saturday night in Washington DC. The Tar Heels fell behind early and never found a way to get into a groove on either end of the floor on their way to a 84-76 loss.
The Wolfpack won their first tournament championship since 1987 on the backs of DJ Horne and DJ Burns who combined for 49 of State’s 84 points. Horne played considerable time in the second half with four fouls that did little to deter him until he fouled out with just over a minute remaining. As a team, they shot the lights out at a clip that Carolina could not match.
RJ Davis did his best to bail his team out with 30 points. Armando Bacot was the only other Tar Heel in double figures with 18 points and 10 rebounds until Harrison Ingram’s futility three-pointer at the buzzer gave him 10. Even though UNC was able to cut into State’s lead multiple times, they led for just 1:04 of game time. They held a one-point lead at halftime that evaporated quickly. It was a real struggle from there with the Heels finishing the game 1-13 from the field.
Carolina may have been the fresher team, having had to play just three games to State’s five, but it didn’t show in the effort. For all of the failings of the night, of which there were many, that one was perhaps the most frustrating.
There’s an outside chance that the loss could cost UNC a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. However, their closest competitions for the final #1, Arizona and Tennessee, didn’t even make it to their conference championship games. We will await the selection committee’s decision on that tomorrow evening.
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