UNC fends off N.C. State with second-half burst

N.C. State’s drubbing of North Carolina in Raleigh occurred exactly one month ago — but it might as well have been years ago.

By halftime of Saturday’s 76-65 UNC win, that game had already become a distant memory.

The Tar Heels and the Wolfpack were entirely different teams. One lineup had become smaller with the addition of P.J. Hairston; the other had become bigger by adding T.J. Warren. One played with significantly more poise and intensity; the other, with 12 turnovers in the first half, could barely hold onto the ball.

But, just as the Tar Heels seemed poised to break away in the early minutes of the second half, there was a sudden reversal. N.C. State went on a 10-2 run, snatched a 43-42 lead, and UNC coach Roy Williams witnessed his team seemingly revert back to the sloppy, lethargic play it had exhibited one month ago.

“I was just ticked off,” Williams said. “I thought we were getting lackadaisical and casual with everything we did.”

So Williams made a move. He pulled his five men off the court during the under-12 media timeout and replaced them with Marcus Paige, Jackson Simmons, J.P. Tokoto, Desmond Hubert and Luke Davis.

That group didn’t fare much better. In fact, N.C. State’s lead ballooned to 49-45 in that unit’s two minutes on the court.

But Williams still accomplished what he set out to do. His message was received.

“The five that were out there, including me, were staggering our offense and were taking bad shots,” said junior Reggie Bullock, who led UNC with 22 points and 13 rebounds.

“When he put the five in, we sat on the bench and saw the easy shots that the five went in and got. It was just moving, cutting and setting screens”

Once the original starting five returned to the Smith Center court, that momentary lapse in intensity quickly subsided.

UNC battled on the offensive boards in its first possession after the timeout, grabbing two offensive rebounds to set up a short jumper for James Michael McAdoo. A minute later, P.J. Hairston stormed to the basket, made the layup and drew a foul, sending the sold-out Smith Center crowd into a frenzy as he turned to the student section and screamed in exuberance.

The score was tied 49-49, the aggressiveness UNC had displayed in the first half had returned, and the Tar Heels took over from there.

“I think it really helped refocus us watching them and knowing we could do a lot better playing against N.C. State.” McAdoo said. “The biggest is thing is we just had to play with more effort.”

For most of the night, though, effort wasn’t an issue. The Tar Heels looked drastically different than they did a month ago, and the clearest example of that improvement was in the play of the freshman point guard Paige. With 11 points in the game’s final seven minutes, Paige ignited UNC’s decisive finish, and he finished with 14 points, eight assists and no turnovers.

In contrast, Paige shot 2 for 11 against N.C. State the first time and was pulled from the lineup halfway through the first half.

“(The win) was big for us,” Paige said. “A lot of the reason was because of the way we played against them the last time. It left a bad taste in our mouths to come out in that big of a game and not play the way we wanted to, so we really wanted to come and set the tone early and really compete the entire time.”

There was a brief moment when UNC didn’t compete at its highest level. But much like the game the Tar Heels lost one month ago, it soon became a distant memory.