Tar Heels dealt stunning loss in Las Vegas upset

LAS VEGAS — After trailing Las Vegas for much of the first half of the Las Vegas Invitational championship game Saturday, No. 1 North Carolina managed to take a four-point lead into the locker room at halftime.

The first half featured seven lead changes, and it was clear to undefeated UNC that leaving the Orleans Arena unscathed wouldn’t be easy.

But when the Runnin’ Rebels came out after intermission with a 14-0 run, the Tar Heels soon saw just how difficult it would be.

In its 90-80 loss to UNLV (6-0) on Saturday, North Carolina’s porous defense failed to stop Rebel shooters who finished 13-for-32 from behind the arc.

In contrast, UNC (5-1) struggled to get anything going offensively late in the game against an unwavering UNLV defense, making just 11 of 36 shots in the second half.

UNC guard Kendall Marshall said the Rebels were especially effective at shutting down the Tar Heels’ quick-paced offensive style.

“They did a good job of slowing down our fast break,” Marshall said. “We like to get out and run, and it’s also a lot easier to get out and run when you’re getting stops. And we weren’t doing that tonight.”

In UNC’s win Friday against South Carolina, Marshall racked up 14 assists — his third double-digit assists performance in five games.

Marshall’s spot-on passing has been a spark on which the Tar Heels have heavily relied so far this season. But on Saturday, the Rebels discovered a way to impede his efforts.

“They did a great job of picking him up in the backcourt, stopping him from making those passes to (Tyler Zeller) and passes to myself, (John Henson),” Dexter Strickland said. It just slowed him down a little bit.”

Coach Roy Williams said his team had a lack of offensive focus from the start of the game.

And when Zeller picked up his third personal foul with seven minutes to go in the first half, that didn’t help matters for the Tar Heels.

Despite shooting more than 56 percent from the field in the first half, North Carolina’s leading scorer failed to create much of a stir before intermission. Harrison Barnes led UNC with 21 points in Friday’s victory, but in the first half against UNLV, he had just four.

Barnes turned his ankle in the first half of Saturday’s game. But Williams said that was no excuse for his squad’s sloppy play.

“They’ve got to learn we’ve got to play a heck of a lot better,” Williams said. “We’ve got to guard the basketball better. We’ve got to rebound better. We’ve got to be more patient. Early in the second half, all of a sudden they make the run and then everybody’s doing one-on-one trying to shoot the ball thinking they’re going to get us back. And it’s not what I do, it’s what we do.”

After North Carolina’s first loss of the season, Zeller struggled to name one thing in particular on which the Tar Heels needed to improve.

“It’s everything,” he said. “We didn’t do a great job at much of anything.”

UNLV’s untiring intensity made that fact painfully obvious for the Tar Heels.

Against the Rebels, North Carolina was out-rebounded for the third time this season, and Las Vegas racked up 20 second-chance points to UNC’s six.

At the sound of the buzzer at the Orleans Arena, UNLV fans stormed the court to celebrate knocking off the No. 1-ranked team.

It might have been an upset. But Marshall wasn’t exactly shocked at the outcome.

“I won’t say it’s a wake-up call, because we knew,” Marshall said. “Coach has been telling us there’s things we’ve got to get better at.”

And on Saturday, Williams couldn’t have asked for a better teaching tool.

Contact the Sports Editor at sports@dailytarheel.com.