No. 3 Tar Heels fall to Seminoles in 90-57 upset

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — After leading all but five members of his No. 3 North Carolina squad off the court at the Tucker Center on Saturday with 14 seconds still remaining on the clock, UNC coach Roy Williams had nothing to say to his team in the locker room.

And as far as UNC guard Dexter Strickland was concerned, following a 90-57 loss to Florida State, there wasn’t really anything that needed to be said.

“We said our prayer, and that was it,” Strickland said. “I think everybody knew what we did and what we did wrong and what we have to do to get better.”

The 33-point loss to the Seminoles (11-6, 2-1 ACC) was the worst loss for North Carolina (15-3, 2-1 ACC) since Maryland beat UNC 96-56 on February 22, 2003.

And from the get-go on Saturday, the Tar Heels knew they didn’t have an easy road ahead of them.

Florida State came into Saturday’s game shooting 30.2 percent from behind the arc, the worst percentage in the ACC.

But in the first three minutes of Saturday’s game, the Seminoles hit three of their first four 3-pointers to grab an early 9-2 lead.

Senior guard Deividas Dulkys shattered his previous career-high of 22 points with a 32-point performance against the Tar Heels. Dulkys, who came into the game averaging just 6.2 points per game for the Seminoles, shot 86 percent from the field against UNC, making 8-of-10 from long range.

“We were giving him wide open shots,” guard Kendall Marshall said. “When you have a guy that basically, can sit there, set his feet, look down at the floor, go up and shoot, it’s going to be hard to guard people.

“(I haven’t been beat like this) since I was about 10 or 11 years old. It’s embarrassing to us.”

Marshall came into Saturday’s game with just 39 turnovers to 161 assists — the second-best assist-to-turnover ratio in Division I basketball.

But against the Seminoles, Marshall had seven of North Carolina’s 22 turnovers and managed a season-low four assists.

Forward Harrison Barnes, who led UNC in scoring with 15 points against FSU, said it was the little things that kept North Carolina down.

“We need to be mentally tougher. I don’t think anything we did really was physical,” Barnes said. “Every time we made a mental mistake, it’s a three. Every time we don’t box out, it’s a second-chance opportunity, it’s a dunk. So it’s a lot of things like that, a lot of little things, that add up to 30-point losses.”

All game long, the mistakes continued to pile up for the Tar Heels.

Florida State led UNC for the entire game, and the Tar Heels went into the locker room at halftime trailing 36-28. The Seminoles came out in the second half with a 30-8 run to take a 30-point lead.

Against Florida State UNC shot a season-low 37.3 percent from the field and 45 percent from the free throw line. The Tar Heels also had a season-low eight assists, a season-high 22 turnovers, and the Seminoles’ 48.4 field goal percentage was the highest for a UNC opponent this season.

Saturday’s upset was the worst loss for the Tar Heels in the Williams era. But after the game, the disappointed coach was the last person who needed to be reminded of that fact.

“We had no answers for them on the court. I had no answers for them on the sideline,” Williams said. “I did the worst job of coaching the team that I’ve ever done, the worst job of preparing the team to play that I’ve ever done. And I’ve got to do a heck of a lot better job than that.”