UNC women's basketball falls to Duke in ACC title game

GREENSBORO — To get to the ACC title game, No. 3 seed North Carolina overcame a 14-point halftime deficit against No. 2 seed Maryland — the second largest comeback in ACC Tournament history.

But after falling behind top-seeded Duke by 15 at halftime in the title game, the Tar Heels couldn’t muster the same second-half magic, losing 92-73.

UNC started out hot, taking a 16-10 lead on a Brittany Rountree 3-pointer with 12:35 left in the first half.

It seemed bound to be a competitive game against the Blue Devils, who narrowly defeated UNC 65-58 in Durham on March 3.

But Duke freshman point guard Alexis Jones had other plans.

Jones, who replaced junior All-American Chelsea Gray for the final third of the ACC schedule after Gray dislocated her knee, scored a career-high 24 points.

“From what I can see they’re probably a better team with Alexis Jones out there than they were with Chelsea Gray,” coach Sylvia Hatchell said. “They’re doing a lot of things with Alexis at point that they weren’t doing when Chelsea was there.”

Duke closed out the first half on a 29-8 run and never led by fewer than 15 points in the second half.

Jones burned the Tar Heels on layups, jumpers and even pulled down a rebound against UNC center Waltiea Rolle — who towers over Jones by 10 inches. The freshman added eight rebounds and four steals in an ACC Tournament MVP performance.

Senior point guard Tierra Ruffin-Pratt, who led all scorers with 25 points and made the All-Tournament first team, said Jones provides a different skill set than Gray.

“Chelsea’s more of a pass-first (point guard). Alexis is more of a score-first point guard,” Ruffin-Pratt said. “You have to focus on keeping Alexis in front of you more.”

Ruffin-Pratt scored all 25 of her points in the second half, after being limited by foul trouble in the first half.

In the Tar Heels’ three tournament games, she scored 64 points and shot 87.9 percent from the free-throw line — markedly better than her 70.4 season percentage.

After missing the NCAA Tournament last season, UNC — which was deemed the conference’s fifth best team by the media before the season began — is a lock for this year’s tournament and will find out their seeding tonight at 7 p.m.

“I remember being in Greensboro on (preseason) media day, and I said, ‘Well there’s two things: first of all we’re underrated, and second of all we’ll be very hard to play against,’” Hatchell said. “So I think those two things have happened, and the fact that we were runner-up is nothing to be ashamed of.”

Contact the desk editor at sports@dailytarheel.com.