UNC wins ninth straight in Wake Forest rout

With 2:06 left in North Carolina’s game against Wake Forest, senior Wade Moody made the biggest shot of the contest.

His 3-pointer didn’t seal a victory. UNC (20-7, 10-4 ACC) already held an insurmountable lead. Instead, his 3-pointer broke a mark this Tar Heel team hadn’t broken all season — the 100-point barrier.

But early in UNC’s 105-72 victory against Wake Forest, the blowout wasn’t so apparent. The Tar Heels led by a slim margin, 18-13, with 10:38 left in the first half, and junior James Michael McAdoo was 0-for-5.

Wake Forest, the losers of seven games in a row, were hanging around and holding on to the hope of a post-Duke letdown from UNC, but in one moment McAdoo seemingly ended any chance of that. In typical Tar Heel fashion, Marcus Paige pushed the ball up the court on a break, and fed the ball to a sprinting McAdoo, who went up with cruel intentions, cocking back his left arm and unleashing a dunk over a Wake Forest defender.

The slam ignited the crowd, and did the same to the Tar Heel offense, which went on an 18-5 run and took a five-point lead and made it 18 by halftime.

“First half I thought for a long stretch early we weren’t really into it,” coach Roy Williams said.

“Then I thought we did get a little better defensively, but it’s just a story of one of those games when we shot the ball really well.”

Once UNC began to click, every facet of the game went its way. The Tar Heels shot better than 57% percent from the field, set a team record for 3-point percentage when making 10 or more, and they even hit 24 of 29 free throw attempts.

McAdoo, who finished with 11 points, used another emphatic dunk with 14:54 remaining in the second half to drive the dagger deeper into the Demon Deacons and quell any chance of a comeback.

In what has now become a nine-game winning streak, it has often been energy plays like those that have driven UNC to victory. Sophomore Marcus Paige said sometimes it comes to plays like that to make everything click.

“I think that had something to do with it, we were a little bit more locked in defensively after that stretch as well,” Paige said. “That dunk definitely shifted the momentum our way.”

Sophomore Brice Johnson, whose energy is often most apparent after plays like that, had one of his own. With 11:58 remaining in the second half and UNC already beginning to stretch the lead in the second half, Johnson pulled in an offensive rebound and flushed home a two-handed dunk in one fluid motion. He said plays like that spread beyond just the dunker.

“It’s a big deal because it helps give energy to everybody else,” Johnson said, “because they feed off of it then they start hitting shots and start clicking.”

It was plays like those early that led to Moody checking into the game with 4:48 left and victory no longer a question. And it has been plays like that that have lifted this UNC team from an abysmal 1-4 ACC start, which included a loss to Wake Forest, and positioned the Tar Heels for a chance to earn a first-round bye in the ACC tournament.

“It’s a happy locker room right now,” Paige said, “and I think the fact that we are winning is making us hungrier to continue that,”

The happiness isn’t contained simply to the locker room. At no point was that more evident than when UNC’s leading scorers were relegated to cheerleading duty late in the game. And as Moody’s shot ripped through the nylon and the entire bench erupted in cheers for the walk-on, the excitement was painted on everyone’s face.

After a poor start to the ACC season, after a stretch of four games in eight days, and after defeating a fierce rival in a thriller, maybe the best thing to do is to sit and watch someone else succeed. It didn’t make the least bit of difference in the outcome. But it was the biggest shot of the game.