After blow out against UNLV, the Tar Heels ready up for their first true test

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — At least for tonight, it didn’t matter. 

An early 13-0 deficit against perennial bottom feeder UNLV — a team that suffered a drubbing at the hands of Montana State in its first and only game before Monday — was far from insurmountable for a North Carolina men’s basketball team bolstering a five-man barrage of former McDonald’s Americans, preseason ACC Player of the Year Garrison Brooks and a multitude of future NBA talents. 

The talent gap was just too big. At least for tonight. 

After a turnover-happy, inefficient start, the Tar Heels came back to crush any upset hopes the Runnin’ Rebels might have had. Using a pair of runs late in the first half, North Carolina took a 37-30 lead into the break. The Tar Heels proceeded to outscore their opponents 41-21 in the second frame, securing a 78-51 victory and a berth into the Maui Invitational semifinals. 

“I felt OK about the score. I told them at the first timeout that I wasn’t worried about the score, I was just worried about how we were playing,” head coach Roy Williams said. “After the first six minutes or so, I thought we did some good things and we got better, and I hope we learned a lot from tonight.” 

After losing some key pieces from last year’s shallow rotation and adding a six-member recruiting class composed of college-ready four- and five-star recruits, UNC’s on-court product is still searching for its identity. 

The Tar Heels have shooters — first-year RJ Davis and senior Andrew Platek combined to shoot an impressive 5-for-8 from beyond the arch — but shooting inefficiencies in the game’s opening minutes created a deficit that won’t be so easy to overcome as UNC gears up to face more talented opponents this week and beyond.

For Platek, the key to his and North Carolina’s second half run was simple: keep shooting. 

“Keep shooting, because I know they’re gonna go in — that’s just my mentality,” Platek said. “You just gotta keep going and keep the confidence in yourself that the next one’s gonna fall.” 

North Carolina’s post rotation is one of the best in the country, with Brooks combining with an elite group of underclassmen in Armando Bacot, Day’Ron Sharpe and Walker Kessler to create an imposing platoon of bigs — but when UNLV clogged the paint with three players to start the game, the Tar Heels couldn’t get anything around the basket.  

Still, North Carolina looked like a team worthy of its top 15 billing in the last 40 minutes of the game. A stifling defensive effort to start the second half stopped UNLV from reaching double digits in the first 15-plus minutes of the frame, and by then UNC had already built a 31-point lead. The Tar Heels out-rebounded their opponents 32-20 in the second half, imposing their will on an undersized Runnin’ Rebels front court. 

“We just know that’s one of our strong suits of this season, just with us being so deep in the front court and having so much length,” Bacot said. “We know that’s something we can lean on, even if our shots aren’t falling, as long as we attack the glass and get a lot of rebounds that’ll give us the advantage over the other team.” 

Tomorrow, the Tar Heels will go head-to-head with Stanford — a team with its own first-year phenom in probable lottery pick Ziaire Williams — in their first true litmus test of the season. North Carolina is rarely a team to come out of the gates hot to start the year, but the match-up could provide a peak into just how far along this young group is. 

“We’ve got to play better,” Williams said. “We can’t spot a lot of people 13 and think you’re gonna come back and win, so we’ve gotta play better during that time period.” 

@zachycrain 

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