Column: UNC men's basketball desperately needs a resume building win

CHARLOTTE — It's time to worry.

When UNC men’s basketball fell 92-89 to then-No. 1 Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse over a month ago, the team showed flashes of what it could be. 

Yes, the Tar Heels fell behind early. But they showed fight, crawling back from a 15-point halftime deficit and taking the lead in what could have been a poetic revenge game.  

And then the same thing happened at the Maui Invitational: three big deficits, and this time, one successful comeback. But the Tar Heels lost to a skilled No. 2 Auburn team and tied their second biggest comeback in program history to mount Dayton. Michigan State was a bad loss, but everything seemed explainable. The season was young, and Hubert Davis’ squad had time to work out the kinks before three major matchups against top-25 teams. 

But the Tar Heels lost 94-76 in a beatdown against then-No. 10 Alabama. Then North Carolina looked to change the narrative against No. 7 Florida in the Jumpman Invitational. Still, the same story persisted.

And with Tuesday night’s 90-84 loss to the Gators at the Spectrum Center, the UNC men’s basketball team is now 0-5 against non conference Power Five opponents this season. The Tar Heels have just one Quad 1 win against Dayton, a key metric — however flawed it may be — utilized in postseason tournament seeding and at-large bids. And North Carolina is running out of time to add quality wins to its resume.

“We can’t beat good teams by playing one half of basketball,” first-year guard Ian Jackson said. “We gotta play two halves and play out the whole thing.”

Just four minutes into the first half, the Tar Heels found themselves in a familiar position: facing an eight point deficit. In every matchup against a high-major school this year, North Carolina has found itself trailing by at least eight points. 

Still, after being down by as many as 17 in the first half, North Carolina looked like it had flipped a switch in the second. An 11-0 run characterized the first two and a half minutes after the break. Later in the half, North Carolina took an 81-77 lead with 4:03 to play.

“It’s something that I can’t explain,” head coach Hubert Davis said. “To play with that type of energy and effort in the second half and not have that consistently in the first half or for an entire game is something that’s been the consistent theme for us this year.”

But, almost like it was written in stone, things started to unravel. In the final four minutes, UNC had three field goal attempts to Florida's seven. The Gators grabbed four offensive rebounds. North Carolina had zero. Florida went 8-8 on free throws in the dwindling minutes of the game. The Tar Heels? 1-4. 

A miscommunication from Florida put sophomore guard Elliot Cadeau on the line with six seconds left. UNC was down 88-84. But Cadeau missed the front end of a one-and-one, extinguishing any spark the comeback attempt had left. 

For a North Carolina team that’s still looking to pick up its first ranked win of the year — after starting the season as the No. 9 team in the country — the lack of explanation and confusion is cause for concern.

Granted, against the Gators, one thing can help Davis explain the deficit in the first half. Florida shot an absurd 52.9 percent from the field and 41.2 percent from three in the first half. Meanwhile, the Tar Heels struggled to find any offensive rhythm, hitting on 29.7 percent of its shots and going 2-16 from beyond the arc in the first half. 

“It’s super frustrating,” junior guard Seth Trimble said. “I feel that’s one of the big reasons why we went down like that in the first half. I don’t know what it is. We have our days [where] we’re a good shooting team, we have our days [where] we’re not.”

With only one non-conference ranked matchup left, it’s almost too late for North Carolina to figure it out. 

While yes, it is still December and there is a lot of basketball to be played, UNC’s regular season schedule doesn’t exactly lend itself to help build a resume worthy of an NCAA tournament bid. Only two ACC teams are ranked in the top-25. Five, including North Carolina, are in the top-50 of the NET rankings.  

The Tar Heels likely have just six Quad 1 opportunities left this season, starting with No. 18 UCLA on Saturday in Madison Square Garden. The others? No. 5 Duke twice. Pitt twice. No. 25 Clemson once.

If UNC wants to build its resume for the tournament, it can’t wait for the second half. And if the players as Jackson put it, “still got to figure it out,” at this point in the season, then maybe that elusive ranked win won’t ever come.

@mdmaynard74

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