UNC Escapes Hot-Shooting Pitt’s Upset Bid at Final Seconds

UNC junior point guard Joel Berry said last week that the toughest obstacle to defending the team’s ACC regular season title is grinding through the middle of the league schedule.

The strength of the conference from top to bottom is enough to create a bump in the road for any team—no matter how talented.

The Tar Heels nearly found that out the hard way at the Dean Dome on Tuesday, overcoming a red-hot shooting performance to edge out the last-place Pitt Panthers 80-78.

A frantic finish saw Pitt’s Jamel Artis hoist up what would have been the Panthers’ 14^th made three-pointer of the game, however the shot fell just short of the rim at the buzzer.

For a split second, while the ball was in the air, the entire arena fell silent—filled with anticipation that yet another one of Pitt’s shots would swish through in a game where they shot an incredible 56 percent from the floor.

Guard Cam Johnson led Pitt (12-10, 1-8 ACC) with 24 points on six made threes, but the Panthers ultimately came up just short of earning another signature victory for new head coach Kevin Stallings.

“It wasn’t a great shot, but if you’d have given me a shot to win the game at the start of the night—told me ‘OK, you’re gonna have a shot to win it’—I’d have signed it with a Sharpie,” Stallings told reporters.

It would have been the first losing streak of the season for the Tar Heels (20-4, 8-2 ACC) who held on to their place atop the conference standings just under a week after Berry spoke about how crucial this stretch is for them.

A lackluster offensive performance in Miami cost UNC last Saturday, but that particular spark returned at home on Tuesday.

Berry responded from his worst performance of the year against the Hurricanes by making five shots from beyond the arc on the way to 19 points in this game. He also made a critical layup in the final minutes that helped cushion a fragile lead.

The bounce back performance is something he credits to the response he had following the team’s return from Miami.

“I came in that night that we got back and I put up 500 shots,” Berry said. “Then I came back the next day and put up 600. I need to do that regardless of how I’m playing, but it just kinda got me back on track because that’s what I would do in my off time.

“I had kind of gotten away from it a little bit,” he added.

Justin Jackson led UNC yet again, with his fourth-straight 20 point outing, while Isaiah Hicks contributed 12 of his 18 points in the second half.

Pitt attempted to follow Miami’s lead defensively and show the Tar Heels a tricky 1-2-2 zone, but the team’s shooters were more than ready to let it fly—sinking nine of their 24 three-point attempts.

Scoring wasn’t as easy as it has been on some other nights, but it was just enough to get the win.

Head coach Roy Williams said afterwards that UNC struggled defending Pitt’s outside shooting because the Panthers were spacing the floor with four shooters—leaving the Tar Heel big men like Hicks and Kennedy Meeks a bit out of position.

“Kennedy Meeks is standing there and [Pitt forward] Michael Young’s three feet behind the three-point line,” Williams said. “Kennedy Meeks is not comfortable. He’s not comfortable there. That’s what it was.”

It’s possible the reason Berry viewed the last three games as so important is because the schedule only gets tougher for the Tar Heels from here.

With games against Notre Dame and Duke next on the docket, it was critical for UNC to avoid dropping another game to an opponent further down the standings.

Despite having to go down to the wire unexpectedly on Tuesday, Berry spoke for most of the team when he tried to find the silver lining—bringing back one specific word that became synonymous, for better or for worse, with previous Tar Heel teams.

“Against Miami, we faced a little adversity and we didn’t step up to play,” Berry said. “They just outhustled us in every aspect of the game, and we can’t have that.

“I think tonight was kind of a good game for us to tough it out a little bit,” he continued. “To show our toughness.”

Up Next:

UNC will stay in Chapel Hill on Saturday as it hosts Notre Dame, which entered the week ranked No. 20 in the country.

Game Notes:

• Pitt shot 55.6 percent from the floor, the highest percentage by an opponent this year (previous was .541 by Kentucky).
• The Panthers also made 13 three-pointers, the most against UNC this year (previous high was 12 by Tulane and Boston College).
• It is the 13th straight season that the Tar Heels have won at least 20 games.

 

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