Carolina combined experience and youth, toughness and finesse and restraint over retaliation in a victory Saturday the Tar Heels easily would have lost in past years.
Florida State used 11 men, two of whom did not play in the first game at UNC back in December, when both were trying to figure out what kind of teams they had. This time, in Tallahassee, they both found out in a hardscrabble way.
The Seminoles held the same narrow halftime lead as in Chapel Hill after scoring 19 points off UNC’s 12 turnovers, but they could not widen it like the first game. Still, it seemed unlikely this would become UNC’s tenth straight victim that scored 70 points or fewer and match the 1982 national champions for doing it in five consecutive ACC road games.
The Noles lost their lead in the first four minutes of the second half and fell behind by 10 with eight minutes left before mounting their own desperate comeback that fell short. As in the first game, they shot atypically well in the first half (this time 7-of-12 from 3-point range) before the galvanized Tar Heels’ defense held them to 2-of-8 in the second half.
Senior R.J. Davis, junior Harrison Ingram and freshman Elliot Cadeau led an effort to outscore and out-rebound their rowdy hosts down the stretch to go 9-0 in the ACC and tighten their grip on first place heading to Georgia Tech Tuesday night.
Besides their tenth win in a row, a first since 2017-18, UNC is the first school to reach 750 regular season wins since the ACC was established in 1953.
Davis — the ACC Player the Year in waiting — had a game-high 24 points. He passed four Tar Heels on the career scoring list (Rick Fox, Billy Cunningham, Brice Johnson and Rashad McCants) to moving up to 18th place with 1,727 points is 20 away from catching George Lynch.
Ingram had another enormous afternoon on the boards and all over the court, finishing with 17 rebounds, the third time as a Tar Heel he has had a least 15, plus a key block with less than a minute to play. He also drained three long balls that gave him 13 points for his sixth double-double at UNC. He added three steals and continues to emerge from an under-the-radar player with some observers.
Armando Bacot remains a bit of an enigma with numbers that don’t match his career average but, despite being double-teamed, adds value not recorded on the stat sheet, like setting screens that open up lanes to the basket.
Against a constantly switching FSU defense, Bacot set up above the 3-point line and rarely found his comfort zone as a low-post presence but allowed Ingram to get the ball coming off the rim that Mondo usually grabs. AB finished with 5 points, 4 rebounds, 2 assists, a block and a steal, as Carolina still needs to re-establish a more aggressive inside game that has marked Bacot’s career.
Cadeau, getting more comfortable with the college game, had his UNC-best 16 points (half on a season-high 8 for 9 free throws), 6 assists and 3 steals. With 14 points against Wake Forest, Cadeau has now scored in double figures in consecutive games for the first time.
Keep an eye on this guy 👀
16 pts | 6 ast pic.twitter.com/lzHfLGmi1M
— Carolina Basketball (@UNC_Basketball) January 27, 2024
The Noles tried to be extra physical and went over the line when the Tar Heels took an early 11-point lead. FSU forward De’Ante Green kept putting his moving mouth in Bacot’s face. The punk prank did not draw a deserving technical foul and might have helped outscore Carolina 33-17 to halftime. But it didn’t last long into the second half thanks to Cadeau’s three-point play and Cormac Ryan’s three smooth treys, the last opening up a 10-point lead.
The Heels fought off a late run and secured the win on Davis’ driving scoop shot and three free throws that outscored Florida State 5-0 to the buzzer. The ACC’s top scorer had his 16th game leading his team this season and his 13th 20-plus output. His two 3-pointers extended his school record of multiples to 17 consecutive games.
Another big factor, as in Chapel Hill, came at the free throw line, where the Tar Heels went 19-of-24 and the Seminoles missed 6 of their 11 attempts.
“Getting to the line is valuable in any game but especially on the road,” said Tar Heel Sports Network analyst and former player Pete Chilcutt, “because we’re going to struggle sometimes on the road making key shots, but we can be consistent getting to the line and we did a great job getting there today.”
Hubert Davis also liked the defensive effort after the Seminoles shot 50 percent in the first half. “We really stepped it up because they only shot 36 percent, and we had only 5 turnovers after making 12 in the first half. And this was the ninth straight (ACC) game we have out-rebounded our opponent.”
The Tar Heels are a plus-122 rebounds in those nine games. Bacot’s three makes him the first UNC player to have 1,000 career defensive rebounds.
It was far from perfect performance with those season-high 17 total turnovers that FSU turned into 26 points, easily the most this season. Two of them came on five-second violations trying to inbound the ball, a recurring problem that caused Carolina to squander two timeouts, and another led to a steal and breakaway basket for FSU.
“I don’t want to see them again this season,” said a relieved Davis. Adding, of this rough and tumble game, “We talk all the time as a team and individuals to live in the trenches. They are getting there.”
The team’s record line reads near perfect after Carolina’s tenth straight victory and claiming its fifth (ACC) road win. It stands at 17-3 and 9-0, 9-0 at home and 5-0 on the road; and 3-3 on neutral courts against high-quad opponents that likely accelerated the Heels’ growth.
January is coming to a close and February opens with a home date vs. Duke, which is 6-2 in the ACC. The Heels need to win in Atlanta Tuesday night to maintain a two-game lead over the Blue Devils, who beat Clemson at the buzzer Saturday in Cameron.
Photo via AP Photo/Colin Hackley.
Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our biweekly newsletter.
Quite simply put, the FSU game was our best game of the year. FSU has improved considerably and is the type of team (tall and fast) likely our greatest challenge match-up wise. Elliot and RJ had great days offensively, but give credit to Bacot as he clears the deck so to speak.
Carolina is playing Carolina ball and that’s National Title level.