It wasn’t always pretty, but the No. 1 team in college basketball is 1-0.

The Tar Heels fought through offensive cold spells, sloppy play and a feisty UNC-Wilmington team to win 69-56 in the Smith Center Monday night. It’s the 21st consecutive time Carolina has won its season opener.

Junior guard Caleb Love was one of three Tar Heels in double figures, and led all scorers with 17 points on the night. Armando Bacot didn’t start his 2022-23 season with a double-double, but still put together a workmanlike line of 16 points and nine rebounds while fighting through foul trouble.

“I think we all came out a little rusty,” said Bacot, the ACC Preseason Player of the Year. “It’s not easy winning games… but it’s a marathon, not a sprint. We’re happy with our results.”

The Seahawks came to play from the start, leading by as many as six points at 8-2 early. UNC eventually fought back on the strength of 11 first-half points from junior guard R.J. Davis, and the Tar Heels took a 32-21 advantage into the half. Neither team was particularly efficient offensively: the Seahawks shot 9-25, the Tar Heels 9-24.

“They just took us out of our rhythm offensively,” Hubert Davis said. “We didn’t do a good job of handling how physical they were.”

Carolina extended its lead to as much as 16 points early in the second half, but couldn’t quite pull away from the pesky Seahawks. The visitors cut the lead down to eight midway through the half, but could get no further. Highlight plays from Love and Seth Trimble got the Smith Center crowd loud on a late Monday night.

The 9 p.m. start time didn’t do anything to dampen the noise inside the arena. Though not a sellout, the Smith Center’s crowd more than surpassed normal standards for a November game.

“It was amazing,” Davis said of the atmosphere. “I walked out of the tunnel [and] the energy was live. It was really unbelievable. The support and the buzz around this team has just been off the charts.

“Right before the game, during the starting lineups, I just remember just not being able to stop smiling” said forward Pete Nance, a graduate transfer from Northwestern. “There was just so much energy and so much adrenaline in the building that I’m just not used to at all.”

Nance finished with with six points, three rebounds and two of UNC’s four assists on the night. That paltry assist number is Carolina’s lowest in a single game since 1980, ironically in a double-overtime NCAA Tournament game against Texas A&M.

“We always talk about having spacing and balance and movement,” said Davis, “and for the most part, especially in the first half, that just wasn’t there.”

Maybe it was rust. Maybe UNC-Wilmington will break more than a few hearts in March. Or maybe the shiny ranking next to Carolina’s name has rattled more than a few nerves in Chapel Hill. Davis, for one, certainly felt his players were a little off.

“I really think, for whatever reason, they were nervous and they were anxious,” Davis said. “Especially on the offensive end, we were moving at such a [nervous] type of pace that at times we couldn’t even catch the basketball.”

The unsightly win was typical early-season basketball, and also a reminder that the days of the Iron Five are now passed. Is Carolina truly No. 1? Perhaps not. But they don’t give out banners in November.

“One of the thoughts of the day we always tell [the team] is ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day,'” Davis said. “‘But it was worked on every day.'”

The Tar Heels will be back in action Friday night against College of Charleston. That game tips off at 7 p.m.

 

Featured image via Todd Melet. For a full photo gallery of the game, click here.

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