A regular season full of ups and downs finished with the highest of highs on Saturday at the Smith Center, as UNC jumped all over Duke right from the opening tip on the way to a 91-73 victory over the Blue Devils.
The Tar Heels sprinted out to a 20-point lead midway through the first half, while holding Duke (11-11, 9-9 ACC) to just six total points over that span.
That early run spearheaded by sophomore forward Armando Bacot was simply a sign of things to come. UNC dominated from start to finish, delivering a Senior Day victory for Garrison Brooks, Walker Miller, K.J. Smith and Andrew Platek.
Bacot tallied 11 of his 18 points in the first half, while Brooks racked up 14 points in his final game at the Dean Dome. Freshman guards Kerwin Walton and Caleb Love also played a large role in the blowout, each ending the night with 18 points of their own.
The Tar Heels shot 55 percent as a team—including 81 percent at the free throw line–and never allowed the Blue Devils to trim the lead any smaller than 12 points after the big opening run.
As a result, head coach Roy Williams and company completed the season sweep over their most heated rival with a wire-to-wire blowout victory—the biggest win the Hall-of-Famer has ever had over Duke during his tenure at UNC.
“The enthusiasm of Senior Day, the enthusiasm of the last game of the year in the Smith Center, the enthusiasm of what you start playing for at this time of the year,” Williams said afterwards. “I think that led to us playing as well as we played. And we know we didn’t play very well in our previous game.”
With the win, UNC ends the regular season with a 16-9 record and a 10-6 mark inside the ACC. That’s likely to be enough for the Tar Heels to earn a spot in the upcoming NCAA Tournament, although next week’s ACC Tournament will give UNC a big chance to improve its seeding.
It was also just about the best ending to the season the Tar Heels could have hoped to see, after battling inconsistency issues all season long.
There’s no telling, obviously, if UNC will be able to maintain this level of play for a prolonged stretch during tournament time. For now, though, all that matters for the Tar Heels is sending the seniors out the right way and picking up yet another win over Duke.
“When I was an assistant here, in 10 years we never lost a Senior Day,” Williams said. “In 15 years at Kansas, we never lost a Senior Day. We’ve messed it up and lost three of them in the 18 years I’ve been here [as head coach], but it’s always extremely important to me to allow those seniors to go out the right way in the last game they play in their building.”
Up Next:
UNC is the No. 6 seed in the ACC Tournament and will play the winner of Wake Forest and Notre Dame on Wednesday at 9 p.m.
Game Notes:
UNC’s 16-point halftime lead represented the largest deficit Duke has faced at halftime all season. The Tar Heels 24-point lead in the second half was Duke’s largest deficit of any kind this season.
The Tar Heels have swept the regular season series against the Blue Devils in two of the last three years.
With 20 turnovers in the game, UNC has turned the ball over at least 19 times in each of its last four outings.
Duke made just five of its 27 attempts from three-point range on Saturday.
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