Wisconsin Hands UNC a Rare Early Exit From NCAA Tournament

A season filled with ups and downs ended with a crashing halt on Friday night in Indiana, as the No. 8 seed UNC men’s basketball team fell to No. 9 seed Wisconsin by a score of 85-62 in its opening game of the NCAA Tournament.

The Badgers — a team that starts four seniors — were all over the Tar Heels right from the start, using their experience and shooting ability to overwhelm a young UNC team lacking each of those attributes. Wisconsin built a 16-point lead by halftime, while no Tar Heel player scored more than five points.

Sophomore forward Armando Bacot went scoreless in the opening half, but attempted to single-handedly carry UNC (18-11) back in the second half by scoring all of his team-high 15 points in the first seven minutes of the period.

Each time Bacot scored, however, Wisconsin (18-12) had an answer on the other end.

Senior guards Brad Davison and D’Mitrik Trice consistently took advantage of open three-point attempts as the Badgers’ frontcourt was also able to keep UNC from doing damage on the backboards — becoming just the second team all season to out-rebound the Tar Heels.

Davison finished with a game-high 29 points, Trice added another 21 and Wisconsin ultimately handed the Tar Heels their first opening round NCAA Tournament loss since 1999 — a stretch dating back four years before the beginning of Roy Williams’ tenure as head coach.

For Williams, it was his first opening round loss in 30 games all-time as a head coach.

“Their coaching staff got them to be more in tune and more focused, with better desire and more alert to go for the offensive rebounds,” Williams told reporters afterwards. “You gotta congratulate them. They played very well. And Roy Williams didn’t coach very well.”

Wisconsin finished the night having made a whopping 13 of its 27 shots from three-point range — more than all but one of UNC’s opponents this season—while also turning the ball over just seven times.

The Tar Heels were able to limit their own turnovers, but struggled to match the Badgers’ shooting accuracy — finishing the night shooting just 39 percent from the floor.

Without being able to consistently get stops or pound the offensive glass and earn easy points on put-backs around the rim, UNC was unable to mount any kind of serious comeback in the second half.

Wisconsin’s experience simply proved to be too much for the Tar Heels to handle on this night, putting an end to what has been a true roller-coaster ride of a season for UNC.

“It’s been a difficult year,” an emotional Williams said. “But everybody has had the problems with COVID that we’ve had. It’s been a hard year to push and pull, push and pull every other day to try to get something done. But how can you be any luckier than Roy Williams is coaching basketball?”

Game Notes:

This was UNC’s first loss in the first round of the NCAA Tournament since 1999 against Weber State. The program is now 31-2 all-time in the opening round of the tournament.
UNC’s 16-point halftime deficit was its largest in the NCAA Tournament since the 2008 Final Four loss to Kansas. It also matched the Tar Heels’ largest halftime deficit of the season, with UNC also trailing by 16 in a home loss to Marquette back in February–another school from the state of Wisconsin.
Caleb Love and Garrison Brooks were the only other UNC players to score in double figures alongside Bacot, finishing with 10 points apiece.

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Photo via ACC Media

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Wisconsin Hands UNC a Rare Early Exit From NCAA Tournament

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