On the eight-year anniversary of Dean Smith’s passing, the Hall of Fame head coach was likely spinning in his grave at Carolina’s performance at Wake Forest Tuesday night. In fact, the energy from his turbulence could likely power a small city.
The Tar Heels went from bad to worse in Winston-Salem, falling behind by 20 in the first half to the Demon Deacons and never recovering in a 92-85 loss. It’s the team’s third consecutive defeat, making it just the fourth Carolina team since 1990 to post two separate losing streaks of at least three games in the same season. Two of those previous teams missed the NCAA Tournament, while the third — the 2019-20 team — saw the tournament it would’ve missed cancelled at the 11th hour due to the COVID pandemic.
To call the effort uninspiring would be an insult to uninspired millions everywhere. Carolina looked lifeless in a first half that was a poor a 20 minutes as the team has played all season long. It was a total washout, with the Demon Deacons exploding to a 47-25 lead at the break, the third-largest halftime deficit faced by UNC in the last 15 seasons. Feckless offense was made all the worse by uninterested defense, which allowed Wake’s electric point guard Tyree Appleby to rack up assists.
Appleby finished with 11 assists and 35 points on the night, 23 of which came at the foul line. His frequent visits to the stripe came in the game’s latter stages as Carolina staged a desperate comeback attempt. The Tar Heels managed to slice the lead — which had been as large as 26 points — down to 10 in the waning minutes, but the effort proved too little, too late. Appleby was money from the foul line, and eventually Carolina ran out of time.
UNC has now lost its last three games in Winston-Salem, and looked rather uncompetitive in all three. The team’s current three-game slide has dropped the Tar Heels to 7-6 in conference play, closer to middling Syracuse than to league leaders Clemson. But Carolina will see plenty of the Tigers soon enough: that’s UNC’s next opponent, who will visit the Smith Center at 2 p.m. To avoid yet another four-game losing streak this season, the Tar Heels will have to spring a home upset.
Imagine saying that when they were ranked No. 1 in November.
Featured image via USA Today Sports/William Howard
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love the outrageous seething keep it up. by the way if UNC and Dr Ralph Basic had not helped China create the RONA, the tournament would have not been cancelled and you would have never had an at large bid and thus missed out in 2020.