UNC out of tune-ups after sloppy yet decisive win over Wagner; Michigan State up next

It hardly felt like an escape — not after a final margin almost 30 points wide; not after North Carolina pulled away enough to afford its walk-ons a bit of playing time in its first NCAA Tournament game in almost two years — but the Tar Heels did not exactly feel great, either, about their 90-62 victory against Wagner here on Thursday.

The final score looked fine enough, at least. That was one thing.

And the threat of drama — the kind that UNC wanted to avoid against an opponent that had every reason to fold early, yet didn’t — gradually subsided. And yet if ever 28-point victory could feel a little wobbly or dissatisfying, it was this one, in the first of what the Tar Heels hope will be a five-game march to Phoenix, and to the final Monday night of the season.

To get there, the Tar Heels know this much: They have to be better than they were Thursday at the Spectrum Center, where about 20,000 UNC fans gathered for a stress-free afternoon of some basketball-watching and instead wound up waiting, and waiting (and waiting) for a pull-away that came, finally, during the final 10 minutes. The belated cheers might as well have been an exhalation.

Roughly translated, they said this:

“Finally,” or “at last,” or, “about time.”

And also: “What took so long?”

UNC had to work to make it happen, and afterward players who’d found things a little too close for comfort — more frustrating or challenging than anticipated — offered various measures of penance. Hardly anyone seemed all that happy. They all seemed to know, starting Saturday against Michigan State in the Round of 32, that the margin of error grows considerably more narrow.

Consider the Tar Heels’ self-evaluations after a 28-point victory that felt much closer:

“Me personally, I think I played terribly,” said Elliot Cadeau, the freshman point guard.

“I thought for me personally today, I didn’t do a great job defensively,” said Armando Bacot, the fifth-year senior forward, who later added that “I would probably give myself an F for today,” on defense.

“We’ve got to clean up on the little things that we did wrong today,” said RJ Davis, the senior guard, before he listed those things — from reacting to screens the correct way to communicating on defense to committing sloppy turnovers to doing a better job of sticking to the scouting report and game plan to the need to be in a better position to wrangle loose balls.

All of those things, individually, “may seem so little,” said Davis, who led UNC with 22 points.

“But it’s big, and it’s evident in March.”

The Tar Heels, the No. 1 seed in the West Region, never found themselves under serious threat against Wagner, a No. 16 and the improbable champions of the Northeast Conference. Wagner never led. The game was tied for only 82 seconds. And yet, still, the Seahawks — with only seven available players, and having arrived here ranked No. 291 nationally, according to kenpom.com — hung around for much longer than anticipated.

For much longer than most everyone thought they might. This was a Wagner team that finished sixth in its nine-team conference. That had to win three road games to win its conference tournament. That then had to advance through a tournament play-in game against Howard on Tuesday night in Dayton. And then had to travel to Charlotte and get ready to play the Tar Heels, with their considerable size and talent advantage at every position on the court.

And yet, despite all of that, it was still not completely over — just a 15-point lead for UNC with less than nine and a half minutes to play.

“Wagner was out there battling,” Davis said and, indeed, the Seahawks during the first 30 minutes played above their meager means. UNC, though, also helped them. There were the six first-half turnovers, which Wagner turned into nine points. There were the nine missed layups; a missed dunk. There was the general and pervading sloppiness, which inhibited UNC’s ability to pull away earlier, and there were also the Tar Heels’ struggles against Wagner’s zone defense.

“I felt like at times we were out of character in the first half,” UNC coach Hubert Davis said afterward, and he was talking about his team’s failure, in moments, to live up to its identity. Davis over the past several months has made no secret of what he has emphasized and tried to instill within his team.

He wants the Tar Heels to be known for their defense. For their rebounding. For their ability to value possessions and not give them away. For their toughness as much as their smarts.

“I felt like in the first half we had moments where we weren’t checking any of those boxes,” Davis said, “and that’s something, as you continue to move forward and specifically against Michigan State, you just can’t do that. You’ve got to be sound in all three of those areas.”

It wasn’t all bad for UNC. It needed somebody to emerge, and provide a lift, and Jae’lyn Withers filled that void. He finished with 16 points and 10 rebounds, off the bench. And Bacot, despite his defensive woes against the much smaller Seahawks, finished with 20 points and 15 rebounds — his sixth consecutive NCAA Tournament game with at least that many rebounds.

The Tar Heels wound up shooting 55%, too, which was their best percentage in a tournament game since their 2016 regional final victory against Notre Dame. But still. There was a reason for all the self-flagellation that followed UNC’s victory on Thursday, and that reason was this: the Tar Heels felt as though they got away with the kind of effort that will no longer be good enough.

Not on Saturday against Michigan State. Not any time after that, if UNC defeats the Spartans.

Cadeau and Bacot and others spoke of lessons learned.

“I think I’ll play a lot better next game,” Cadeau said, after going scoreless with three assists and four turnovers in 19 minutes.

Bacot, who characterized UNC’s start on Thursday as “somewhat flat,” said his lackluster defensive effort was “definitely going to motivate me to go out there Saturday and have a great defensive game. And yeah — I just thought it was unacceptable, me on the defensive end.”

“I thought it kind of leaked into the other guys. But I’ll be better. I’ll watch film, correct it and we’ll be ready to defend on Saturday.”

Photos: North Carolina defeats Wagner in first round NCAA Tournament action

This, on Thursday, was likely UNC’s final tune-up of the season; the last time it could afford to go out onto the court, play around for 25 or 30 minutes and then get serious over the final 10. Such an effort is not likely to be enough — not against Michigan State and not the following week in Los Angeles in the West Regional, should the Tar Heels make it that far.

They walked off the court on Thursday at the Spectrum Center not so much with a sense of relief, because the outcome had been long decided, but with a sense of frustration and maybe even some disappointment. Some of them felt like they knew they’d gotten away with something. It was one thing to play like they did for long stretches during a first-round 1-16 game.

Now, though, the time for tuning up is over. Thursday was it. Up next is Michigan State and coach Tom Izzo, a man known for his March escapades, with a trip West up for grabs.